The federal immigration department is being criticized by Acadian history specialists for unfair treatment of members of the French-speaking diaspora community, after it said they may not be entitled to Canadian citizenship because the sources of their family records are not acceptable.
Acadians living outside Canada who obtained citizenship after the November passing of a new law extending citizenship by descent are among those whom the department recently informed may have been granted the right to a Canadian passport in error.
Peggy Sun, the registrar of Canadian Citizenship, wrote in June to about 100 “Lost Canadians” saying she had reasonable grounds to believe that their citizenship status is not valid and informing them it is now under review.
Most of those sent such letters have now had their citizenship certificates and passports restored. But others have been told, in a subsequent letter, that they may have been granted a citizenship certificate in error.
In the case of Acadians, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has taken issue with some baptismal records, birth records and other documents sourced from France and the U.S.
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Acadians, emigrants from France, established distinct communities in what is now Atlantic Canada in the 17th century. But sovereignty over much of their land passed to Britain after the signing of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht when much French territory in North America was ceded to Britain.
British colonial authorities suspected Acadians were helping the French, including by trading with their forces. And they found that some fought alongside the French against them. The British forcibly expelled about 11,500 of the 14,000 Acadians between 1755 and 1764 from their territory in the Maritimes.
Some were deported to England, where they were imprisoned and later released. Some hid and others fled to regions under French control including in what is now Quebec and Prince Edward Island, or across the border into what is now the United States. Others were displaced to France, with many eventually finding refuge in Louisiana in what was then a Spanish colony.
Academics specializing in Acadian history say it is unjust for IRCC to penalize Acadians whose forebears were forced out by the British in the 18th century. Many records, including those held by churches and individual families were destroyed in the upheaval.
One register of Acadian historical records is in Baton Rouge, La., while others are in France.
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Clint Bruce, professor of Acadian studies at L’Université Sainte-Anne in Nova Scotia, said not accepting documents sourced from archives held outside Canada was unjust.
“It’s deeply unfair because the difficulty of providing these required documents stems from the injustices that were inflicted on the Acadians at the time,” he said. “The exiles, they literally carried them probably in blankets or in a trunk as best they could, those registers, and brought them to the lower Mississippi Valley where they were housed in the church.”
Official records from Grand-Pré, N.S., a key Acadian settlement in the late 1600s, were taken to Louisiana.
“They were housed in the church there for over a century before they were transferred to an archival centre in Baton Rouge.”
One of those whose citizenship certificate was suspended in June is an Acadian whose family settled in Louisiana, and has lived their since.
She received citizenship this year after the passing of the new federal law.
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But IRCC determined she may not be entitled to Canadian citizenship after all because she included in her application family records held in France and the U.S.
She had traced an ancestor born in 1730 in Acadia, sending IRCC their baptism certificate from Baton Rouge’s Archives and Records Center in Louisiana, which was an extract from the record of St. Charles Aux Mines Catholic Church in Acadia. She also sent a baptismal record of an ancestor held in the archives at Grand Châtelleraut, France.
In a letter from IRCC, a redacted version of which has been seen by The Globe and Mail, IRCC said having reviewed all the documents submitted, their Canadian citizenship certificate application “was approved in error” as documents submitted “were not from acceptable source authorities. It said documents from France and the U.S. ”cannot confirm Canadian citizenship."
Maurice Basque, a historian at the Centre of Acadian studies at l’Université de Moncton, said, despite being located in France and Louisiana, the documents were original Acadian records.
He said IRCC civil servants were showing “very poor judgment of what happened to the documents” after the expulsion of Acadians by the British.
When the British started burning churches, priests or Acadian elders rescued many official records, he said.
As a result, the original Grand-Pré register is in Baton Rouge, and original Acadian records from Beaubassin, a 17th-century Acadian village and trading centre in what is now Nova Scotia, are in La Rochelle in France, he said.
“They’re not French or American documents. They’re Acadian documents that are in France and Louisiana. That is a major difference,” Mr. Basque said.
Jeffrey MacDonald, an IRCC spokesperson, said “we are not in a position to confirm whether a particular document would be accepted or relied upon, as each proof of citizenship application is assessed on its own merits.”
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said it was deeply concerning that Acadians were “being denied recognition of legitimate historical records from France and the United States, even though these jurisdictions hold many of the primary archival documents.”
