Surfing phenom Erin Brooks banned from competing for Canada until citizenship request approved | CBC Sports

The International Surfing Associated has suspended Erin Brooks’s eligibility to compete for Canada because she is not yet a Canadian citizen.

The decision, announced Tuesday afternoon by the ISA, caught both the Brooks family and Canadian surfing officials by surprise. The Texan-born 15-year-old has been competing in ISA events under a Canadian flag even as she pursues dual citizenship.

In a statement, the ISA said Brooks should never have been allowed to compete as a Canadian. Surfing Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) requested in March 2022 that Brooks be allowed to compete for Canada as her citizenship application had been filed, but not completed.

The decision caught Brooks and her family by surprise. 

“There was no indication that this was coming, everything seemed fine, everything seemed to be moving forward,” said Erin’s father, Jeff Brooks, from South Africa where Erin was scheduled to compete. “This process has taken longer than any of us ever thought it would and I am still trusting in the COC and their efforts with the Canadian Immigration Minister to get Erin’s citizenship issues resolved.

“I’ve told Erin to only focus on the things she can control which is to continue surfing and training. We are hopeful she will be reinstated soon and can get back on track to chasing her dream of representing Canada in the Olympics.”

Surfing Canada president Lionel Conacher echoed those thoughts.

“We remain hopeful that Erin’s Canadian citizenship status will get resolved soon so that she can get back to winning medals for Canada,” Conacher said. 

The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) said it supports Brooks’s citizenship application despite the ruling.

“We’re aware of the ISA decision. We continue to support Erin’s application for Canadian citizenship,” David Shoemaker, the COC’s CEO, said in a statement to CBC Sports.

Request ‘should have been rejected’

The ISA said it originally granted the request for Brooks to compete “based on assurances received from the COC and Surfing Canada that the citizenship was in process,” but after review determined it was not in accordance with its own rules.

“According to the applicable ISA rules and the documentation available at that time, the request by the COC and Surfing Canada should have been rejected,” the statement said.

CBC Sports first reported last week that despite excitement in Canadian Olympic circles about Brooks’s medal prospects in Paris, she was still not a Canadian citizen, making her ineligible to represent Canada in the Olympic stage. But Brooks, Surfing Canada and the COC all believed she was eligible to compete in ISA events and recently won a silver medal at the world championships in El Salvador.

Brooks has garnered significant media attention in recent years, rising quickly up the ranks and making a name for herself in the surfing world and beyond. For the past number of years, she has competed under the Canadian flag at international events. All of the coverage of her success, including articles written on the COC’s website, reported she is a dual citizen of Canada.

“The ISA takes responsibility for the administrative error made so we would like to express our deep regret and offer our apologies to Ms. Brooks and her family for the impact this case may have on her personally — with the hope that this case of her citizenship will be resolved promptly,” the ISA said Tuesday in its statement. “The ISA EC has been seeking legal counsel on this issue and will continue to do so in terms of next steps and consequences of this case.”

For the past three years, Brooks’ family, with the help of the COC and Surf Canada, has been trying to convince the Canadian government to grant the surfing phenom Canadian citizenship.

Brooks was born and raised in Texas before moving to Hawaii to pursue her surfing career, but does have Canadian connections. She still has extended family living in Canada, mostly in the Montreal area.

Her grandparents were born in Quebec before moving to California. Her mother is German but her father, Jeff, was born in the U.S. and was eligible to acquire dual citizenship under Canadian law at the time.

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Those rules have since changed and Erin has had to take a different route toward citizenship. She has made an application directly to Canadian Immigration Minister Sean Fraser, who could offer her an exemption and grant citizenship on the basis that Brooks has exemplary or exceptional value to Canada.

The decision is at the sole discretion of the minister, who has had her application for nearly three years. In a statement to CBC, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said it could not comment on the application because of privacy legislation.

Warren Creates, an Ottawa immigration lawyer who is not directly involved in this case, says exemptions on these grounds are “extremely rare” and in his experience an “uphill battle.

“It’s a very high bar. Yes, the minister has this discretion, but they have to use it wisely and in a balanced way not randomly,” Creates said. “Just because there’s a petition signed by 10,000 people saying this person should be a citizen so they can compete in an international competition wearing the Canadian colours, there is a very responsible balancing done by senior departmental officials before they recommend to a minister to approve any such case.”