C’est une grande contradiction du gouvernement Legault. Et il tentera de corriger le tir dans les prochaines semaines.
À moins d’un revirement de dernière minute, il proposera trois scénarios de baisse du seuil d’immigration permanente pour les prochaines années. Ces scénarios fixeront le seuil sous les 50 000 nouveaux arrivants par année à compter de 2026, année électorale. On pourrait donc avoisiner les 35 000 promis par le Parti québécois dans son plan présenté l’automne dernier. Les scénarios seront soumis à une consultation ce printemps pour être adoptés d’ici juin.
Le ministre de l’Immigration, Jean-François Roberge, a préparé le terrain à cette réduction en imposant l’automne dernier un moratoire sur deux importants programmes d’immigration permanente : le Programme régulier des travailleurs qualifiés (PRTQ) et le Programme de l’expérience québécoise destiné aux diplômés (PEQ-Diplômés). Québec n’accepte plus de nouvelles demandes depuis. Le moratoire est en vigueur jusqu’en juin.
Cette décision n’a toutefois pas une incidence à très court terme. À preuve, le gouvernement prévoit tout de même jusqu’à 67 000 nouveaux arrivants cette année, frôlant le record de 2022.
Sans le moratoire, le Québec était en voie d’en accueillir environ 70 000. Pourquoi ? En bonne partie parce qu’il y a eu explosion des demandes de la part des diplômés via le PEQ, à la suite d’une décision prise en 2023.
Christine Fréchette, alors ministre de l’Immigration, avait décidé que les personnes sélectionnées dans le cadre de ce programme seraient admises « en continu », sans aucun plafond. Québec a pour ainsi dire ouvert les vannes, plaidant que le PEQ était réservé surtout aux étudiants ayant obtenu un diplôme dans un programme donné en français.
Le premier ministre François Legault n’est donc pas parvenu à respecter sa promesse électorale : maintenir un seuil de 50 000. Dépasser ce seuil est « suicidaire » pour la nation québécoise, plaidait-il pourtant en campagne électorale en 2022. Il avait eu la même difficulté dans ce dossier durant son premier mandat, alors qu’il avait promis un maximum de 40 000 nouveaux arrivants par année.
Dans les faits, Québec a réduit le seuil d’immigration seulement au début de son premier mandat. Il l’a abaissé à 40 000 nouveaux arrivants en 2019. Si on met de côté la pandémie, qui a évidemment freiné l’immigration en 2020, le seuil a augmenté à au moins 50 000 par année depuis 2021 avec un sommet de 68 700 en 2022.
Au-delà du nombre, l’important est aussi de connaître le profil des immigrants que l’on accepte. Sur ce plan, le gouvernement Legault récoltera-t-il les fruits attendus de ses décisions ? Il y a deux ans, il a rehaussé les exigences en matière de français pour l’ensemble des immigrants permanents. Les indications entre les mains du gouvernement laissent croire que 80 % des nouveaux arrivants qui seront admis cette année auront une connaissance du français. Ce serait 10 points de plus qu’en 2024 et les années précédentes. À suivre.
Angle mort
À quoi bon débattre d’un seuil pour réduire l’immigration permanente si l’immigration temporaire continue d’augmenter ? C’était l’angle mort du dossier jusqu’ici, et Québec va corriger le tir là aussi.
Pour la toute première fois, la « planification pluriannuelle » du gouvernement Legault tiendra compte de cette immigration temporaire.
Le nombre de résidents non permanents a plus que doublé depuis 2021 pour dépasser les 600 000. Parmi eux figurent les demandeurs d’asile, dont le nombre a triplé au cours de la même période. Le Québec compte 40 % des demandeurs d’asile du pays.
Cette immigration temporaire met sous pression les services publics, martèle le gouvernement. François Legault en fait d’ailleurs la cause sous-jacente de la crise du logement et de la pénurie d’enseignants. Et la semaine dernière en Chambre, il a même établi un lien avec la crise de l’itinérance à Montréal.
Le gouvernement a commencé à agir pour réduire cette part de l’immigration. Il a décidé de limiter le nombre d’étudiants étrangers. Il a suspendu le Programme des travailleurs étrangers temporaires pour certains emplois dans l’île de Montréal, une mesure qui est reconduite jusqu’à la fin de novembre et qui sera étendue à Laval en mars.
