Did discrimination keep this couple out of Canada? A Canadian court delivers a ‘bittersweet’ ruling

2023/08/28 Leave a comment

Of note, ongoing challenge of indicators used to indicate likely refugee claims and overstays:

The Canadian government has been ordered to reinstate a travel document for a Roma couple who were kept from making a trip to this country at least partly because their hosts were former refugees.

The Federal Court ruled this week on a case that put a spotlight on the Canada Border Services Agency’s use of “association with refugees” as an “indicator” to vet travellers.

And although the couple will now get their travel document, Justice Simon Fothergill ruled that the CBSA’s use of indicators did not amount to a discriminatory practice.

The couple said they were disappointed at Fothergill’s decision.

“We have been unable to visit our family in Canada for more than four years now,” said Andrea Kiss, who had set out on the 2019 trip to see her sister, who was about to have an abdominal surgery.

“I am disappointed the court did not recognize the harm and humiliation that CBSA’s discrimination against Roma people is causing.”

Kiss and her husband were set to fly from the Budapest airport in 2019 to visit Andrea’s sister in Toronto, who, along with her family, has refugee status in Canada.

Although the couple had been issued an electronic travel authorization (eTA) — a travel document required for those flying into Canada from visa-exempt country such as Hungary, they were stopped and referred for further screening.

Canadian border officials made a “no-board” recommendation and cancelled the couple’s travel authorization. The case note, among other concerns, cited their hosts as “convention refugees who arrived in Canada via irregular means in 2015 and 2016 respectively.”

The notes suggested the couple had weak ties to Hungary, where they did not own property or a long-term rental lease and were unable to explain what they would do over their three-month stay in Canada, how the husband managed to take such a long vacation from work or why they were carrying $2,000 in cash.

In fact, according to the couple’s claim, not only did they own property in Hungary, the husband had worked for the same employer for 26 years and had received approval for a six-month leave for the trip.

The Kisses challenged the decision in court with a non-Roma Hungarian family that faced a similar experience, claiming CBSA officials did not have the authority to conduct overseas examination and cancel the travel documents, and that the use of “association with refugees” as an indicator was discriminatory.

The government had agreed that their eTAs should be granted, but the complainants insisted on seeking a formal declaration from court to that effect.

“The Court has found that the Officer had statutory authority to cancel the Applicants’ eTAs, although the criteria for exercising that authority were not satisfied in either of these cases. This is conceded by the (Immigration) Minister,” Fothergill wrote in the decision.

However, there’s no evidence established, the judge found, of “the existence of a co-ordinated program by the CBSA to interdict travellers abroad solely on the ground that they are of Roma ethnicity or associated with Roma refugee claimants in Canada.”

The court said the border officials’ decisions were based on information provided by a private security agent employed by Air Canada, combined with other information contained in immigration records.

It pointed out that the decision-making officer was located in Vienna, Austria, and had no direct interaction with the travellers and did not “exercise any coercive powers,” hence the complainants’ “unauthorized overseas examination” accusation against the border officials was unsupported.

“This did not constitute the examination of foreign nationals, but rather the provision of assistance to an air carrier in meeting its obligation to ensure travellers are eligible to enter Canada,” wrote Fothergill.

During the court proceedings, the complainants submitted evidence that showed CBSA overseas liaison officers made no-board recommendations against 1,252 Hungarian nationals between 2012 and 2018.

An affidavit from a York University law professor said the recognition rate of refugee claims from Hungary, majority of them by Roma minorities, was almost 69.7 per cent, a rate above the refugee board’s overall protection grant rate.

The complainants argued that the border officials’ cancellations of the travel authorization was part of Canada’s broader interdiction policy that seeks to enforce its border and immigration laws extraterritorially by pushing the border out against undesirable visitors such as potential refugees, even before they depart from their country of origin.

Air travel advocate Gabor Lukács, who assisted the families in court, said that while he was happy the complainants were vindicated and will have their travel authorization restored, the ruling was bittersweet.

“If you target people from Hungary who have a refugee history, it is tantamount to targeting the Roma people. The evidence on that point was clear and uncontradicted,” said Lukács, founder of the Halifax-based Air Passenger Rights.

“The court is basically saying that by preventing people to board a flight because they are too brown, because they have the wrong ethnicity, the CBSA is just helping the airlines to meet their own legal obligations. It is a whitewashing of what is quite clearly a systemic discrimination.”

Source: Did discrimination keep this couple out of Canada? A Canadian court delivers a ‘bittersweet’ ruling

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Rudyard Griffiths: Want cheaper housing? Boost supply—but reduce demand too

2023/08/28 Leave a comment

While he is oblivious to the temporary resident numbers, a rare call to reduce permanent resident numbers to earlier levels of around 300,000, the demand side of the equation. Valid points on the financialization of housing but likely untouchable given how it would affect current home owners :

Mike Moffat deserves congratulations for serving up some innovative and impactful policy ideas to address Canada’s gaping housing shortage. The federal cabinet would do well to zero in on his suggestions when he briefs them in Charlottetown this week for what is being billed as an important confab on the country’s housing “crisis.” The key point that government ministers need to hear more from Moffat on is reintroducing accelerated depreciation rates for rental housing. Government cannot and should not try to “solve” the housing shortage on its own. Large pools of private capital need to be attracted back into building rental housing and currently the incentives do not exist for this to happen on any meaningful scale.

What is striking about Moffat’s essay and much of the current conversation about housing is the relentless focus on increasing supply. It is as if the issue of housing demand has been erased from policymakers’ minds when it comes to tackling what has been rightly identified as one of the most complex and important issues facing the country.

Take immigration. Right now in Ontario we are adding every two years the population of Mississauga and building a city roughly equivalent in size to Cornwall. To state the obvious, this is completely unsustainable and likely unfixable in any reasonable period of time that voters could and should expect. Yet we know that returning immigration levels, and student and temporary worker visas, back to the twenty-year average of 300,000 people—versus the one million plus arrivals in the last twelve months—would have an immediate and salutatory effect on demand.

Immigration’s impact on housing looks like a live debate going into the cabinet meeting with the new housing minister (and former immigration minister) Sean Fraser publicly musing about putting a cap on the “explosive growth” of international student enrolments.

