Dual Citizenship Tempest

The teapot tempest over Dion's dual citizenship continues. A positive side-effect of this controversy may be that Canadians learn something about their citizenship law and that this may prove to be a "teachable moment". I recently read a letter to the editor on the issue of Dion's nationality that claimed that Sir John A. Macdonald was a dual citizen, a comment that reveals a gross ignorance of the history of Canadian citizenship law (and of Canadian history more generally). I know not all Grade 9 history classes are created equal, but you would think that a reasonable intelligent person would remember that until after the Second World War, Canadians were legally British subjects (Macdonald was a British subject, but so was Cartier. In fact, if you don't understand this basic fact, so many things about Canadian history and heritage don't make sense-- e.g., why is there a Crown on Ontario licence plates).

The Toronto Star has an excellent article today that mentions the creation of Canadian citizenship in the 1940s (it also discusses John Turner's British birth).


There is a great deal of popular mythology surrounding Mackenzie King's decision to create a separate Canadian citizenship that distinguished Canadians from other subjects of the Empire/Commonwealth. One widespread idea is that the decision was somehow linked to the move to racial and ethnic equality within Canada. The reality is quite different: historically, the Tories, the imperialist party in Canada, were somewhat more tolerant of non-white immigration than the Liberals, the party that tried to detach Canada from the Empire/Commonwealth as much as a possible.

Canadian citizenship was created at precisely the moment non-whites were starting to use their status as British subjects to settle in the UK (until 1961, pretty much any healthy person from the Commonwealth could move to Britain without restriction). Although Canada eventually opened its doors to non-white immigration from the Commonwealth, it did so because of pressure from Britain (especially Harold Macmillan), the need to curry favour within the Commonwealth, and because Diefenbaker's Conservatives saw no conflict between anglophilia and a strong committment to racial equality. In the 1950s, black organizations such as Montreal's Negro Citizenship Association's attempted to have Canada's definition of British subject broadened to include black West Indians--- Ottawa was indifferent to their claims and was focused on recruiting whites immigrants in continental Europe.