Surtout, le premier ministre fait pression sur Ottawa, qui contrôle une partie de l’immigration temporaire et qui a pris certaines mesures pour la réduire dans les derniers mois.
M. Legault veut que le fédéral aille plus loin et, notamment, qu’il réduise de moitié le nombre de demandeurs d’asile installés au Québec. Quitte à les déplacer de force dans d’autres provinces, a-t-il suggéré l’automne dernier, une proposition qui a soulevé la controverse.
Le gouvernement a soupesé d’autres options afin de pousser 80 000 demandeurs d’asile à quitter le Québec pour une autre province. Par exemple, payer une indemnité aux demandeurs en échange de leur départ et réduire les services offerts par l’État, comme le chèque d’aide sociale.
Il faut s’attendre à ce que François Legault tente d’augmenter la pression sur les partis politiques fédéraux alors que des élections approchent. Mais il a fait chou blanc jusqu’ici avec sa principale demande de rapatrier les pleins pouvoirs en immigration.
This is a great contradiction of the Legault government. And he will try to correct the shot in the coming weeks.
Unless there is a last-minute turnaround, it will propose three scenarios for lowering the permanent immigration threshold for the next few years. These scenarios will set the threshold below 50,000 newcomers per year starting in 2026, the election year. We could therefore be close to the 35,000 promised by the Quebec Party in its plan presented last fall. The scenarios will be submitted for consultation this spring to be adopted by June.
The Minister of Immigration, Jean-François Roberge, prepared the ground for this reduction by imposing a moratorium last fall on two important permanent immigration programs: the Regular Skilled Worker Program (PRTQ) and the Quebec Experience Program for Graduates (PEQ-Diplômés). Quebec has not accepted new requests since then. The moratorium is in effect until June.
However, this decision does not have a very short-term impact. As proof, the government still expects up to 67,000 newcomers this year, close to the record of 2022.
Without the moratorium, Quebec was on its way to welcoming about 70,000. Why? In large part because there has been an explosion of requests from graduates via the PEQ, following a decision taken in 2023.
Christine Fréchette, then Minister of Immigration, had decided that the people selected under this program would be admitted “continuously”, without any ceiling. Quebec City has almost opened the floodgates, arguing that the PEQ was reserved mainly for students who obtained a diploma in a given program in French.
Prime Minister François Legault therefore failed to meet his electoral promise: to maintain a threshold of 50,000. Exceeding this threshold is “suicidal” for the Quebec nation, he pleaded in the election campaign in 2022. He had had the same difficulty in this case during his first term, when he had promised a maximum of 40,000 newcomers per year.
In fact, Quebec only reduced the immigration threshold at the beginning of its first term. He lowered it to 40,000 newcomers in 2019. If we put aside the pandemic, which obviously slowed down immigration in 2020, the threshold has increased to at least 50,000 per year since 2021 with a peak of 68,700 in 2022.
Beyond the number, the important thing is also to know the profile of the immigrants we accept. On this level, will the Legault government reap the expected fruits of its decisions? Two years ago, he raised French requirements for all permanent immigrants. The indications in the hands of the government suggest that 80% of the newcomers who will be admitted this year will have a knowledge of French. That would be 10 points more than in 2024 and previous years. To be continued.
Blind spot
What is the point of discussing a threshold to reduce permanent immigration if temporary immigration continues to increase? It was the blind spot of the file so far, and Quebec will correct the shot there too.
For the very first time, the Legault government’s “multi-year planning” will take this temporary immigration into account.
The number of non-permanent residents has more than doubled since 2021 to exceed 600,000. These include asylum seekers, the number of whom has tripled over the same period. Quebec has 40% of the country’s asylum seekers.
This temporary immigration puts pressure on public services, the government hammers. François Legault makes it the underlying cause of the housing crisis and the shortage of teachers. And last week in the Chamber, he even established a link with the homelessness crisis in Montreal.
The government has begun to act to reduce this share of immigration. He decided to limit the number of foreign students. It suspended the Temporary Foreign Worker Program for certain jobs on the island of Montreal, a measure that is renewed until the end of November and will be extended to Laval in March.
Above all, the Prime Minister is putting pressure on Ottawa, which controls some of the temporary immigration and has taken certain measures to reduce it in recent months.
