OTTAWA - Thousands of immigrants earn their Canadian citizenship the hard way, through an arduous, rule-laden process that can take many years.
But one newly minted Canadian had some help in very high places - the chief of defence staff, two defence ministers, the immigration minister and eventually the entire federal cabinet.
Meet CF-18 pilot Capt. Marco Raaijmakers, 37, whose unusual fast-track journey to citizenship shows that where there's a will, there's a way.
Raaijmakers, born a Dutch citizen, was the subject of a special cabinet order last August waiving the usual hurdles and making him a full-fledged Canadian.
His story began Jan. 31, 1999, when he arrived in Canada as an exchange pilot from the Royal Netherlands Air Force, based in Cold Lake, Alta. A Dutch colleague who had earlier been posted to Canada had sung the country's praises, urging him to go.
By 2002, Raaijmakers' contract with the Dutch military expired and he applied to join the Canadian air force, which is chronically short of experienced pilots.
"I tremendously enjoyed the three years as an exchange pilot," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"I always enjoyed Canada. I had a good feeling about Canada."
The Canadian military rarely accepts foreign citizens - only five recruits last year out of 11,000 - and even then insists they be landed immigrants and have applications well in progress for full citizenship. They also must be citizens of the original seven NATO countries who formed the organization in 1949, including the Netherlands.
Raaijmakers met only the NATO rule, but as a valued CF-18 veteran with overseas experience in Bosnia-Herzegovina, he was given a waiver by the chief of defence staff and was allowed to join the air force in July 2002.
Based in Bagotville, Que., Raaijmakers' immigrant status soon created security problems, because some key military documents were restricted to Canadian eyes only, even though he had NATO and other clearances.
He eventually gained permanent resident status and married a French-Canadian woman, but still faced a waiting period of several years before he could become a Canadian citizen.
"I immediately felt at home at my new squadron in Bagotville at the time. . . . I expected to stay in Canada a long time, maybe the rest of my life," he says, adding that the security issue was also interfering with his job.
Through the military, Raaijmakers asked the then-Liberal government in the spring of 2005 for special dispensation for fast-track citizenship.
Normally, the process is hidden because applicants' identities are protected by the Privacy Act. But Raaijmakers' own candour, and documents obtained under the Access to Information Act in which his identity was removed, help fill in the blanks.
Then-defence minister Bill Graham formally backed the application in June 2005, but processing had to wend its way through the Citizenship and Immigration Department. The paperwork took so long that it was eventually hijacked by the election that was called in November that year.
The application was revived with the election of a Conservative government in January 2006; re-approved by the new Tory defence minister, Gordon O'Connor, in June; seconded by then-immigration minister Monte Solberg; and was put to the full cabinet of Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Aug. 25 last year, with a senior military officer standing by to answer questions.
Cabinet approved it with apparently little deliberation.
Raaijmakers, who meanwhile had a son born last year, sealed the deal at a citizenship ceremony on Oct. 20 in Quebec City. He retains his Dutch citizenship but makes clear that Canada is his new home.
"I decided to stick around and I don't regret it," he said from Cold Lake, where he now trains new pilots on CT-155 Hawks.
Cabinet only occasionally grants citizenship, with just 12 such orders in all of 2006. In September last year, it actually revoked the Canadian status of two people who had made fraudulent or misleading statements in order to gain citizenship, though the details are being kept secret.
But there's another, even rarer route to citizenship: a resolution of Parliament.
Last June, an honorary citizenship was bestowed in this way on the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, who visited Canada three months later.
That honour has been conferred on only two other people: South African leader Nelson Mandela and Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving thousands of Jews in the Second World War.