Let’s hope this is where government ultimately end ups or acknowledging the impact of record population growth on shelter costs. After all, expectations about the future matter as price signals in the here and now. They give buyers and sellers clues as to the direction of travel of a market, in this case, housing. Indicating to the market that demand via population growth will be slower for the foreseeable future would lower shelter prices today and is an easy win. 

Immigration of course is a sensitive issue that has many dimensions beyond economics and housing. But to argue that Canada wasn’t becoming more diverse and inclusive at annual migration levels a quarter of what they are today is preposterous. Also, migration isn’t the weather. It is a choice. It can be expanded or lowered according to the absorptive capacity of society. Right now that capacity, in terms of not only housing but a variety of other metrics such as health care and public infrastructure, is clearly beyond reasonable limits.

Missing also from the current discussion is some much-needed soul-searching about the role the federal government has played recently in stoking housing demand, and its corollary, a crisis of affordability. Much of the pandemic-era rise in shelter costs has its origins in a little-known mechanism called the Domestic Stability Buffer. This is the amount of capital that banks are required by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to set aside to cover losses in the advent of a Black Swan-type event.

In the Spring of 2022, OSFI cut the DSB from 2.25 to 1 percent, providing Canada’s banks with a massive $300B in new lending capacity or 15 percent of total annual GDP. These funds overwhelming went into residential mortgage origination during the same period the Bank of Canada was slashing its overnight rate and pushing down borrowing cost by buying bonds hand over fist. The combustion of hundreds of billions in new capital and ultra-low rates explains much of the unprecedented runup in prices with average homes nationally now costing as much as average homes in Toronto in 2019. Think on that for a moment… 

As with immigration levels, OSFI made a policy choice. Some or all of the $300B in new lending capacity created out of thin air could have been mandated for corporate loans to create private sector jobs or fund new capital investment. But it wasn’t. Instead, OSFI joined the alphabet soup of other Ottawa financial organizations (CMHC, FCAC, etc.) and added to a policy environment already highly favourable to increasing shelter costs.

Part of this week’s cabinet deliberations should be a root-and-branch review of federal policy as it relates to the financialization of housing as an asset. What schemes genuinely help lower-income Canadians get into homes and rental accommodation? Which are in fact subsidies to higher-income Canadians, investors, the banks, and the real estate sector as a whole? Proof point: in what world does it make sense to have over forty percent of residential units in Ontario “investor-owned”, with some communities such as Windsor, Sudbury, and St. Catherines seeing that level approach 80 percent or more?

Here the biggest tool the federal government wields to increase housing affordability is the capital gains exemption on Canadians’ primary residences.

When this policy was instituted in 1971 it was never envisioned as applying to the housing market with an average home price at ten times the average national income. Nor was it meant to shelter millions of dollars of capital gains in luxury home sales in Canada’s major cities for the 1 percent. We need to have an adult conversation about this exemption. Is it really still in our national interest? Beyond its effect on shelter costs, are we OK with the large intergenerational wealth transfers it is increasingly facilitating? Transfers that allow the children of high-income families to “afford” housing in our largest cities, through nothing other than their birth, and price out the less fortunate. One-third of people don’t own a home, and don’t benefit from the subsidy—many not out of choice.

The cautionary tale for not using all the tools at our disposal to address our national housing crisis is what is happening right now to real estate in China.

The Chinese also took housing to their largest asset class by far and trebled, like Canada, over a generation, its contribution to GDP. They used similar tools such as cheap credit from government via the banking sector and tax subsidies to individuals and corporations to engineer a massive explosion of real-estate-related wealth.

Their entire real-estate-led economic growth model has hit a wall. High prices slowed family formation. Ever higher debt levels curbed purchases. The real-estate portion of Chinese GDP is now falling precipitously, and it seems Beijing has few if any tools left to prevent a deep recession that could end up structurally damaging their economy.

Canada has all the same raw ingredients to replicate the toxic housing and real-estate endgame China now faces. The stakes are high. We need bold action and yes there is a case for increasing housing supply. But let’s also think about the policy levers that we have to sensibly curtail demand and unwind the financialization of housing as an asset class. Both are factors that China’s experience indicates can quickly flip an unaffordability crisis into long-term, intractable economic malaise.  For all our sakes let’s hope the policy deliberations needed to avoid this “own goal” begin this week in Charlottetown.

Source: Rudyard Griffiths: Want cheaper housing? Boost supply—but reduce demand too

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Cornellier review of Meggs: Immigration 101

2023/08/28 Leave a comment

Good summary of her book and of interest more generally given Quebec indépendantiste perspective and areas where future Quebec governments may push for additional powers with respect to temporary workers, students among others. Relatively silent on the imbalance of settlement service funding where Quebec maintains its share of funding irrespective of its declining share of immigrants to Canada:

Les enjeux liés à l’immigration au Canada et au Québec n’ont pas fini de faire la manchette. Au Québec, l’an dernier, selon l’Institut de la statistique du Québec, il y a eu 80 700 naissances et 78 400 décès. Comme la tendance devrait se maintenir, cela signifie que, désormais, seule l’immigration pourra contribuer au maintien et à la croissance de la population québécoise.

On peut toutefois se demander, dans l’état actuel des choses, si une telle croissance est nécessairement un bienfait. Quand on considère le problème aigu de la pénurie de logements, le manque de places dans les services de garde et l’état précaire de notre système de santé et de services sociaux, sans parler des défis engendrés par une croissance de ce type dans le dossier de l’avenir du français au Québec, ce n’est pas une évidence.

Pour réfléchir rigoureusement et sereinement à cette question, Anne Michèle Meggs est la personne toute désignée. D’origine ontarienne, Meggs est diplômée en études canadiennes et vit en français, à Montréal, depuis des décennies. Elle a dirigé le cabinet du ministre ontarien des Affaires francophones avant de travailler comme directrice de la planification au ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration du Québec.

Dans L’immigration au Québec. Comment on peut faire mieux (Renouveau québécois, 2023, 204 pages), un recueil de chroniques d’abord parues dans L’aut’journal depuis 2019, elle montre avec efficacité que le dossier de l’immigration au Québec est complexe, souffre d’une gestion désordonnée et charrie son lot de mythes.

Meggs ne s’oppose pas à l’immigration. Cette dernière, note-t-elle, « fait partie de l’histoire de l’humanité » et n’a rien de condamnable. On migre pour avoir une meilleure qualité de vie, pour fuir les conflits, la persécution ou les catastrophes naturelles, et ça se comprend. « L’immigration est un projet foncièrement humain », écrit Meggs.