Mr. Legault wants the federal government to go further and, in particular, to halve the number of asylum seekers living in Quebec. Even if it means forcibly moving them to other provinces, he suggested last fall, a proposal that raised controversy.
The government has weighed other options to push 80,000 asylum seekers to leave Quebec for another province. For example, paying compensation to applicants in exchange for their departure and reducing services offered by the state, such as social assistance cheques.
It is to be expected that François Legault will try to increase the pressure on federal political parties as elections approach. But he has done white cabbage so far with his main request to repatriate full powers to immigration.
Cue all the oligarchs and other questionable individuals, but disturbingly appropriate for the Trump administration (most business and citizenship immigration programs make limited if any contribution to local economies and employment).
To use Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick’s description of the EB-5, this replacement will likely generate even more “nonsense, make-believe and fraud:”
The U.S. is going to “sell” gold cards for $5 million, Trump announced in the Oval Office Tuesday.
“We’re going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million and that’s going to give you [permanent resident] Green Card privileges, plus it’s going to be a route to citizenship,” the president said. He branded it as “somewhat like a Green Card, but at a higher level of sophistication.”
“Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card,” he continued. “They’ll be wealthy and they’ll be successful and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people. And we think it’s going to be extremely successful and never been done before.”
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick clarified the Trump administration plans to terminate a somewhat similar EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program and “replace it with the Trump gold card.”
The EB-5 program allows investors to apply for permanent residence in the U.S. if they “make the necessary investment in a commercial enterprise in the United States” and plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs.
The EB-5 program was “full of nonsense, make-believe and fraud,” Lutnick continued. “It was a way to get a green card that was low priced.”
Once vetted, gold card holders “can invest in America and we can use that money to reduce our deficit,” he added.
The president predicted that the gold card will bring in “very high level people” who create jobs. With these cards, “you’re getting big taxpayers, big job producers, and we’ll be able to sell maybe a million of these cards, maybe more than that,” Trump said.
The Kushner family was sharply criticized eight years ago after the sister of Jared Kushner, then senior White House adviser to his father-in-laws Donald Trump, traveled to Beijing to tempt wealthy Chinese with an EB-5 Green Card with an investment in one of the Kushner family’s real estate projects — an offer that a former White House ethics lawyer under George. W. Bush called “corruption, pure and simple.”
The new citizenship pathway comes as the Trump administration cracks down on immigration into the U.S. The president even issued an executive order to end birthright citizenship. An appeals court last week rejected the Trump administration’s request to pause a lower court judge’s order halting the president’s executive order.
A more strategic approach to international students and rebalancing in favour of universities and college programs where there is high labour force needs:
…In the short term, we should prioritize international university students over their college counterparts, since they pay higher tuition. Algonquin College in Ottawa lists international tuition and book costs at $16,000 to $22,000, which is much less than across town at Carleton University, where international tuition ranges from $34,000 to $53,000. To be clear, these are both fine academic institutions that are important parts of the Canadian educational system. However, an international student at Carleton contributes more to Canadian national income through tuition revenue than does their counterpart at Algonquin.
Also, university students have higher average earnings upon graduation than college students and are more likely to meet the admission criteria under the Skilled Worker immigration program after graduation. And unlike college students, university students are more likely to be involved in academic research, which helps with our productivity challenges, and they are more likely to be the leaders of technology spin-off companies.
Should we have international students at colleges? Yes, but at lower numbers than in the recent past and concentrated in key fields. Students doing programs in the building trades should be prioritized given the need to expand our housing stock. International students in health care programs should also be prioritized, as this will help us to expand our strained health sector.
Will increasing international students create another population surge? Not necessarily. One sensible first step would be to quickly wind down the lower wage part of our Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
Each temporary foreign worker’s impact on housing and health care is similar to that of an international university student. Replacing temporary foreign workers with international university students in the same communities would lead to a boost in tuition revenue and improve our pool of highly skilled potential immigrants, but without affecting the demand for local housing and health care. This makes even more sense ahead of a possible tariff-driven recession where unemployed auto workers may wish they had access to jobs held by temporary foreign workers….
More on Bill 84 and the caution regarding its assimilationist tendencies rather than integration, particularly regarding “common culture, and that integration is a joint responsibility of the host society and newcomers:
Pour le sociologue Gérard Bouchard, un des pères de l’interculturalisme au Québec, il était « grand temps » que le gouvernement consacre son modèle d’intégration des immigrants dans une loi.
