Proposed class-action lawsuit aims to help ‘lost Canadians’ reclaim citizenship

They call themselves the "lost Canadians," citizens in their hearts but not, apparently, in the eyes of the federal government.

The may number in the thousands and we may get a better idea of how many there are if a B.C. woman is successful in launching a class-action court case over their status.

Jackie Scott discovered 10 years ago that she wasn't officially Canadian because of a legislative anomaly. The 68-year-old woman was born in Britain to a Canadian soldier and British mother during the Second World War.

But Canada didn't pass its first citizenship law until 1947, which meant apparently that her father was technically a British subject and her birth outside Canada meant she wasn't entitled to citizenship.

Scott was raised by her father in Ontario but only learned of her stateless situation while living in the United States with her husband, CBC News said. She applied for a citizenship certificate and to her surprise was turned down.

[ Related: 'Lost Canadian' hopes to overhaul Canadian citizenship laws through court ]

It's thought there may be thousands such Canadian non-citizens snared by various twists in the Citizenship Act, which has been updated several times in the last seven decades.

A parliamentary committee which studied the issue in 2007 classified lost Canadians in four groups, including some war brides, people born aboard to Canadian parents before 1977 changes to the act, Canadians who'd lost their citizenship before 1977 as children because their parents became citizens of another country and second-generation Canadians born abroad since 1977.

The committee's report recommended changes to allow lost Canadians to reclaim their citizenship. But the government's 2009 revision of the act, which covered about 750,000 lost Canadians, apparently still left many out in the cold, according to a CBC News report at the time.

Scott went to court initially for a judicial review of her status but on Monday she suspended her action so lawyers could broaden it, The Canadian Press reported.

"It's not just about me," she told reporters after the Federal Court hearing.

“What happened today is quite interesting and it’s going to result in a historic decision as to what a Canadian is and when Canadians actually came into being,” James Straith, one of Scott's lawyers, said after Monday's hearing, according to CP.

“What we hope to do now is come back and get a final order from the court where the court finds not just in Jackie Scott’s case, but in every one of these cases of lost Canadians."

The government's stance on the case of Scott and other lost Canadians has come in for criticism. Ottawa is arguing that citizenship is a creation of federal statute.

"In order to become a Canadian citizen, a person must satisfy the applicable statutory requirements," the government said in its response to Scott's application, CP said.

Straith said the government's position troubles him.

If the government is “able to maintain that citizenship is only something that is defined by Parliament, and not simply defined by the law and Constitution of Canada, then they have a lot more flexibility on what they can do with citizenship and where they can allow and deny citizenship,” he said.

[ Related: Fraud crackdown increases number of Canadians having their citizenship revoked ]

The government's 2009 amendments covered those born from 1947 on, Raji Mangat, a B.C. Civil Liberties Association lawyer, told CBC News.

"Children born abroad to Canadians should be Canadians, plain and simple," he said. "It doesn’t matter if your parents were married or what the gender of your Canadian parent is."

Mangat said excluded Canadians still include those who were born abroad out of wedlock to a Canadian father, or to a Canadian mother who had no right to pass her citizenship down to her child, CBC News said.

Scott decided to morph her suit into a class action after Federal Court Judge Luc Martineau rejected as evidence a 1943 pamphlet given Canadian soldiers serving overseas. It included the statement that soldiers "were fighting as citizens of Canada, not merely as British subjects," Straith said.

The judge refused to allow the document because the court's review of her case is narrowly focused, he said. Elevating the case to a class-action trial could produce a more meaningful ruling, Straith said, according to CP.