Pour être couronnée de succès, cette démarche doit se faire dans le respect des personnes qui migrent, de la société d’accueil et de la société d’origine. Cela exige, de la part de la société d’accueil, d’avoir « une vision claire soutenue par une infrastructure législative et administrative efficace ». Or, au Canada et au Québec, cette vision, pour l’instant, fait défaut.

D’abord, les idées fausses entretenues au sujet de l’immigration nuisent à la rigueur du débat. Non, redit Meggs en citant des experts, l’immigration n’est pas une solution à la pénurie de main-d’oeuvre et au vieillissement de la population. Non, ajoute-t-elle, le déclin du français n’est pas d’abord le résultat de l’immigration, mais celui du faible taux de natalité des francophones, de leur anglicisation et de leurs comportements linguistiques : engouement pour la culture et pour les cégeps anglophones, indifférence à l’égard du statut du français, exigence de l’anglais en entreprise, etc.

« La société d’accueil, écrit Meggs, a le devoir de créer un espace propice à l’intégration en français [des personnes immigrantes]. » Elle est souvent loin d’être à la hauteur de cette mission. Les efforts de francisation déployés par le gouvernement du Québec, notamment en milieu de travail, ne méritent pas non plus la note de passage.

Le principal obstacle à une bonne compréhension du dossier de l’immigration au Québec est toutefois le tripotage des chiffres. Alors qu’on se demande si notre capacité d’accueil — une notion qui n’a jamais été rigoureusement définie — est de 30 000 ou de 70 000 immigrants, le Québec en accueillait, en 2022, 155 400, c’est-à-dire 68 700 personnes admises à la résidence permanente et 86 700 personnes détentrices d’un permis de séjour temporaire (étudiants étrangers et travailleurs), cela sans compter les demandeurs d’asile.

Tout le débat, dans ces conditions, est faussé puisque les temporaires, plus nombreux que les permanents, échappent à la réflexion sur les seuils et aux efforts d’intégration en français qui devraient être déployés par le gouvernement du Québec.

En vertu de l’Accord Canada-Québec sur l’immigration signé en 1991, explique Meggs, le Québec pourrait exiger que les immigrants temporaires soient inclus dans le calcul annuel du nombre d’immigrants qu’il veut recevoir. Il pourrait aussi ajouter des conditions linguistiques à cet accueil, mais il ne le fait pas, sauf quand il déplore, mollement, le refus fédéral des demandes de permis d’études pour de jeunes Africains francophones.

Pour avoir une politique d’immigration efficace et humaine, le Québec devrait pouvoir gérer seul l’ensemble du dossier, c’est-à-dire être indépendant, note justement Meggs. En attendant, Justin Trudeau et François Legault disent et font un peu n’importe quoi.

Chroniqueur (Présence Info, Jeu), essayiste et poète, Louis Cornellier enseigne la littérature au collégial.

Source: Immigration 101

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How to fix Canada’s international student system? These experts have a plan

2023/08/26 Leave a comment

Another proposal to address the excessive growth of international students:

Amid a raging debate over how to manage Canada’s international student sector, some say the federal government should adopt a different kind of system for granting visas to foreign students — one that could reset expectations and help weed out “bad actors.”

And such a system, advocates say, has already been proposed.

For years, critics have been calling for reforms to this country’s fast-growing international education program. Thousands of international students are lured to Canada each year, many by the prospect of gaining permanent residence as a result of getting a Canadian education and ensuing work permit.

This week, facing public pressure over the housing crisis, the federal government mused about reining in the surging number of students who have filled the classrooms of post-secondary institutions from coast to coast.

“It’s critical to signalling first that there is a real problem,” Toronto immigration lawyer and policy analyst Mario Bellissimo told the Star.

Though caps have never been placed on visas for foreign students, workers or visitors before, advocates point out the idea of restricting how many people can apply for entry into the country is not a new concept. Many permanent residence programs already have annual quotas, such as for the sponsorship of parents and grandparents.

“The mechanism of how they’re going to do this is as important as establishing a cap. If it’s not set out in a way that’s sustainable, we’re meeting back here in a year or two.”

What Bellissimo and others say they believe would help is a two-staged system similar to the existing economic immigrant selection process to both cap and manage the international student intake.

Earlier this year, Bellissimo led an effort with other lawyers and MPs to submit a proposal to reform the international student program to then immigration minister Sean Fraser, who is now in charge of the housing portfolio.

The proposed Expression of Interest Study Permit Program is modelled on the current economic immigration application management system. That system requires interested applicants to enter into a pool and be invited to submit an application based on their scores in a points-ranking system.

Points would be allocated based upon factors such as the applicant’s education history, previous degrees, grades, language ability, financial sufficiency and educational institution to which they were admitted.

The pool would be divided into streams between those accepted by colleges and universities, as well as those who are pursuing a study permit for “in-demand” occupations in Canada or who have no interest in remaining in the country after graduation. There could also be the option for provinces and municipalities to support the applications destined for their regions.

Once all the study permit spots are filled, the remaining candidates in the pool would wait for the next round of invitations in the following school term. Their applications would be disposed of after a year and they would have to reapply to be considered again to avoid a backlog.

“Capping is not necessarily a bad thing, because if you allow everyone to apply, inevitably many are going to be turned away or are not processed at all,” said Bellissimo. “So you’re actually squeezing the door shut as opposed to opening it.”

The approach would reset applicants’ expectations of their ability to come to Canada either temporarily or permanently, and redirect them to other programs if one were close. For international students, it could mean picking other countries if it was too competitive to get admitted to Canada.

Bellissimo says he was told the proposal was being considered.

Education is a provincial jurisdiction and post-secondary education institutions are currently charged with admissions of international students. The Immigration Department can control the intake by wielding its power in issuing study permits or inviting eligible applicants to apply without overstepping on the provincial jurisdiction.

“Managed intake is probably a first priority versus cap. The idea of a management system is you don’t necessarily have to refuse 50 per cent of applicants. You can somewhat control the number of applicants that are actually competitive to apply for study permits,” said Vancouver immigration lawyer Wei William Tao, who was part of the effort with Bellissimo.