Dans un mémoire d’une quinzaine de pages qu’il déposera mardi en lever de rideau de l’étude du projet de loi 84 « sur l’intégration nationale », l’historien et sociologue donne sa bénédiction — non pas sans nuances — à l’avenue empruntée par le ministre de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration, Jean-François Roberge, pour écrire un nouveau « contrat social » avec les personnes immigrantes. S’il le « félicit[e] » pour sa proposition législative soumise il y a un mois à l’Assemblée nationale, il l’incite du même souffle à éviter les dérives « assimilationnistes ».
« Je suis heureux de constater que des notions essentielles de l’interculturalisme ont trouvé place dans l’énoncé du projet de loi 84 », souligne M. Bouchard, qui avait fameusement codirigé les travaux de la commission Bouchard-Taylor en 2007 et 2008.
“Il est grand temps que le Québec se dote d’un modèle de gestion de la diversité qui s’écarte à la fois du multiculturalisme canadien et de tous les modèles assimilationnistes ou à tendance assimilationniste », écrit-il.
Dans son mémoire, Gérard Bouchard, qui avait écrit en 2014 un essai intitulé L’interculturalisme. Un point de vue québécois, se réjouit que le ministre Roberge se soit rattaché dans son projet de loi à une série de principes phares de l’interculturalisme à la sauce Québec — la « culture commune », la « réciprocité », la « promotion du français » et la « nécessité de l’intégration ». Il ne se prive pas, toutefois, d’effectuer une mise en garde. « Il manque [au projet de loi] quelques composantes et celles qui sont mentionnées devront être complétées, sinon reformulées », soutient-il.
Selon lui, il faudra par exemple éviter de définir la « culture commune » du Québec, un concept qui apparaît dans la première phrase du projet de loi, « comme la fusion de toutes les cultures ». « [Cela] relèverait de l’assimilation », peut-on lire.
L’État québécois aura en outre à « prévenir la discrimination et le racisme » et à « financer des cours de francisation et d’initiation à la culture et à la société québécoise » s’il veut bel et bien respecter le principe de réciprocité prévu au projet de loi.
« L’intégration assigne des responsabilités aux immigrants et aux minorités, mais aussi d’importants devoirs à l’État et à la société d’accueil », écrit M. Bouchard, qui recommande d’ailleurs que les entreprises et les organismes privés soient incités à appliquer les pratiques interculturelles dans leur quotidien, comme devront le faire les institutions publiques si le projet de loi est sanctionné comme tel.
« Vision étroite »
À la mi-février, dans une lettre ouverte publiée dans Le Devoir, une trentaine de personnalités publiques, dont les anciennes ministres Louise Beaudoin (Parti québécois), Louise Harel (Parti québécois) et Kathleen Weil (Parti libéral du Québec), avaient dit du projet de loi 84 qu’il était « loin de s’inscrire dans [la] continuité » de l’interculturalisme.
« Avec son approche aux accents assimilationnistes, il s’agit d’une nette rupture par rapport au modèle hérité de la Révolution tranquille. Affirmer les spécificités de l’approche québécoise est essentiel pour offrir une option de remplacement à la fois crédible et juste au multiculturalisme canadien. L’initiative caquiste ne va pas dans ce sens », pouvait-on y lire.
À la veille de son passage en commission parlementaire pour commenter le projet de loi, la Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI) tenait le même discours, lundi.
« Il est manifeste que le PL-84 rompt avec l’approche interculturelle de l’intégration, au profit d’une approche assimilationniste », affirme l’organisme dans un document transmis au Devoir et contenant ses « commentaires préliminaires » sur le texte de loi caquiste.
Selon la TCRI, qui fédère plus de 150 organismes œuvrant auprès des personnes immigrantes, la définition de la « culture commune » dans le projet de loi « occulte la diversité qui façonne le Québec d’aujourd’hui ».
« Elle passe sous silence la richesse des nations, cultures et langues présentes sur le territoire, notamment celles des Premières Nations et des Inuits ou de la minorité historique anglophone, qui ne sont mentionnées que dans le préambule du projet de loi. En parlant d’une “culture commune” qui ne reconnaît pas ces contributions, le gouvernement semble vouloir imposer une vision étroite de la culture québécoise », peut-on lire.
