this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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Summary

A Canadian parliamentary petition to revoke Elon Musk’s citizenship has gathered over 150,000 signatures.

Launched by author Qualia Reed and sponsored by MP Charlie Angus, the petition accuses Musk of undermining Canada’s sovereignty due to his ties to Trump, who has repeatedly suggested annexing Canada.

Musk is a Canadian citizen through his mother. The petition will be presented to the House of Commons, which resumes on March 24.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I would be surprised if this sort of thing was possible and I’m pretty sure it’s not and im pretty sure it’s a good thing that it’s not

It isn't in the US, but the US is not all countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroyim_v._Rusk

Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that citizens of the United States may not be deprived of their citizenship involuntarily.[1][2][3] The U.S. government had attempted to revoke the citizenship of Beys Afroyim, a man born in Poland, because he had cast a vote in an Israeli election after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen. The Supreme Court decided that Afroyim's right to retain his citizenship was guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In so doing, the Court struck down a federal law mandating loss of U.S. citizenship for voting in a foreign election—thereby overruling one of its own precedents, Perez v. Brownell (1958), in which it had upheld loss of citizenship under similar circumstances less than a decade earlier.

EDIT: I haven't previously read up on citizenship law for Canada, so I don't know if this is missing relevant Canadian citizenship law, but a quick search suggests that Canadian law doesn't permit for executive removal of citizenship either:

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-29/page-3.html

Loss of Citizenship

Marginal note:No loss except as provided

7 A person who is a citizen shall not cease to be a citizen except in accordance with this Part or regulations made under paragraph 27(1)(j.1).

None of that section nor paragraph 27 looks like it provides for involuntary removal of Canadian citizenship.

That being said, there is a question of whether this is ordinary federal law or constitutional law. I don't know how one determines that.

In the US, Afroyim v. Rusk found that the US Constitution disallowed removal of citizenship. There is a high bar to modify the US Constitution -- a majority of both legislatures in a three-quarters supermajority of state legislatures need to approve of a constitutional amendment. This is considerably higher than the bar to pass ordinary federal law, which is just a simple majority in the House, Senate, and the President, or a two-thirds supermajority in both the House and Senate.

Canada's constitutional situation is complicated. Canada started out following the UK model, where Parliament can change any law it wants to as easily as any other -- there is no "higher law" like a constitution. At the time that Canada got split off from the UK at a constitutional level, some of Canadian law was decided to be part of the constitution and some not...but it was never defined exactly what law was and what wasn't, so I understand that courts have been working that out ever since. The constitution isn't simply a separate document, as in the US.

Also, different parts of Canada's constitution have different bars for amendment.

So I don't know for sure how strong this constraint is; it might be that the Canadian legislature could remove this bar as readily as they would a typical law.

EDIT2: Someone else pointed out the Shamima Begum case below, where the British executive removed someone's citizenship. I followed that and commented on it when it happened, and it is definitely possible for the executive to strip a citizen's citizenship in the UK; the law explicitly provides for it.

I was fairly concerned about this at the time it was in the news, because most other legal rights depend on citizenship. If you can remove someone's citizenship, you can remove most of their other legal rights and protections.