“Now … schools throw off letters of acceptance kind of blindly to as many people they can, knowing that a large proportion will never make it here, but (are) still eager to.”

By limiting the number of spots schools could feed in the pool, said Tao, it would encourage their administrations to be more “prudent” in handing out letters of acceptance to candidates.

But the idea to cap the intake has already upset the post-secondary educational sector that has increasingly counted on international students as a source of revenue amid declining domestic enrolments and provincial cuts to education.

Employer groups that rely on international students to fill job vacancies have also raised concerns over the proposed cap.

The Quebec government has already publicly rejected the idea.

“This has developed into a huge industry. So people are upset if there’s a cap, then some colleges or some universities are going to miss out on income,” said Toronto immigration lawyer Zeynab Ziaie.

“It’s a very short-sighted way of looking at this, because if we’re just having them go through programs or colleges that are just for show and just to give them permission to remain here, is it really helping Canada?”

Ziaie said both Canada and shady recruiters have marketed the international student program as a pathway for immigration. However, there has been a huge gap between the number of students who are being admitted and who end up qualifying as permanent residents.

She said immigration officials have the power to impose stricter and more cumbersome requirements on student visa applicants such as higher language test scores and the minimum $10,000 bank balance, which has remained unchanged for years.

“It might limit who can come in and study in Canada, but at the same time, it might be more fair if you were someone who is likely not going to ever be able to apply for permanent residency,” said Ziaie.

“You shouldn’t really have to come and incur all of these costs and then not have a pathway to permanent residency later.”

Source: How to fix Canada’s international student system? These experts have a plan

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Randall Denley: Time for Ford to act on Ontario’s reliance on international students for post-secondary funding

2023/08/26 Leave a comment

Good and needed reminder that the provinces and their education institutions are largely responsible for the rapid increase in international students, with the federal government largely automatically facilitating visas:

A light bulb has finally come on in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet. Dim thought that bulb may be, it has sufficient power to illuminate a glaring weakness in how Ontario funds post-secondary education.

Sean Fraser, the new federal housing minister, offered the opinion this week that the 807,260 international students in Canada are putting pressure on the Canadian housing market. That’s not terribly surprising, since the number of international students has more than doubled since the Liberals took power. It’s also a problem that Fraser failed to address when he was immigration minister.

While it’s gratifying to see the federal Liberals tentatively identifying a link between the number of people flowing into the country and the shortage of housing, it’s Ontario Premier Doug Ford who really has to wake up.

Ford talks non-stop about the housing crisis and is willing to do anything to build more housing, but his own government’s policies have made the problem worse. Its failure to properly fund post-secondary is the root cause of the burgeoning international student population in Ontario, where about half the national total resides.

This is a problem Ford inherited, then made worse. Under the previous Liberal government tuition fees rose steadily as universities scrambled to cover costs not met by provincial funding. When first elected, Ford cut tuition fees by 10 per cent and his government has frozen them ever since.

That was great for students, not so great for universities and colleges. To make up the public funding shortfall, universities and colleges turned increasingly to international students, who pay much higher fees than Canadians, up to four times as much.

In effect, the Ford government and the universities and colleges reached a tacit agreement. The post-secondary institutions would stop fussing about underfunding in exchange for the government supporting an unlimited flow of international students.

Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk has highlighted the overreliance on international student fees in two reports. In December 2021, Lysyk found that Ontario’s colleges received 68 per cent of their tuition fees from international students. That’s what happens when a Canadian student pays $3,228 and an international student $14,306 for the same education. In 2022, she determined that international students, about 14 per cent of the student body, were paying 45 per cent of university tuition fees.

Some differential for international students is justified, but only enough to make up what the province covers for homegrown students. Ontario’s fees are exorbitant.

In effect, Ontario has turned its post-secondary sector into an international training business. As a result, the sector has expanded in its search for revenue, flooding the province with students who require housing.

Despite the obvious pressure this creates on housing, the Ontario government has been enthusiastic about the burgeoning Ontario student population. Not only do the international students subsidize the education of students from Ontario, they provide a source of cheap labour while they study here. Even better, the government hopes that many of them will stay in Ontario after they graduate.

Ford is caught between conflicting problems. There is a labour shortage and immigration seems like an obvious way to solve it, but a larger population increases demand for housing and health care beyond the province’s capacity to provide it. Ford has struggled to connect those two dots, championing population growth while pretending the province can handle it.

Whatever the perceived benefits, Ontario’s heavy reliance on international students’ tuition dollars to support its colleges and universities is unwise, a point made compellingly in an analysis by the Canadian Federation of Students.

It is also a problem that will be expensive to fix. The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations says that provincial funding covers only 33 per cent of university costs. Bringing Ontario per-student funding up to the average of the rest of Canada would cost $12.9 billion over five years, the professors estimate. For context, Ontario’s base program spending for the entire post-secondary sector this year is $12.1 billion.

Ontario has taken one small step toward rationality. Earlier this year, it appointed a “blue-ribbon panel” of academic and business leaders to provide the government with advice on making the post-secondary sector financially stable. Raising government support and cutting reliance on international students would be two obvious recommendations. The panel is expected to report within the next four weeks.

The Ontario government is certainly not going to stop the flow of international students, nor should it. What it needs to do is reduce the system’s reliance on those students’ fees by reducing their numbers and making up the difference itself. That would help both the housing market and the stability of post-secondary education.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist, author and former Ontario PC candidate. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com

Source: Randall Denley: Time for Ford to act on Ontario’s reliance on international students for post-secondary funding

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Le blasphème comme limite à la liberté d’expression?

2023/08/26 Leave a comment

Thoughtful discussion:

La liberté d’opinion et d’expression fait partie des droits protégés par la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme de 1948. Il s’agit du droit de ne pas être inquiété pour ses opinions et du droit de chercher, de recevoir et de répandre, sans considération de frontières, des informations et des idées, par quelque moyen d’expression que ce soit.

Or, cette liberté d’expression heurte les tenants de dogmes religieux, qui ont recours aux accusations de blasphème pour faire taire les personnes mettant en question leurs croyances. À preuve, la résolution non contraignante du Conseil des droits de l’homme des Nations unies, adoptée en juillet 2023, qui demande aux États de condamner tout plaidoyer et manifestation publique et préméditée de profanation du Coran.