En ne s’attachant qu’à la dimension culturelle du processus d’intégration, le projet de loi 84 passe par ailleurs sous silence « d’autres dimensions de l’intégration, comme l’intégration socioéconomique », soulève la TCRI.
Les consultations particulières entourant le projet de loi sur l’intégration nationale s’amorcent mardi à l’Assemblée nationale. En plus de Gérard Bouchard et de la TCRI, plusieurs groupes, comme la Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, le Mouvement laïque québécois et la Ligue des droits et libertés, seront entendus d’ici le 18 mars.
For sociologist Gérard Bouchard, one of the fathers of interculturalism in Quebec, it was “it was high time” for the government to enshrine its model of integrating immigrants into a law.
In a brief of about fifteen pages that he will deposit on Tuesday in the lifting of the curtain of the study of Bill 84 “on national integration”, the historian and sociologist gives his blessing – not without nuances – to the avenue taken by the Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, Jean-François Roberge, to write a new “social contract” with immigrants. If he “congratulated” him on his legislative proposal submitted a month ago to the National Assembly, he encouraged him in the same breath to avoid “assimilationist” excesses.
“I am pleased to see that essential notions of interculturalism have found a place in the statement of Bill 84,” emphasizes Mr. Bouchard, who had famously co-directed the work of the Bouchard-Taylor commission in 2007 and 2008.
“It is high time that Quebec has a diversity management model that departs from both Canadian multiculturalism and all assimilationist or assimilationist models,” he writes.
In his memoir, Gérard Bouchard, who had written an essay in 2014 entitled L’interculturalisme. A Quebec point of view, is pleased that Minister Roberge has attached himself in his bill to a series of key principles of interculturalism with Quebec sauce – the “common culture”, “reciprocity”, the “promotion of French” and the “need for integration”. He does not hesitate, however, to give a warning. “There are [a few components missing from the bill] and those mentioned will have to be completed, if not reformulated,” he says.
According to him, it will be necessary, for example, to avoid defining the “common culture” of Quebec, a concept that appears in the first sentence of the bill, “as the fusion of all cultures”. “[This] would be a matter of assimilation,” we can read.
The Quebec State will also have to “prevent discrimination and racism” and “finance francization and initiation courses into Quebec culture and society” if it does want to respect the principle of reciprocity provided for in the bill.
“Integration assigns responsibilities to immigrants and minorities, but also important duties to the State and the host society,” writes Mr. Bouchard, who also recommends that companies and private organizations be encouraged to apply intercultural practices in their daily lives, as public institutions will have to do if the bill is sanctioned as such.
“Close vision”
In mid-February, in an open letter published in Le Devoir, about 30 public figures, including former ministers Louise Beaudoin (Parti québécois), Louise Harel (Parti québécois) and Kathleen Weil (Parti libéral du Québec), had said of Bill 84 that it was “far from being part of [the] continuity” of interculturalism.
“With its approach with assimilationist accents, it is a clear break with the model inherited from the Quiet Revolution. Affirming the specifics of the Quebec approach is essential to offer a replacement option that is both credible and fair to Canadian multiculturalism. The Caquist initiative does not go in this direction, “we could read.
On the eve of its passage in the parliamentary committee to comment on the bill, the Table of Concertation of Organizations Serving Refugees and Immigrants (TCRI) gave the same speech on Monday.
“It is clear that the PL-84 breaks with the intercultural approach to integration, in favor of an assimilationist approach,” says the organization in a document sent to Le Devoir and containing its “preliminary comments” on the Caquiste law.
According to the TCRI, which brings together more than 150 organizations working with immigrants, the definition of “common culture” in the bill “hides the diversity that shapes today’s Quebec”.
“It ignores the richness of the nations, cultures and languages present on the territory, especially those of the First Nations and the Inuit or the historical English-speaking minority, which are only mentioned in the preamble of the bill. Speaking of a “common culture” that does not recognize these contributions, the government seems to want to impose a narrow vision of Quebec culture,” we can read.
By focusing only on the cultural dimension of the integration process, Bill 84 also ignores “other dimensions of integration, such as socio-economic integration,” raises the TCRI.
Special consultations on the draft law on national integration begin on Tuesday in the National Assembly. In addition to Gérard Bouchard and the TCRI, several groups, such as the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, the Mouvement laïque québécois and the Ligue des droits et libertés, will be heard by March 18.
