Vomitus Maximus: Black wants citizenship back

"Black, who in a speech four years ago called his Canadian citizenship an 'impediment to my progress in another, more amenable jurisdiction (Britain),' now contends the government should grant his request because his parents were born in Canada."

Black's request of Ottawa is especially curious considering some of his well-publicized criticism of his native country. In November 2001, in his first major speech in Vancouver after he officially became Lord Black of Crossharbour, he called Canada a "one-party federal state with no deliverance in sight," and added, "Most Canadians remain resolutely oblivious to their country's objective decline."

Black attacked Canada's universal health-care system, and "soft-left" policies that he said were driving as many as 100,000 skilled workers a year to the United States. "The head of the Canadian government says they will be replaced by Haitian taxi drivers. They will not," he said at the time.

"To someone just arrived from Haiti or Romania, Canada is a far more satisfying place to be a citizen than it was to me," Black said in his speech.