De tout temps les religions revendiquent le droit d’être protégées contre le blasphème, soit une parole, un discours ou un geste qui outrage un ou plusieurs de leurs aspects.

Dans les sociétés de droit, cette requête s’appuie de nos jours sur trois éléments. À savoir : la liberté de religion ; la protection de la société et de l’ordre public ; la religion comme élément intrinsèque et indissociable de la personne.

Dans le premier cas, la demande d’interdiction du blasphème présume que la liberté de religion vise la protection des croyances et des sentiments religieux des expressions jugées offensantes. Il incomberait ainsi à l’État d’intervenir pour contrer les critiques de dogmes religieux, ce qui semble contradictoire avec le principe de séparation de la religion et de l’État, de la liberté d’expression et de la liberté de conscience des citoyens.

La deuxième justification concerne la protection de la société et de l’ordre public. Il s’agit là d’une question brûlante d’actualité en Suède et au Danemark, à la suite des crises diplomatiques avec les pays musulmans qu’ont provoquées les récents autodafés du Coran survenus sur leurs territoires respectifs. Sans parler d’interdiction du blasphème, en tout respect de la liberté d’expression, ces pays explorent aujourd’hui des solutions juridiques qui pourraient permettre d’interdire certaines manifestations offensantes afin de contrer une situation jugée « dangereuse pour la sécurité nationale ».

Il s’agit d’une question délicate puisqu’elle remet en question leur autonomie nationale quant au modèle de société choisi démocratiquement. D’ailleurs, n’est-ce pas cette autonomie par rapport aux accusations de blasphème de pays tiers qui a permis de protéger l’écrivain britannique Salman Rushdie d’une fatwa appelant à la mort ? Voire encore celle qui a permis au Canada d’accueillir la Pakistanaise Asia Bibi, accusée de blasphème dans la foulée d’une dispute autour d’un verre d’eau en 2019 ?

La troisième justification mise en avant pour interdire le blasphème vient de l’idée que les individus et leurs croyances forment un tout indissociable, et que le respect des uns implique obligatoirement le respect des autres. Les accusations d’islamophobie s’appuient sur ce principe en confondant critique de dogmes religieux et propos offensants à l’égard d’une personne. Cette conception d’un tout identitaire immuable soulève cependant la question de la liberté, pour les croyants, de se conformer ou non aux dogmes religieux, de la liberté de croire ou de ne pas croire, de la liberté d’association et de la liberté d’expression.

La situation au Canada

Le Canada a décriminalisé le blasphème en 2018. La liberté d’expression défendue par le Canada est cependant limitée par la criminalisation des discours qui incitent à la violence contre un groupe identifiable. Le défi consiste donc à départager un propos critique à l’égard d’une religion de ce qui relève du discours haineux visant un groupe en particulier, c’est-à-dire qui incite à détester des personnes.

En 2020, à la suite de l’assassinat de l’enseignant français Samuel Paty pour avoir montré des caricatures jugées blasphématoires par une partie de la communauté musulmane, le premier ministre canadien, Justin Trudeau, avait ainsi créé toute une polémique en associant le respect d’un dogme au respect de la personne : il avait alors affirmé qu’il ne fallait pas chercher à « blesser, de façon arbitraire ou inutile, ceux avec qui on est en train de partager une société et une planète ». Ces déclarations semblaient aller au-delà du concept de propos haineux qui limite la liberté d’expression au Canada.

Est-ce la perception de ce supposé lien indissociable entre religion et croyants qui a motivé le premier ministre à nommer, en 2023, une commissaire chargée de la lutte contre l’islamophobie ? N’y a-t-il pas là confusion entre le respect de la personne musulmane et le respect absolu des préceptes de l’islam ?

Rappelons que c’est la liberté d’expression qui a notamment permis les avancées scientifiques contraires aux dogmes religieux (on n’a qu’à penser à l’origine de la vie) ou à la reconnaissance du droit des femmes à l’égalité.

Aujourd’hui, le Canada semble errer en souscrivant au concept d’islamophobie par respect et pour éviter de blesser des sensibilités d’une certaine communauté. Comme la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme l’a rappelé en 1994 : « Ceux qui choisissent d’exercer la liberté de manifester leur religion, qu’ils le fassent en tant que membres d’une majorité ou d’une minorité religieuse, ne peuvent raisonnablement s’attendre à être exemptés de toute critique. Ils doivent tolérer et accepter le déni… Et même la propagation par d’autres de doctrines hostiles à leur foi. »

Toute critique des religions ne constitue pas en soi une incitation à la violence ou à la discrimination.

Source: Le blasphème comme limite à la liberté d’expression?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Un système surchargé fait rater la rentrée à des étudiants en francisation 

2023/08/26 Leave a comment

    Service delivery failure despite priority on francisation:

    Depuis son ouverture, le 1er juin dernier, Francisation Québec fait face à un achalandage record : en moins de trois mois, près de 30 000 immigrants se sont inscrits sur ce nouveau guichet unique, a appris Le Devoir. Or, croulant sous la tâche, le ministère de l’Immigration peine à répondre à la demande — et près de 95 % des nouveaux inscrits ne vivront pas de rentrée scolaire ces jours-ci.

    Selon les données fournies par le ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration (MIFI), des 23 500 détenteurs d’un dossier jugé complet, seuls 1500 peuvent s’asseoir sur les bancs d’école. Quelque 3500 autres qui n’ont pas encore de date de début de cours devraient par contre se joindre à eux ces prochaines semaines, assure le ministère.

    Au centre de francisation Louis-Jolliet, à Québec, à peine 200 nouveaux étudiants à temps complet et à temps partiel pourront commencer leurs cours prochainement. L’établissement pourra toutefois franciser son nombre habituel d’étudiants grâce à la réinscription d’environ 1000 étudiants qui avaient déjà suivi des cours et qui évoluaient dans l’ancien système, avant Francisation Québec. « Si je n’avais pas eu mon bassin d’élèves qui fréquentaient déjà notre centre, c’est sûr que ça chutait à trois groupes », explique Julie Larrivée, directrice adjointe du centre et responsable de la francisation.