As Israeli jets roared defiantly over Sunday’s Beirut funeral for a Hezbollah leader, a leader of a Canadian-based terror organization was among those paying tribute to the dead terrorist.
Charlotte Kates, a leader for the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network — considered a terrorist group by the Canadian government — posted tweets from the Beirut sports stadium used for the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah. Killed in an Israeli air strike, he was a founding member of the Lebanese terror group, Hezbollah.
“It is such an honour to be here in Beirut today, one among a sea of over a million people in collective tribute, mourning, love and commitment to the road of resistance and liberation exemplified by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hisham Safieddine,” Kates posted to X on Sunday morning.
Included in the posted images was a picture of Kates holding a Palestinian flag emblazoned with the Samidoun logo and the antisemitic phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in Arabic — in front of a crowd waving yellow Hezbollah flags.
It isn’t clear how Kates found herself in Beirut for the funeral.
The Toronto Sun’s questions to Samidoun regarding their association with the conference were not returned.
As well, inquires to the office of Public Safety Minister David McGuinty went unacknowledged.
Other Canada-linked attendees included former Green Party of Canada leadership contender Dimitri Lascaris, who tweeted video of the Israeli flyover.
A notorious presence in North America’s anti-Israel scene, the American-born Kates was arrested — but not charged — in Vancouver last year after praising the Oct. 7 Hamas Israel terror attacks, calling them “heroic and brave.”
While little is known about Kates’ citizenship status in Canada, she met her husband Khaled Barakat — a Palestinian-Canadian — over a decade ago, and both make their home in Vancouver….
It would have been helpful if CBC had reached out to experts who could explain if there are variances among different ethnic and racial groups for bone density data. Likely there are as is the case for many other health issues and conditions but negligent not to do include in the reporting:
…The Black Physicians Association advised the London Health Sciences Centre on how to do culturally-appropriate community screening. The hospital declined an interview request for this story.
As for Brown, she’s looking forward to speaking to her doctor about her bone density results and seeing if she needs to do another scan. “I’m not ticked off about this; I just think we have to fix it. Like, come on,” she said. “If the ethnicity piece doesn’t matter, then eliminate it from the results page. Because right now, it tells me my T-scores and then says what normal is based on a normal Caucasian woman. I want to know, what’s normal for me?”
CBC News has reached out to Well Health Diagnostic Centres, which owns the clinic where the scan was done, and will update this story if they reply. GE HealthCare says patient safety is its top priority. “As a global healthcare company, our goal is to develop products aimed at improving outcomes for all patients,” a spokesperson said.
Canada’s immigration department may soon need to factor in climate change when deciding whether to deport some asylum seekers to their home countries, an internal government document suggests.
The analysis on “climate mobility” by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says that the federal government may not be able to deport people to regions hit hard by floods, drought or rising sea levels.
The 2024 internal IRCC document, obtained through an access to information request, says “Canada does not have a formal position or strategy on how to address the complex nexus between climate events and mobility.”
It notes that climate events are not currently a ground for protection under the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees or Canada’s system of determining asylum cases.
But it says that refugee claims may be affected by a “watershed” 2020 decision by the United Nations Human Rights Committee that concluded climate change may trigger obligations not to deport some people….
…The bonus of the size of the challenge is that all options will be on the table. There is no idea too crazy to get a hearing. Here are several areas of focus:
• For those in the Department of Finance, there is the immediate work of a response to tariffs. But there is also long overdue work on tax simplification and (hopefully) tax reduction. If you’re the team with the plan to put the tax code on a postcard, now is the time to present it. Canada will need to become a far more attractive place to invest and do business.
• A similar challenge awaits those in the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, who will need to keep being ambitious on competition law and the granting of basic science research. Cartels and oligopolies need to go, and scientists looking for a new home as Trump blazes the National Institutes of Health need a reason to come North.
• If you’re in the Privy Council handling intergovernmental affairs or in Natural Resources Canada handling the energy sector, now is the time to find ways to get to “yes” faster than ever before. Streamlining environmental approvals and knocking down interprovincial barriers to trade will require a major reworking of federalism as it has been practised (or not practised) for decades. And while Quebec has traditionally been a roadblock, the prospect of becoming American should create more wiggle room for how to be Canadian.
