As usual, my post runs long to longer. So I offer a summary for those who want to skip the explanations and elaboration.
Summary
*** My best guess for the source most likely to first publish the
coming-into-force date for revisions to section 5(1) of the
Citizenship Act is the web page maintained by the Parliament of Canada for
House Government 41st Parliament, 2nd Session Bill C-24, at a link there under "Additional Information" for "Coming into Force."
*** Reminder with emphasis: we do not know when the revised residency requirements adopted in Bill C-24 (that is the
SCCA) will come into force
except it is near certain it will happen
before some time in September, at the latest, and could be any day now.
The key: it could be any day, not just the first day of the month (like July 1st or June 1st).
*** While we do not know the precise date, it is certain it will be before the Federal Election. Probably not before the Budget is tabled, which is supposed to happen
next week. Probably no connection between the
coming-into-force date and whether or when the budget goes to a vote.
By the way: the Federal Election is currently scheduled for
Monday, October 19, 2015; there is some speculation about whether Harper might call an earlier election (unless some extremely unusual circumstances arise, at this point it cannot be later than October 19th), but that speculation is now dissipating as the timeline shrinks while in contrast there appears to be an absence of political advantages for Harper and the Conservatives to push up the election date (with the Duffy trial in progress, oil price pressures continuing to loom over the economy and government budgeting, some recent not-so-great optics, soon would not be good timing for Harper and company; in contrast, the Harper and the Conservatives still want to get some work done, like Bill C-51).
As to the sources for learning, as early as possible, the coming-into-force date for remaining provsions in the
SCCA and why it could be
any day, any day of the month in the coming months, I offer an in-depth explanation with further analysis and elaboration below.
Most will probably want to skip what follows.
My sense is that some of those who are more or less following this issue closely are, like me, keeping up with what resources there are for information, how to best assess that information, what sorts of inferences can be drawn from this or that information, and why . . . so I elaborate in depth my own research and analysis. I suspect, however, this is interesting only to a few, so again,
most should just skip past the rest of this post.
Best resources to follow to learn coming-into-force date ASAP:
Like many others, I have been periodically checking the
Gazette and the CIC newsroom for updates, for news, regarding the implementation of changes to the
Citizenship Act and the
Citizenship Regulations. Of course, like others, I also have often referred to both
the Citizenship Act as it is published in the Justice Laws site for Consolidated Acts, with links to
"related" provisions and
"Amendments Not in Force", and to the Parliament of Canada
web page for Bill C-24.
I am not certain, but I now think that the first official notice of the coming-into-force date might be posted at the latter, at the
web page for Bill C-24, where there is a link listed, under "Additional Information," for the
Coming Into Force of Bill C-24.
Note: some of the links above may not work. The Parliament of Canada web site is easy to find, and Bill C-24 is easy to find under "Bills Before Parliament."
In any event, this page currently states it is current as of April 13. I do not know how current this information is ordinarily kept. As I explain further below, in discussing why it should be emphasized that the coming-into-force date could be any day, not just the first day of the month, the Gazette is likely to be a week or three weeks behind in publishing notice of the order by the Governor in Council establishing the
coming-into-force date. The media is very likely to publish this information within a day or so of the order. The CIC website should also publish this information within a day or so of the order (CIC posted information about the July 31, 2014 order on August 1st last year), so the latter remains a better source for more timely information than the Gazette . . . except at least I am not certain that CIC will post this information that timely if the order itself pre-dates the
coming-into-force date by much. Moreover, CIC sometimes posts information online but does not necessarily do it as "news" or at the "newsroom" page, so it is not always readily apparent.
In contrast, my sense is that it is an official part of Parliamentary business to
timely post the status of its bills. So I expect that the
link for the coming-into-force date of Bill C-24 will have that date very soon after the Governor in Council issues the order.
The media may very well obtain the date sooner than when the order is actually made, so there may be media reports before the Parliamentary site reflects the
coming-into-force date.
As I have suggested before, I expect there to be some
credible rumours sooner or later, before the actual date, but in contrast Harper does run perhaps the tightest ship in Canadian government history, so perhaps there will not be any substantive, credible rumours, nothing warranting any reliance anyway.
As I explain further below, the Gazette is too slow to rely upon for
news of the date (although it provides important and roughly timely information as to other relevant aspects, so for those following this it remains a valuable resource).
General Observations with Reminder:
Reminder with emphasis: we do not know when the revised residency requirements adopted in Bill C-24 (that is the
SCCA) will come into force
except it is near certain it will happen
before some time in September, at the latest, and could be any day now. I and others have made various guesses, but they are really no more than that,
guesses.
The guesses (or
bets) I have focused on are the first day of the month, with the first of July being the most frequent guess, then June 1st, with May 1st and August 1st being long shot bets, June 19 still being the bet or guess for some.
But it could be any day. ANY DAY! There is NO certainty, little confidence even, that the coming into force date will be any particular day of the month. It could easily be June 5th or July 10th, May 15th or August 17th. It could be any day, any day between now and some time in September, although it seems most likely it will be a date in June or July.
Revisiting why the cut-off date is important:
Why is this important? The more pertinent question is
who will be affected, thus who is most interested in, concerned about, what the actual date will be. And the answer to that is obviously all those PRs who are
on-the-cusp of applying soon, in the next few months, especially those who will reach the 1095 days of actual physical presence threshold between now and sometime in June or July (with perhaps those on track for August harboring some hope the coming-into-force date will be delayed until August or even September).