    Alors que la rentrée s’amorce ces jours-ci, elle dit avoir dû refouler plusieurs candidats qui s’étaient inscrits sur la plateforme Francisation Québec tout juste après son lancement en juin et qui n’ont eu aucune nouvelle du MIFI depuis. « Les gens étaient désespérés, ils sont venus quand même nous voir pour nous demander quoi faire et où appeler. J’ai dû leur dire qu’ils ne pouvaient rien faire, qu’ils devaient surveiller leurs courriels tous les jours pour voir si le MIFI leur répondait. »

    En Beauce, des intervenants du milieu font le même constat. Avec ses collègues, Liliana Arcila, agente d’intégration au Carrefour jeunesse-emploi de Beauce-Nord, dit avoir inscrit pendant l’été sur Arrima (la plateforme vers laquelle Francisation Québec redirige les gens) une dizaine de travailleurs temporaires et de demandeurs d’asile voulant se franciser. « Personne n’a eu de nouvelles. Le site leur disait qu’ils allaient être contactés pour une évaluation, mais personne n’a pu commencer », indique-t-elle.

    Même son de cloche au Centre de services scolaire de la Beauce-Etchemin, où des dizaines de personnes inscrites après le 1er juin n’ont reçu aucune nouvelle. « D’habitude, on a 20, 30, 40 [étudiants de] niveau 1 qui rentrent en août et septembre. Mais là, les cours sont commencés, et les nouveaux étudiants ne sont pas là. Si quelqu’un nous appelle demain matin pour nous dire qu’il a eu son évaluation, on va devoir lui dire d’attendre à janvier », déplore une employée de ce centre de services, qui souhaite rester anonyme parce qu’elle n’a pas l’autorisation de son employeur pour s’adresser aux médias. « On est en train de mettre sur la glace une année complète d’école. »

    Des évaluations erronées

    Selon les données du MIFI, des 23 500 nouveaux dossiers complets (sur un total de quelque 30 000 nouvelles inscriptions en date du 20 août), la grande majorité des personnes n’auront pas besoin de subir d’évaluation, car elles ont déclaré n’avoir aucune ou avoir une très faible connaissance du français. Or, parmi les 7800 personnes devant passer un test, moins de la moitié (3000) ont été jusqu’ici évaluées par le bureau d’évaluation de Francisation Québec.

    De nombreux classements sont également erronés, a constaté Mme Larrivée. « On a vu beaucoup d’aberrations. On a des étudiants de la Tunisie qui ont été classés au niveau débutant. Ça ne se peut pas, ça. On voit qu’ils arrivent quand même à parler français. » D’autres, qui ont été classés dans les niveaux intermédiaires, doivent être recalés. « J’ai une enseignante qui a reporté d’une journée sa rentrée pour appeler tous les élèves sur sa liste. Elle a réajusté les classements. »

    Tania Longpré, doctorante en didactique des langues secondes et enseignante en francisation à Terrebonne, a fait le même constat. « J’ai reçu deux hommes la semaine dernière qui avaient été classés niveau 7 [par le MIFI], mais je les ai reclassés au niveau 3 », a raconté l’enseignante, qui signe une lettre ouverte dans Le Devoir pour déplorer les nombreux cafouillages de Francisation Québec en cette rentrée scolaire. « Je ne sais pas à quel point j’ai le droit de faire ça, mais je ne vais quand même pas laisser dans un niveau 7 quelqu’un qui ne parle pas français. »

    Selon ce qu’a rapporté Le Devoir en juin dernier, d’autres intervenants du milieu scolaire se sont inquiétés de la centralisation des pouvoirs en francisation au sein du MIFI. L’évaluation que fait le ministère des candidats— en ligne et seulement à l’oral — en avait fait sourciller quelques-uns.

    Julie Larrivée, du centre Louis-Jolliet, reconnaît que le système vit une transition. Mais elle estime tout de même que les étudiants étaient bien mieux servis avant. « Nous, ça fait 25 ans que notre expertise est développée », dit-elle.

    De record en record

    Après avoir connu une année record — 65 000 personnes ont suivi des cours de francisation l’an dernier —, le ministère de l’Immigration s’apprête à en vivre une autre. Au lancement de Francisation Québec, le 1er juin, on comptait déjà 16 000 personnes en attente, et une session record de cours d’été a été mise sur pied pour l’absorber le plus possible — un véritable tour de force, selon le MIFI.

    C’est d’ailleurs parce qu’il a fallu s’attaquer à réduire le nombre de personnes en attente que les nouveaux inscrits n’ont pas encore commencé leurs cours, a laissé savoir le ministère. « Comme l’offre de cours est moins importante durant la période estivale, notamment en raison des vacances du personnel enseignant, il est plus difficile de placer l’ensemble des élèves lors de cette période. Cette situation se résorbe habituellement par la reprise des sessions à l’automne. »

    À l’heure actuelle, 16 600 étudiants qui se sont inscrits avant la mise en place du guichet unique suivent des cours de francisation.

    Source: Un système surchargé fait rater la rentrée à des étudiants en francisation

    Filed under Immigration, Integration Tagged with ,

    Japan’s Incremental Immigration Reform: A Recipe for Failure

    2023/08/26 Leave a comment

    Of interest:

    Japan’s immigration policy underwent a fundamental shift in 2019 with the establishment of the “specified skilled worker” program, says sociologist and migration expert Higuchi Naoto. By allowing non-Japanese with limited skills to secure work visas and creating a pathway to permanent residence, the Japanese government had officially opened the door to immigration on a broader scale. Yet it has steadfastly denied doing so. “The reason,” says Higuchi, “is fear of a backlash from the right wing of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.”

    The Forces Behind “Creeping” Liberalization

    The Specified Skilled Worker No. 1 (SSW1) status of residence permits qualified foreign nationals (see table) to stay in Japan for a maximum of five years to work in any of 12 designated occupational fields, including construction, shipbuilding, and nursing care. Migrants classified as SSW1 are not allowed to bring their families to Japan. The SSW2 status of residence—reserved for SSW1 “graduates” with more advanced skills—can be renewed any number of times, and its holders may bring their families to Japan to live. SSW2 has been limited to workers in the construction and shipbuilding (including ship machinery) sectors, and only 11 workers had made the transition, according to the latest government figures. But on June 9 this year, the cabinet agreed to extend the scope of SSW2 to nine other occupational fields, including agriculture, hospitality, and manufacturing. (Excluded is nursing care, since carers can apply for long-term stays under a separate status of residence).

    What precipitated the policy change?