• But the most ambitious action needs to happen at National Defence and Global Affairs Canada. Canada will need to work the rooms at multilateral fora like the G7, G20 and NATO to create a coalition that can counter the new American direction. And while this must address military spending and new avenues for trade, it must also include ways for like-minded democracies to place constraints on the platforms of the “attention economy” that have done so much to skew debate around public policy.
Lenin would have loved the propaganda potential and network effects of a global Facebook. He would have loved to be Elon Musk, with his thumb on the scales of truth. We can be sure the current Vladimir in the Kremlin loves them, too. Indeed, it’s why Putin doesn’t let them operate at home while exploiting them abroad.
The breakdown reveals significant fluctuations in the number of renunciations. From October 1 to December 31, over 600 people gave up their U.S. citizenship. This followed a sharp rise in the third quarter, where more than 2,150 individuals renounced between July 1 and September 30. Earlier in the year, from April 1 to June 30, over 1,700 individuals renounced their citizenship, while the first quarter saw around 350 renunciations from January 1 to March 31.
Before 2009, the number of US renunciations was under 750 per year. In 2009, there were 742, followed by 1,534 in 2010. The number rose to 1,781 in 2011 and then dropped to 932 in 2012. However, in 2013, nearly 3,000 people chose to renounce their US citizenship. In 2014, the number increased to 3,415, and by 2015, it reached 4,279. In 2016, 5,409 people gave up their US citizenship. The trend continued with 5,132 renunciations in 2017, 3,974 in 2018, and 2,071 in 2019. In 2020, the number spiked to 6,705, followed by 2,426 in 2021 and 2,816 in 2022. The total for 2023 was over 5,000.
One of the primary reasons people choose to renounce U.S. citizenship is the country’s tax system, which mandates citizens to report and pay taxes on their global income, regardless of their residence abroad. Expatriates often find complying with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and other regulations overwhelming.
As a result, many opt to renounce their citizenship to simplify their financial obligations. Additionally, some countries do not allow dual citizenship , requiring individuals to choose between U.S. nationality and the citizenship of their country of residence. Other reasons for renunciation include personal, political, or bureaucratic factors.
A Seoul court has supported the rejection of an application for dual US-South Korean citizenship because their parent’s residence in the US was for the purpose of their child gaining US citizenship.The Seoul Administrative Court said Monday that it had ruled in favor of the Seoul Southern Immigration Office, which rejected the plaintiff’s February 2024 application to retain the citizenships of both countries.
South Korea’s Nationality Act states that a child of a citizen obtains citizenship at birth, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution grants citizenship to anyone born inside its territories. This means that someone born in the US to parents who are Korean citizens — as in case of the plaintiff — is granted dual citizenships at birth.
Dual citizens at birth are usually allowed to retain the nationality of South Korea and another country by pledging to the government not to exercise the rights of foreign citizenship before the age of 22, or within two years of completing their mandatary military service in the case of men. This is to prevent dual citizens from dodging duties mandated for South Koreans, such military service.
But the immigration office refused to allow dual citizenship to the plaintiff, saying that the plaintiff’s mother is thought to have lived in the US only for the explicit purpose of obtaining US citizenship for her child — sometimes referred to as “birth tourism.” The Nationality Act states that in cases where the parent is “deemed to have resided in a foreign country for the purpose of having the person acquire the nationality of the foreign country,” the child can retain his or her South Korean citizenship only after renouncing the other nationality.
The plaintiff’s mother went to the US in 2003 just before giving birth to the plaintiff, staying in the country for a month and a half. She went back to the US in 2011 and lived for four months since then.
“There are substantial grounds to believe (that the plaintiff’s mother) gave birth in a foreign country, with the intent to have the child gain the citizenship there,” the court said in its verdict.
The plaintiff denied that the mother’s stay in the US was for the purpose of ensuring her child had US citizenship, saying that she lived for four years in the country overall.
The Article 17-3 of the Enforcement Decree of the Nationality Act does state that a person who lived for two or more years in a country and gave birth there cannot be considered as having conducted birth tourism. But the court said this clause applies to parents who stayed for two consecutive years at the time of the birth of the child.
“The Nationality Act of this country had applied strict single nationality principle, and has only allowed dual citizenship on a limited number of cases since 2010. If the court interprets the article (Article 17-3) as the plaintiff claims, we cannot achieve the act’s goal of preventing birth tourism,” the court went on to say.
