The percentage of immigrants with Canadian citizenship dropped between 2011 and 2016, the result of what an expert calls “Harper-era citizenship policy changes.”According to a new analysis, Canada’s overall naturalization rate fell to 82.7 per cent from 85.6 per cent in that period, during which the former Conservative government, under then prime minister Stephen Harper, raised the residency, language and knowledge requirements, as well as the citizenship application fee.“There were a lot of changes made under the government and the impacts of those changes are reflected in the latest census data,” said Andrew Griffith, who will present his analysis at a national immigration conference in Calgary on Thursday.“Although the changes only came in 2010, immigrants who landed four or five years earlier were still subject to those changes. The changes were not just going forward, but they applied to people who had already submitted their applications.”Based on the latest census data, Griffith, a retired director general of the Immigration Department’s citizenship and multiculturalism branch, examined citizenship rates by region of birth, province, education, age, income, gender and immigration class before and after the Harper government’s citizenship reforms.Over 90 per cent of immigrants who came to Canada before 1981 were Canadian citizens in 2016, about the same rate for those who arrived in the two decades after them. At the time of the 2011 national survey, 77.2 per cent of immigrants who had been in the country between five and 10 years had citizenship. By the time of the 2016 census, after the Tory reforms had been in place for several years, the rate fell to 68.5 per cent.Under the Conservative government, citizenship applicants had to be physically present in Canada for four out of six years (instead of three out of five) with a minimum of 183 days in each of the four years, before applying. The Tories al ...
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