    Higuchi puts it simply. “The government was under pressure from business because the five-year permits of the [first wave of] SSW1 workers will expire next spring,” he explains.

    Employers facing labor shortages are doubtless hopeful that some of their foreign employees will be able to stay on by upgrading from SSW1 to SSW2 status. To qualify, however, the workers will have to pass skills exams, currently under preparation by the relevant industry groups and government agencies.

    “This is typical of the government’s incrementalist approach to immigration policy,” says Higuchi. “After putting an adjustable framework in place, it gradually expands the scope to create a fait accompli by stealth. Under pressure from various industries, it will doubtless continue to loosen restrictions bit by bit, by expanding the number of eligible occupations and reducing the difficulty of the exams, for example.”

    A System of Loopholes

    Before 2019, Japan maintained a basic policy of granting work visas only to highly skilled foreign nationals. However, from 1990 on, the government established a number of exceptions and loopholes to facilitate the use of foreign labor in low-skilled jobs that were becoming difficult to fill. For example, after the revised Immigration Control Act came into force in 1990, third-generation descendants of Japanese émigrés (primarily from Brazil and other parts of Latin America) were able to settle in Japan as “long-term residents,” with no restrictions on employment.

    Around the same time, Japan began accepting unskilled foreign “trainees” on a short-term basis. In 1993 this practice was systematized and expanded through the creation of the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP). Although the program’s ostensible purpose was to support international cooperation by transferring skills to workers from developing countries, it soon came under criticism as a government-sanctioned side door for foreign labor and a recipe for exploitation.

    By the first decade of this century, Japan’s worsening demographic outlook bolstered the acceptance of lower-skilled foreign workers as full-scale employees, rather than so-called trainees. “The ruling party and the business lobby floated a number of reform proposals. One called for admission of 10 million foreign workers, another for the adoption of a three-year ‘temporary worker’ visa,” says Higuchi. “But none of them was adopted.”

    Instead, the government gradually expanded the TITP, extending the period of stay from three to five years and including more and more industries and occupations in the program’s scope. The number of foreign “trainees” soared. (At last count, there were more than 320,000 foreign workers registered as technical interns, down slightly from the pre-pandemic level.) In anticipation of surging demand connected with preparations for the Tokyo Olympics, the government took action to increase the supply of construction workers by instituting a program under which foreign “interns” in that field could continue working in Japan for a few years after their internships ended. It also gave the green light for employment of non-Japanese agricultural workers in national strategic economic zones.

    Through these incremental changes, says Higuchi, “the government laid the groundwork for adoption of the Specified Skilled Worker program, promoting [the acceptance of lower-skilled foreign workers] in practice even while publicly opposing it in principle.”

    The TITP as Nursery

    From the government’s viewpoint, says Higuchi, the much-vilified TITP probably qualifies as a policy success. “It’s provided labor for industries suffering from shortages without allowing the workers to settle in Japan. Sure, some trainees go missing each year, but only about three percent on average. From the government’s perspective, this means the program is being adequately managed.”

    Critics inside and outside Japan, meanwhile, continue to slam the TITP, citing labor and human-rights abuses. In response, the government has begun talking about “progressively dissolving” the system as the SSW program gears up.

    Higuchi doubts that the TITP will be dismantled anytime soon. “Foreign nationals who have worked as a technical intern for three years can transition to SSW1 without taking an exam. Otherwise, they need to [pass a test to] show Japanese competence at the N4 level [‘ability to understand basic Japanese’]. To secure workers with SSW1 status without relying on the TITP would involve a major expansion of Japanese-language instruction and testing programs in migrant-sending countries like Vietnam. A year of study is needed to reach N4, and prospective applicants would also need to prepare for the technical skills exam in their field of employment. Realistically speaking, the TITP mechanism for importing unskilled labor will be needed to secure an adequate number of legally employed workers [under the new program].”

    Restricting Free Choice of Employment

    The government has also said that it is considering loosening the TITP’s rule against changing jobs. But Higuchi is skeptical about the prospects for substantive reform. “Even if technical interns upgrade to SSW status, they’ll be required to find employment in the same industry,” says Higuchi.

    The main concern among policy makers is that if foreign workers are free to choose their place of employment, they will gravitate to urban centers and industries offering relatively favorable working conditions. That would leave the employers and occupations most in need of foreign labor short-handed.

    “Émigrés are by nature independent-minded people, and giving full play to that trait would ultimately benefit the economy as a whole,” says Higuchi. “But the current system is all about confining people to the categories they’ve been assigned. For example, it makes no provision for foreign nationals to operate their own businesses or work as independent contractors, even though a relatively high percentage of people in the construction industry are self-employed. The SSW program was adopted as part of a larger economic growth strategy, but as strategies go, it doesn’t make much sense.”

    Lessons Not Learned

    While Japanese bureaucrats may regard the TITP as a success, few would give high marks to the policy of granting long-term residence to foreigners of Japanese descent (Nikkeijin), says Higuchi. For one thing, a large number of the migrants returned home after losing their jobs during the Great Recession.

    But the biggest problem, Higuchi says, is that the policy was not accompanied by adequate support and integration measures. “The majority [of South American Nikkeijin] remain stuck in temporary positions, even after thirty years working in Japan,” he notes. “Many of their children were never enrolled in school, and others stopped attending. It’s clear that the failure to actively integrate the [third-generation] Nikkeijin badly hobbled the fourth generation.”

    “In the end, the policy can be viewed as a kind of experiment, testing what happens if the government allows immigration without doing anything for the immigrants. I’m sure the Nikkeijin would have achieved a lot more if they’d been provided with rigorous Japanese-language training when they first arrived in 1990. Yet I’ve seen no indication that policy makers have learned the lessons of that ‘experiment.’”

    Or perhaps they have learned the wrong lessons. In 2018, the government established a new category of work visa for fourth-generation Nikkeijin, who were previously permitted to reside in Japan only as dependent family members. But the new work visas are much more restrictive than those granted the previous generation. Applicants must be able to demonstrate Japanese-language competence at the N5 level (“ability to understand some basic Japanese”), and they must secure sponsors in advance. Moreover, they are not allowed to bring family members, and their stay is limited to five years. Thanks to these restrictions, Higuchi says, “Practically no one has applied.” There are reports that the Ministry of Justice intends to grant long-term residence to such migrants after five years if they demonstrate N2 competence in Japanese (“ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations, and in a variety of circumstances to a certain degree”), but there are no plans to loosen the initial visa and status-of-residence requirements.

