Working site on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.
2026/09/21 Leave a comment
Assume many of you may have also tried using ChatGPT to download IRCC data for analysis. Did a quick trial with study permits and remarkably efficient and will likely use it substantially on my next quarterly update as it easily verifiable.
2026/09/21 Leave a comment
Not surprising, given that previous immigration levels were unsustainable, resulting in business models being equally unsustainable. Hard of the students of course:
…According to Languages Canada’s 2025 Annual Survey Report, member institutions welcomed just 81,636 students recently — down nearly half from the 150,112 students enrolled in 2019. The organization attributes the drop to federal study permit caps introduced in January 2024 and unpredictable visa policies, which choked the pipeline of students entering Canadian colleges and universities through preparatory language pathway programs.
In 2019, the language-education sector directly and indirectly generated $6.75 billion in economic activity for Canada and supported 75,000 jobs, Languages Canada reported. Peralta says those revenue figures have now been cut in half.
ILAC’s collapse comes less than a week after another major international chain, EC English, closed its operations around the world, including three campuses in Canada.
Languages Canada told the Star it has found new academic homes for all 471 students impacted by EC English’s closures at its campuses in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Staff at ILAC were given virtually no notice of the closure. One ILAC teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of harming future employment prospects, described receiving an email late Friday morning urging staff to attend an urgent virtual town hall call at 4:15 p.m.
During the brief meeting, ILAC chief executive officer John DeFranco read a prepared statement informing staff the school was closing immediately after failing to secure new investors….
2026/09/21 Leave a comment
Yes, notable change:
…Though never free from the systemic impacts of racism and xenophobia – not to mention the continuing colonial dispossession of First Nations – Alberta has for decades welcomed newcomers, and celebrated them as an engine of economic growth.
Just a few years ago, the UCP was actively courting migrants, while Ms. Smith mused about an Alberta inhabited by 10 million souls.
Only recently did the party embrace the type of anti-immigrant rhetoric that paints newcomers as a burden. In February, Ms. Smith stated, without evidence, that immigration has “flooded our classrooms, emergency rooms and social support systems.”
This argument falls apart under scrutiny. Immigrants, including temporary residents, pay taxes. If classrooms and hospitals are overflowing, it’s because the UCP has failed to adequately invest in them.
Scapegoating immigrants is a common tactic in Western democracies. But in Alberta, this plays directly into the hands of the separatist movement – a movement that is not only staunchly anti-immigrant, but a hotbed of xenophobia and racist conspiracy theories.
Voting yes to the immigration questions will normalize the type of reactionary politics typically associated with MAGA and far-right movements in Europe….
Richie Assaly is a freelance writer and former Toronto Star culture reporter. He writes about politics, music and books.
2026/09/18 Leave a comment
Hard to argue against greater predictability and stability. And the impact of drastic changes, without some transitional measures, is particularly unsettling, poor policy and unfair to many of those caught by changes:
…Some policymakers may argue that the system is doing what it is supposed to do: admitting only a select group of graduates and expecting the rest to take their skills elsewhere.
But a system that relies on abrupt rule changes and unstable pathways isn’t really identifying “the best.” What it’s actually rewarding is whoever can most easily absorb uncertainty, financial risk and administrative complexity, rather than those who are most rooted in Canadian communities or best positioned to contribute over the long term.
For students who have already invested years of work, savings and emotional energy into building a life here, that distinction matters. A fair system should offer more.
If Canada wants to remain credible as a destination for talented international graduates, it needs to back that reputation with something concrete: clear and stable pathways to permanent residence for the people it has already encouraged to stay.
Negar Valizadeh Geography, Environment and Geomatics, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Source: How Canada’s immigration caps are trapping its own graduate students
2026/09/18 1 Comment
Of note:
…Mr. Sheeran’s mistake was booking Macklemore to begin with. Not because of his anti-Israel stance – he has every right to these opinions, of course – but because the guy who performed in Jew Face is the one who should be considered toxic, period.
Mr. Sheeran, despite all of this, will be fine. So will Pink. And Boy George. And Macklemore. Our concern – after the victims of this conflict, of course – should be for the fledgling artists who happen to be Jewish or Israeli or have expressed concern about the Oct. 7 victims and dare to believe Israel should exist. These artists face the risk of being shunned and cancelled before their careers have a chance to take off. As do many artists who speak out in support of the Palestinians.
We’re tearing each other down with these insignificant fights when the real struggle should be about how to bring peace to the region. Perfect.
2026/09/17 2 Comments
But it did in in 2014 (CBSA allowed religious travellers to avoid female guards), which generated considerable media attention and condemnation:
A Hindu temple grand opening in France has turned into a global controversy over whether followers of the Swaminarayan sect asked female employees not to be present during a delegation’s Sept. 6 visit to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
The Hindu sect, the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), has a substantial following in Canada, but constitutional law and workplace experts say this country’s human rights and anti-discrimination laws would prevent a similar incident from happening here.