For many in this situation, if not most, what
Martin29 said is perhaps the dominant feeling:
I suppose more than a few do care more than that, but overall for literally many thousands of PRs (between now and August, for example, it is highly likely there will be over
fifty thousand PRs who reach the 1095 days APP threshold), the actual date selected will determine whether they can apply this year, or will have to wait at least another year. For many of these PRs, just a ten day holiday or a week long business trip could make the difference. For many the question is whether or not to visit an ill parent abroad at the risk of delaying their path to citizenship by more than a year. There are thousands,
thousands, for whom this is a major factor in planning the coming months of their lives.
It appears the government has virtually no concern about the inconvenience this lack of transparency has on real Canadians, many thousands of them. Why is there such a brutal disregard for the lives of so many thousands of Canadians? (Reminder: PRs are Canadians, Canadian PRs.)
While we do not know for sure that a specific date has yet been determined, I am confident one has, or at the very least there is a tentative date, which if made public would indicate a
no-sooner-than date, and which if made public would allow a large percentage of those
on-the-cusp to make more concrete plans for the coming weeks and months.
Those on-the-cusp, for whom the date is important, should write a brief request to their Member of Parliament:
This should be a request that the MP either:
-- advise them when (more specifically than "in approximately a year") the government will in fact make the revised provisions in the
SCCA in force, or
-- if the MP will ask the government, during the Parliament's Question & Answer Period, why it has not made the coming-into-force date public given the impact it will have on many thousands of PRs who are just now becoming eligible for a grant of citizenship
Including, in the request to the MP, a succinct statement about why the coming-into-force date is personally important might be a good idea. Keep it brief. Do not entangle this request with advocacy for changing the law (such as, for example, to give credit for time in Canada on a work permit).
Why I say it could be ANY day:
I do not purport to have been following the Canadian legislative procedure extensively or to have a thorough understanding of it. A lot of what I now know about the legislative process in Canada I have learned following, over the years, various tabled Bills regarding the
Citizenship Act (mostly, though, the Bill to amend the residency requirement which was pending in 2011, which did not proceed past the First Reading due to the calling of the election that year, and Bill C-24 resulting in the
SCCA, although I was also closely following Bill C-23 last year, the so-called "Fair Elections Act," a more Orwellian title than even the
SCCA). Indeed, prior to the adoption of Bill C-24 I hardly thought about
coming-into-force dates and had been watching the Gazette only sporadically regarding various regulatory changes (such as those implementing conditional PR for sponsored partners, amendments to the proof of language requirements for citizenship, and such).
But since the sudden implementation of parts of the
SCCA per the order made by the Governor in Council last July 31st (establishing August 1st as the coming-into-force date for some important procedural provisions), with no public notice prior to that (beyond the notice inherent in the June announcements that Bill C-24 had been adopted and given Royal Assent), and given the huge importance the
coming-into-force date for subsection 3(1) of the
SCCA (replacing 5(1)(c) in the
Citizenship Act), as specified in section 46(2) of the
SCCA, the latter prescribing that the
coming-into-force date is to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council) I expanded the scope of my scrutiny, including for example a more regular perusal of the relevant parts in the Gazette.
As we have discussed, the February 28 and March 14 issues of the Gazette giving notice of proposed regulatory changes related to, and dependent on, provisions in the
SCCA not yet in force, at the least offered a clue that (1) it was extremely unlikely the
coming-into-force date would be any earlier than the very end of April (first of May), but (2) the government was clearly doing the necessary housekeeping in order to bring the
SCCA amendments into effect.
A month has elapsed since then. The window in time for the cut-off date is shrinking. It will happen fairly soon now. At the least probably (albeit far from surely) within the next 80 days.
As oft noted, and like others, I have tended to focus my
guesses on particular dates, like July 1st or June 1st, perhaps June 19th but also May 1st or August 1st, maybe even September 1st.
But as I noted above it could be May 15th, June 12th, July 6th, August 7th,
ANY DAY, ANY DAY between now and . . . , any day between now and a date in September, although far more likely between May 1st and August 1st, with again a date in June or July having the highest probabilities
as best we can GUESS.
An example from another Bill not related to citizenship:
Last week, dated April 8, the Gazette published the
March 26, 2015 order by the Governor General in Council fixing
April 10, 2015 as the coming-into-force date for the
Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act. This was Bill C-10, first reading back in November of 2013, passed by the House of Commons before Bill C-24 (back in May of 2014) but not by the Senate until October 2014, and Royal Assent was in November 2014. And it just came into force last Friday.
The order was issued March 26th.
The order appeared online last Thursday (day before the coming-into-force date itself), in Gazette issue dated Wednesday April 8.
What I took from this is that the
April 10, not April 1 date, suggests no preference for a particular day of the month.
That said, there appears to be some pattern favouring the first day of the month for other legislative acts. Just as an example, for the legislation last year regarding an agreement for free trade and environmental cooperation with Honduras, which received Royal Assent the very same day as Bill C-24 did (last June 19th), the Governor General in Council fixed the 1st of October 2014 as the date that legislation comes into force . . . that order was issued
August 28, 2014, registered in the
September 10, 2014 Gazette.
The pattern varies too considerably to draw any firm conclusions. But it also varies enough to reinforce the observation that despite the fact that most guess a
first of the month (July or June predominantly) for the
SCCA, it could be
ANY DAY, any day of the month.
And it is totally up in the air as to how much notice there will be. I tend to agree with
screech339 that [it is highly likely] there will some notice but how much is very uncertain. I say this, though, acknowledging it is well within the range of what is practically possible that there will be virtually no notice. We really cannot say. It seems likely, as it often is, that the Governor in Council will issue an order fixing the date, that order for the
coming-into-force date will be linked at the Parliamentary Business web site, probably get some media coverage, probably posted by CIC at its web site, and the date itself will be a few days or weeks following that.
Overall though, the continuing story is a simple one: it could be any day now, any day now.