    A Patchwork of Policies

    The creation of the SSW status of residence was a policy change spearheaded by the prime minister’s office, known as the Kantei. But the Kantei does not oversee or coordinate immigration control on an ongoing basis. “Big business is forever lobbying the Kantei on economic and labor policy, and in this case the Kantei yielded to industry’s call for deregulation,” says Higuchi.

    In fact, there is no single “control tower” coordinating Japan’s immigration policy, which helps explain its lack of consistency and rationality.

    “The Ministry of Justice, which has jurisdiction over immigration control [via the Immigration Services Agency], has considerable authority over the admission of foreign workers,” says Higuchi. “But it has no idea how those human resources should be allocated. The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has a Foreign Workers’ Affairs Division, but it only has jurisdiction over building cleaning and nursing care. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries each propose separate quotas [for construction workers and agricultural/fisheries workers, respectively] on the basis of their own sectors’ needs. The reason the number of foreign construction workers has grown so rapidly is that the construction industry has very cozy ties with MLIT.”

    What about the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, which oversees economic and industrial policy from a more sweeping perspective?

    “It would certainly make sense for METI to take some initiative in the context of an overall economic growth strategy, but in fact it’s only shown itself interested in securing highly skilled personnel in the information and telecommunications fields.”

    Another obstacle to a more comprehensive, rational reform of Japanese immigration policy is the fact that the Liberal Democratic Party has controlled the government for so long. Many countries have managed to develop a balanced policy as a result of the alternation of power between parties with different perspectives on immigration. But in Japan, regime change is rare.

    “For the LDP government, at least, there’s nothing to be gained by abandoning the current incrementalist, patchwork approach. What it really wants to do is secure as much labor as possible without any abrupt increase, which would trigger a backlash from the party’s right wing. Imperceptible increases aren’t what Japan needs to avert serious labor shortages, but the government doesn’t seem overly alarmed.”

    Can Japan Have Its Cake and Eat It, Too?

    In Higuchi’s view, the Japanese government will have trouble meeting even its modest goals for expanding the labor force if it continues to cling to the principle that foreigners entering Japan for purposes of employment must come equipped with specific occupational skills. “From the standpoint of policy goals, it would make more sense to admit untrained workers and nurture their skills here than to use exams to screen out unskilled applicants,” Higuchi says.

    At the same time, Higuchi stresses the need to lay a solid foundation for success by providing formal Japanese-language training and other systematic instruction to new arrivals.

    “It’s not enough for local governments to offer Japanese classes once or twice a week. Newcomers need formal, intensive training at the outset to ensure that they can communicate in the workplace. And the Japanese government should guarantee their educational and living expenses during that period. Municipal governments can’t be expected to shoulder that burden. Yet the central government has done everything it can to sidestep investment in human resources and minimize its own expenses.

    “In Europe over the past couple of decades, it’s become the norm to provide language instruction in conjunction with vocational training. For example, Germany provides expats with about 600 hours of language training [as part of its required integration course] and a monthly allowance of about 1,000 euros during the training period. The US government doesn’t make that sort of human investment—but then, neither does it require migrants to pass a skills test after a certain number of years.

    “Japan, on the other hand, demands skills from its foreign workers yet refuses to invest in them. And this would be a smart investment, since it would help address our labor shortages and eventually yield returns in the form of tax revenues. The government really doesn’t get it. It wants to have its cake and eat it, too.”

    Helping Migrants Realize Their Potential

    Higuchi’s research on Nikkei immigrants in Japan has shown a strong correlation between Japanese-language proficiency and employment options.

    “To move up to regular employment or start their own business, they need business-level Japanese. Also, they’re more likely to find good work with a recommendation from a Japanese acquaintance. Relying on networks of other immigrants mostly leads to low-paying temporary and contract work. Strengthening ties between migrants and the Japanese community fosters social integration and multicultural coexistence and delivers a whole range of economic benefits.”

    Migrants tend to be resourceful entrepreneurs if given the opportunity. Even in Japan, South Asian expats managed to carve out a niche selling used cars and now do a booming business exporting used Japanese automobiles around the world. The most successful at this ethnic enterprise, says Higuchi, is a group of Pakistani expats who obtained legal residence status by marrying Japanese women.

    “The OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] has made the case that migrants contribute substantially to the local economy through their entrepreneurship and ethnic businesses,” says Higuchi. “But the Japanese government makes no provision for ethnic enterprise; in fact, it won’t even let foreign workers move into more promising occupations. That stifles economic dynamism and drastically limits migrants’ potential to contribute to growth. It’s time for a fundamental shift in thinking.”

    (Originally written in Japanese by Kimie Itakura of Nippon.com.

    Source: Japan’s Incremental Immigration Reform: A Recipe for Failure

    Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

    Globe editorial: How the Liberals can roll back the surge in student visas (and blame Stephen Harper)

    2023/08/25 Leave a comment

    Likely one of the simpler solutions but will provoke considerable opposition given the number of education institutions that have largely become “visa mills.”

    Another lesson from the Harper years is with respect to Temporary Foreign Workers; when abuse and displacement of Canadian workers became apparent, the government reversed course and largely reimposed the restrictions it had imposed.

    One bit of political folk wisdom of Chretien (forget the context and the exact wording) was “when you paint yourself into a corner, you need to step on the paint.” Time for the government to do so with credible changes:

    Timid as it is, the federal Liberals’ mulling of a cap on the (already astronomical) number of international student visas met with instant opposition from Quebec and postsecondary institutions.

    Source: How the Liberals can roll back the surge in student visas (and blame Stephen Harper)

    Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

    Yakabuski: Capping foreign student visas isn’t as simple as it sounds

    2023/08/25 Leave a comment

    Good reminder that making choices harder that talking about “considering” limits. And, as always, interest groups, whether provincial governments, education institutions and associations, have louder voices that people affected by housing availability:

    Housing Minister Sean Fraser’s suggestion that Ottawa may consider limitingthe “explosive growth” in foreign student visas, which many experts say has contributed to Canada’s housing affordability crisis, is giving indigestion to college and university administrators.

    …

    Source: Capping foreign student visas isn’t as simple as it sounds

    Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

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