BAPS, which originated in the Indian state of Gujarat, has a strong following in Canada and has been expanding. A Toronto temple was built in 2007 and the Calgary temple was built in 2021. A third one is under construction in Belleville, Ont.
If a similar request were made in Canada — to ask female staff members to step away from their positions — the guiding legal principle would be the “duty to accommodate” outlined in human rights codes, according to Pearl Eliadis, a human rights lawyer and associate professor at McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy in Montreal.
Eliadis said Canada’s duty to accommodate, the legal principle that requires employers to make room for an employee’s religious or medical needs, likely does not apply to a case like this because the request would come from a visiting third party rather than an employee needing protection. …
2026/09/17 Leave a comment
Of note:
…As the categories of majority and minority now shift and blur, Americans find themselves returning, almost obsessively, to Jews: a group that doesn’t fit easily into racial binaries, that troubles the boundaries between religion and ethnicity, whose members are not people of color but whose claim to whiteness was always suspect in the eyes of white supremacists, and who have diasporic ties to a polarizing nation-state.
This ambiguity has also created ideological blind spots. Centrist liberals were late to recognize the seriousness of antisemitism in American life. They likewise missed its potency as a political weapon for the populist right and the combustibility of the Palestine question in American politics. Progressives have failed to grapple with antisemitism among their own ranks. And now a conservative administration intent on undoing civil rights law has turned that ambiguity to its own advantage.
The civil rights revolution was never finished. Now its contradictions have returned, sharper than ever. They won’t end with antisemitism, because debates about Jews are never just about Jews. They are the seismographs of a society’s deeper tremors: its fears of difference, its contested visions of nationhood.
As Americans, we can build a legal framework that is more than a cynical tool with which to punish one’s enemies and also better than what preceded it — something capacious enough to protect all minorities, principled enough to command legitimacy and resilient enough to resist political manipulation. We can do it if we stop treating civil rights as a cudgel and start treating them once again as a covenant. Covenants are not merely inherited; they are renewed. This one must be renewed not for the America that was, but for the America that we are becoming.
Prof. Loeffler is the author of “Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight Over Free Speech in Modern America.”
Source: For Trump, Jews Are Proving to Be a Very Useful Tool
2026/09/17 Leave a comment
Interesting detailed analysis. Not sure even the Trump administration would go that far, but labour mobility implications for cross border services etc are something to watch out for:
…Tariffs may be the easy part
None of these scenarios is inevitable.
Some would almost certainly face legal challenges. Others would run against the spirit, and in some cases the letter, of longstanding bilateral agreements. Several would impose serious costs on American companies, workers, and consumers, as well as Canadians.
But that is different from saying the tools do not exist.
For decades, Canada has tended to think about its exposure to the U.S. mainly through trade: how much it exports south, how vulnerable particular sectors are to tariffs, and how quickly it can diversify into other markets. That remains important. But the deeper relationship rests on much more than the movement of goods.
It depends on easy movement of people, trusted border administration, coordinated tax rules, privileged access to American technology, and physical infrastructure that both countries have spent decades integrating.
Those arrangements are usually treated as the background architecture of the relationship. In an even more serious confrontation, they can also become leverage.
And even these five possibilities do not exhaust Washington’s arsenal. At the far end of the escalation ladder sit the president’s emergency economic powers, which can be used to restrict financial transactions and block foreign property under U.S. jurisdiction after a qualifying national emergency is declared. Authorities of this kind sit at the heart of much of the U.S. sanctions machinery used against adversaries such as Iran, Russia, and North Korea. Applying anything comparable to Canada would represent a rupture far beyond today’s trade dispute.
The more realistic lesson is simpler.
Canada’s vulnerability is not only that it trades heavily with the U.S. It is that decades of successful integration have embedded Canadian prosperity inside systems that Washington helps administer.
Those systems make both countries richer in normal times.
In a confrontation, they can also become pressure points.
If the trade war keeps escalating, tariffs may eventually prove to have been the easy part.
Pouya Daneshpajooh is an Editorial Intern at The Hub and a Master of Global Affairs student at the University of Toronto’s Munk School.
Source: Beyond tariffs: 5 worrying ways Trump could escalate his trade war with Canada
2026/09/16 Leave a comment
Looking forward to the various datasets:
Statistics Canada says the response rate for this year’s census of the population was 98.4 per cent, one of the highest ever recorded.
The data is collected every five years and the questionnaire includes age, gender, marital status and language use.
That information is used to determine electoral maps, plan social programs and determine funding for municipal and provincial governments.
…StatCan says it’s begun the work to compile the data it collected and it will release seven batches of information beginning in February 2027.
