By: Donovan Martin Sr, Editor in Chief
It often begins in the most ordinary way. A counter. A form. A polite exchange. Someone applies for a passport, confident it is routine, and is told there is a problem. Not a missing document. Not a delay. Something deeper. In other cases, it arrives more quietly, through an ominous letter in the mail, written in careful language, informing someone that their government no longer recognizes them as who they believed they were. These moments are rare, but for those who experience them, they are among the most gut-wrenching ways a person can learn that the country they grew up in no longer sees them as belonging.
Lost Canadians are individuals who were born here, raised here, or born abroad to Canadian parents, who lived their lives believing they were Canadian, only to later discover that technical provisions in the law did not recognize them, or that their status was treated as lost, incomplete, or never properly granted. They did not lose recognition through choice or misconduct. They were failed by law. For many, this discovery came years or decades later when applying for a passport, benefits, or official proof, long after they had built full lives under the reasonable assumption that everything was settled.
Nothing dramatic triggered the loss. No crime. No betrayal. No act of disloyalty. What changed was not who they were, but how the law chose to define them, relying on technical distinctions rather than lived reality and leaving people exposed without warning.
To understand how this could happen, it is necessary to be precise about the legal architecture. Recognition as a Canadian is governed primarily by the Citizenship Act, an ordinary statute passed by Parliament. That Act exists for a reason, and over time it has been amended repeatedly, often because Lost Canadians themselves forced attention to gaps and exclusions that had real human consequences. Those amendments mattered. They corrected injustices. They made the law more inclusive. But they did not change the fundamental nature of the framework.
Statute law, by design, remains mutable.The Charter of Rights and Freedoms occupies a different place in the legal order. It came into force in 1982 as part of the Constitution, reflecting a decision to elevate certain protections beyond the reach of ordinary politics. Rights placed in the Charter are meant to endure even when they are inconvenient or unpopular. That endurance is secured by making constitutional change deliberately difficult and dependent on broad national agreement.
Citizenship was never expressly placed within that constitutional framework.That omission is not the same as an error, but it is a choice with consequences. At the time, it may have seemed sufficient to rely on the Citizenship Act to define and protect who belongs. The assumption appears to have been that statutory law, administered in good faith, would be enough. The experience of the Lost Canadians shows the limits of that assumption.
Because recognition as a citizen exists only in ordinary legislation, Parliament defines who qualifies and under what conditions, and Parliament retains the authority to redefine those conditions. This does not require ill intent. It does not require hostility. It requires only the passage of time, changing priorities, and technical amendments that operate quietly but decisively. What Parliament creates by statute, Parliament can revise by statute, even when the consequences reach deep into people’s lives.This is where the distinction between law and right becomes critical.
The Charter already demonstrates how protection operates once something is constitutionally recognized. Mobility rights provide a clear example. Once a person is recognized as a citizen, they are guaranteed the right to enter, remain in, and leave the country, and to move freely within it. These are not permissions granted by Parliament. They are constitutional guarantees. Governments cannot suspend or narrow them through ordinary legislation, regardless of political pressure or administrative convenience.
The contrast is striking. Rights attached to citizenship are entrenched. Citizenship itself is not.This imbalance produces outcomes that are difficult to reconcile. In this country, individuals can commit serious, even horrific crimes and remain citizens. We punish conduct, sometimes severely, but we do not usually sever that legal bond. At the same time, others have lost recognition not because of wrongdoing, but because of a technical rule, a date, or an interpretation applied after the fact. Belonging endures misconduct, but can fail paperwork.
That contradiction exists because one is constitutionally protected and the other is not. Amending the Charter to include citizenship would not negate the Citizenship Act or eliminate Parliament’s role. It would change the baseline on which that Act operates. Parliament could still legislate, still refine, still improve the law, but it could no longer quietly narrow who belongs without constitutional scrutiny. Inclusion would become the starting point, not the outcome of advocacy after harm has already occurred.
Society has evolved since 1982. Families look different. Mobility looks different. Our understanding of fairness and belonging has evolved. The law has adapted in many areas to reflect those changes. Recognition as a citizen has improved through statutory reform, but it remains exposed because it is still treated as a legal status rather than a constitutional right.
The Charter was created to protect what is too important to leave to shifting political winds. The story of the Lost Canadians shows what happens when something foundational is left just outside that protection. Enshrining citizenship as a right would not rewrite the past, but it would fundamentally alter the future, making it far harder for people to discover, decades later, that their country no longer recognizes them. Until that gap is closed, citizenship in Canada rests not on a lock, but on the assumption that no one will ever try the door.
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