Anyone in the world can come to Canada, have a baby, and secure that child a lifetime of Canadian benefits along with a family link to this country for later chain migration. They don’t have to speak English or French; they don’t have to share our taboos against incest and rape; they don’t need to contribute anything to Canadian society. There are no guardrails.

But on Tuesday, we got a glimpse of how good things could be when Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner proposed a simple change to the law that would prevent citizenship from being granted to children born in Canada to non-citizens — unless at least one parent has permanent residency.

This would close Canada’s widest and most longstanding chain migration entry point without being too harsh on the foreign nationals who have established a connection to the country (though we do need higher standards for PR, too). It’s about as fair as you can get. Alas, Rempel Garner’s amendment was promptly shot down by the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals, who believe in the extreme approach of handing passports out like candy at a parade.

The rest of the world has noticed our complete lack of boundaries and is taking advantage of it. Non-resident births in 2021-22 doubled to 5,698 from the previous year’s 2,245. It’s a cottage industry in B.C., and in one study of 102 birth tourists at a Calgary hospital, the most popular source country was Nigeria, but parents also came from the Middle East, India and Mexico. Keep in mind that these are just the non-residents — there are plenty of other temporary residents giving birth here, but we don’t seem to be keeping track.

Even if these children grow up and never set foot in Canada again, they’ll be entitled to all the benefits of citizenship. They’ll be able to run for office, vote, and obtain consular services if unrest engulfs whatever country their family has chosen to raise them in. If they ever join a terror organization like ISIS, Canadian officials will be expected to retrieve them.

Not to mention the privilege of low domestic tuition, a right to public health care, the unfettered ability to re-enter the country, the ability to claim all kinds of social benefits, the absolute impossibility of deportation should they ever commit a heinous crime, and the guarantee that their children will be eligible for Canadian citizenship, too — and their children, if the Liberals pass Bill C-3, which has now cleared committee.

It’s not just the developing world’s rich who are using this loophole. It’s an avenue that’s open to any economic migrant: from “students” of strip-mall colleges, to temporary workers, to bogus asylum seekers. Having a child in Canada bolsters their applications to remain, particularly if they ever face deportation.

Only children over 18 can add points to a foreign parent’s immigration application, which might be cited as a supposed guardrail by the birthright camp. But when those parents are fighting deportation on what the system calls “humanitarian and compassionate grounds,” immigration officials have been required since 1999 to consider Canadian-born children in deciding whether to make an exception and allow them to stay.

That requirement came to us from the Supreme Court in a case about a Jamaican woman who had lived in Canada illegally for 11 years. She was on welfare, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had at one point been charged with assault with a weapon. To her advantage, she had given birth to four children in Canada. The immigration officers handling her file denied her request to apply for permanent residency from within the country (which wasn’t allowed, but could be excused for compassionate reasons).

The court determined this was unfair, in part because the well-being of her Canadian children wasn’t taken into consideration. The judges didn’t outright call the front-line immigration officials racist, but that’s been the takeaway of the legal community.

This tactic is no secret — even to the point immigration consultants are advertising it online with varying degrees of nuance. Success is not guaranteed and many bids to stave off deportation by those who invoke their Canadian-born children fail. Regardless, these attempts come at great cost, taking up court time and bandwidth in judges’ brains that should have been spent elsewhere.

For example, a Sikh couple, Sucha Singh and Manjinder Kaur, came to Canada on temporary resident visas in 2018 and claimed asylum on the basis of alleged political persecution. It took until 2022 for the refugee board to deny their bogus claim. It took another three years of failed procedural attempts to halt their deportation before it was finally scheduled for Oct. 4, 2025. In that time, they had a child in Canada, which was used in a last-minute plea to the Federal Court to halt their deportation. They were ultimately denied, but because it takes so long to evaluate asylum seekers and oust the fake ones, Canada will now have a lifetime obligation to this family.

Most Canadians believe that being a member of this nation should mean something, and even in 2019, most (55 per cent) wanted to see a change to the rules on birthright citizenship. Considering how much more the country has soured on economic migrants, that sentiment can only have grown. This is not a fringe idea; indeed, it’s the fair one.

For being so reasonable, Rempel Garner was accused by Bloc MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe of being “Trumpian.” In French, he called birthright citizenship “a principle we have to keep in our society” — why exactly that is, he didn’t elaborate. Justice Minister Sean Fraser later called it a matter of equal rights, finding it problematic to “pick and choose who amongst Canadians gets the full benefits of citizenship.”

Neither can define what it means to be Canadian, so their solution is to refuse any standards at all. They would rather force the country to obligate itself to unknown scores of families with no substantial connection to this place than accept that their vision is unfair. Rempel Garner can’t change that (yet), but for now, she can at least show the public that there’s a way out. The Liberals can’t muzzle this conversation any longer.