The agency says more than 88 per cent of Canadians chose to fill out the census online, more than have ever used that option before.
Source: Canada’s 2026 census participation was among highest ever, says StatCan
2026/09/15 Leave a comment
So the number after less than one year is already greater than the five-year estimate by PBO and IRGC. As Kurland notes, “They dropped the ball big time:”
Both the wait times and the number of people waiting for a decision regarding their proof-of-citizenship application has surged exponentially since Bill C-3 came into effect, according to new data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
More than 136,000 people are awaiting a decision, with estimated wait times now more than 33 months. They include people eligible for citizenship under the amended rules and those who are first-generation descendants. In the case of applications from outside Canada or the United States, the estimated wait time could take an additional three or four months.
The wait time has increased by eight months from this August, when it was estimated to be 25 months. The number of applications has also increased by 14,000.
Bill C-3, which came into effect in December 2025, amended the Citizenship Act to end the first-generation limit on citizenship by descent, meaning Canadians born outside the country can also pass their citizenship to their children who are born outside the country. It also expanded eligibility to people born before Dec. 15, 2025, if they can prove they’re directly descended from a Canadian citizen, and have verifiable documents showing that the citizenship was passed down – even if that ancestor left the country years ago.
Half of applications come from U.S.
According to data provided by the IRCC in August, more than 6,100 people have obtained proof of citizenship under these new rules since late 2025.
As of May 31, 51 per cent of all approved citizenship applications under the new eligibility criteria came from people born in the U.S., according to data provided by the IRCC.
One immigration lawyer says the new numbers are “staggering” and “far beyond the capacity of IRCC” to process in a reasonable timeframe.
Kyle Hyndman, an immigration lawyer from Victoria, B.C., told CTVNews.ca on Thursday, that a “significant” number of applications are coming from the south of the border.
“Both what’s happening in the U.S. politically – and also news coverage of the Canadian citizenship situation in the U.S. – have both spurred a lot of interest,” Hyndman said.
“That’s certainly part of the surge, and that’s put all kinds of pressure on every stage in this process,” he said.
…‘A predictable uptake’
Christine Beltempo, the current chair of the Canadian Bar Association National Immigration Law Section and a lawyer with the national law firm McCarthy Tétrault, told CTVNews.ca on Friday that she’s seeing many applications coming in from other countries besides the U.S., like Mexico.
“You’re creating additional bureaucracy for some people who actually are presumably, according to the new law, Canadian citizens,” she said, referring to people from countries like Mexico, who need a visa application to enter Canada, unless they get their citizenship certificate.
Outside of the U.S., the most approved applications are from Mexico, Bolivia, the United Kingdom and its territories, China, India, Bolivia, France, Australia and Italy, according to the IRCC’s data.
Beltempo called the surge in processing times “a predictable uptake,” following the amendment to Bill C-3, which is leading to “frustration” among applicants who were looking forward to this legislative change.
“What we’re seeing is disappointment, frustration, mixed emotions and certainly people finding it very difficult to plan their lives and their futures in Canada, without having a predictable amount of time before which they can actually get their documentation,” she said.
Beltempo added that the IRCC is facing backlogs in other departments as well, which needs to be examined by the federal government. She says it’s concerning for associations like the Canadian Bar Association, in terms of access to justice and other programs.
“I think it’s important to remind the public that this change came as a result of a court finding that the previous law was unconstitutional.”
‘When you’re Canadian, you have the right to be here’
Before Bill C-3 was amended, Canadian citizenship by descent was limited to first-generation individuals, born or adopted outside the country by a Canadian citizen. That restriction was subsequently struck down in a 2023 ruling by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which found it unconstitutional.
Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer and policy analyst from Vancouver, told CTVNews.ca Friday, that the sudden uptick in the number of applications and the increase in estimated wait times is a combination of the political tension between Canada and the U.S., in addition to the Bill C-3 amendment.
“They certainly drop the ball in failing to resource the citizenship people to process, resulting in three years and longer processing times,” Richard Kurland said. “When you’re Canadian, you have the right to be here.”
Kurland said despite people having a claim to Canadian citizenship, the province they enter cannot allow them access to health care, public education or employment without the paperwork from the IRCC.
“There’s no way that the (federal) government could not know that the inventories would become bloated (and) processing times would go through the ceiling,” he said.
“They dropped the ball big time.”
Meanwhile, multiple factors are to blame for an increase in the volume of applications outside of Bill C-3, an IRCC spokesperson told CTVNews.ca in a statement on Friday.
“Complex cases often require substantial documentary evidence and additional verification, which can extend timelines,” the spokesperson wrote.
“The current estimate should be understood in that context, rather than as a direct comparison with historical figures that were calculated using different inventories or methodologies.”
Source: Proof-of-citizenship applications surge, estimated wait time is almost 3 years
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