Since I put up that list of MPs who were born in other countries and made the assumption that most, if not all, of those MPs would, therefore, hold dual citizenships, I’ve had lots of correspondence from those with some tremendously helpful information on this file.
First off — one of the organizers of Joe Volpe’s leadership campaign wants to set the record straight. Volpe is only a Canadian. Though he was born in Italy, Canada did not permit its citizens to hold dual citizenship until 1977 and Volpe was here well before that. So Volpe is a Canadian citizen.
Secondly — Knowing that until 1977, Canada prohibited dual citizenships, we may assume that several MPs on that list would no longer be citizens of the country of their birth because they arrived in Canada ahead of the lifting of that prohibition.
Thirdly – We know that anyone who stands for election to the House of Commons must be eligible to vote and, therefore, must be a Canadian citizen. So we may logically conclude that foreign-born MPs are all Canadian citizens.
Finally — some countries, I am informed, do not allow their citizens to hold dual citizenships. I’m afraid I do not have an exhaustive list of those countries. But it seems reasonable to assume that some MPs who were foreign-born may have had to renounced their original citizenship in order to become Canadian citizens. As a result, some of my original conclusions — that foreign-born MPs were likely to hold dual citizenships — seems to be founded on some faulty assumptions.
Everybody straight with that now? 🙂