Dual standards are just wrong
National Affairs
Claire Hoy

We all remember the panic in July at the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hezbollah

when the federal government was hiring every ship it could find to transport some of the reported 40,000 Canadian "citizens" from Lebanon back "home" to Canada.

Now, $85 million later, and having rescued about 15,000 "citizens" from that war-torn nation, we learn that close to half of those people, roughly 7,000, have returned to Lebanon.

Why? Because for them, Lebanon, not Canada, is home.

Yet, thanks to a 1977 change in immigration legislation - a change, as often is the case, by Liberals of the day hoping to garner more of the socalled "ethnic" vote - and contrary to practice in most of the world, Canadians don't really have to act like Canadians.

That is to say, they can hold dual citizenship.

And while the war certainly focused the situation on Lebanese dual citizens, it's not confined to that particular group by any means. Fact is, an estimated four million foreign-born Canadians - and an undetermined number of those born here - are dual citizens, i.e. they are citizens of both Canada and some other country. Surely this isn't a good idea.

At the time of the great Lebanese rescue mission, those who supported the idea that "a Canadian is a Canadian" were outraged at the suggestion that, well, perhaps being a Canadian should at the very least involve asking people to chose to be a Canadian first and foremost.

Inconvenient perhaps. But, as most countries in the world have concluded, it's hardly unreasonable to expect a person to receive all the benefits of citizenship without at least having the responsibility of declaring allegiance to the country. During the uproar over whether or not it was Canada's obligation to not only rescue all these Canadian "citizens," but was also our - i.e. the taxpayers - duty to pay the freight for it, anybody who questioned this great wisdom was denounced as a bigot. Or worse.

Former Liberal honcho Sheila Copps publicly scolded "armchair quarterbacks" who were questioning that perceived duty, suggesting that all those tens of thousands of "Canadians" in Lebanon at the time were tourists.

Not quite. Not since about half of those who took advantage of Canadian largesse have already returned to their "home," i.e. Lebanon, putting the lie to the notion that dual citizenship is as legitimate as straight citizenship. It isn't. Which is why, we repeat, most countries don't allow such duplicity.

To be sure, since a war was going on at the time, it would have been completely inappropriate for Prime Minister Stephen Harper - or any government, for that matter - to quibble over what is and what isn't a Canadian.

Traditionally in these affairs, when Canadians are in a tough spot the government does what it can to rescue them.

This is as it should be, although it hasn't been the tradition for the taxpayers to pick up the tab.

It is particularly galling, to me at least, that we picked up that tab for the 7,000 Lebanese citizens - who pretended out of convenience to be Canadians in order to get a berth on a rescue ship - who have demonstrated their first loyalties by scurrying back home so quickly.

This is not to criticize them - or anybody else - who opts to live in another country. It's just to say that if that's your choice, then you shouldn't be able to demand the rights and privileges of full citizenship in this country, rights and privileges people earn, at least in part, by paying taxes and making other contributions to the country at large.

Mind you, we haven't always helped ourselves in this regard. Our courts and legislative bodies, for example, have formally declared that a Canadian is not necessarily a Canadian in the same sense that the rest of us are. How else to explain different court concepts for aboriginals, for example?

How else to explain why Canadian law demands certain services in both official languages in nine provinces and allows one province, Quebec, to make one of those official languages, i.e. English, illegal under certain circumstances?

Yet despite these dual standards on the home front - which also should be edited out of our law books and legislation - we allow people to claim the full benefits of citizenship without even having to live here from time to time. It's wrong, period.

The time has come to end this practice but, this being Canada, and politicians being worried about the "ethnic" vote, don't expect it anytime soon. Oh Canada, indeed.