What was Bill C-6 of 2017?

Bill C-6 (An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to another Act) is the federal statute that reversed many of the changes introduced by the previous government's Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act (Bill C-24) of 2014. Bill C-6 received Royal Assent on June 19, 2017 under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government and substantially restored the principle that all Canadian citizens are equal regardless of how they acquired their citizenship.

The Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act of 2014 had made several significant changes to citizenship law. It created a two-tier citizenship system by allowing the federal government to revoke citizenship from dual citizens convicted of treason, terrorism, or espionage. It increased the physical-presence requirement from 3 years out of 4 to 4 years out of 6. It introduced an 'intent to reside' requirement. It expanded language-and-knowledge testing to applicants aged 14 to 64 (up from 18 to 54). It allowed the Minister to revoke citizenship through a paper-review process without a Federal Court hearing.

Bill C-6 reversed each of these changes. The two-tier provisions allowing revocation of citizenship from dual citizens convicted of specified offences were repealed, restoring the principle that all Canadian citizens are equal. The physical-presence requirement was reduced back to 3 years out of 5 (specifically, 1,095 days during the 5 years before the application). The 'intent to reside' requirement was repealed. Language-and-knowledge testing was limited to applicants aged 18 to 54. Revocation procedures were amended to provide a Federal Court hearing in most cases, responding to the Federal Court's decision in Hassouna v. Canada (2017) that the paper-review procedure violated section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Bill C-6 also restored statelessness protections (preventing citizenship revocation that would render the person stateless), credited time spent in Canada as a temporary resident or protected person toward the physical-presence requirement (limited to 365 days), repealed provisions exempting members of the Canadian Armed Forces who were not citizens or permanent residents from certain requirements (since they could not become citizens under the regular framework), and restored citizenship status to individuals who had been retroactively denied citizenship by the 2014 Act. The federal Bill C-71 of 2024 has continued the work of addressing remaining legacy issues from earlier Citizenship Acts, particularly around the first-generation limit on citizenship by descent.