‘You are a very bad minister,’ Conservative immigration critic says at tense committee meeting

2025/12/05 2 Comments

Watched this brutal exchange. Her name comes up periodically as someone who may be shuffled and her appearance yesterday may increase speculation. That being said, MP Rempel Garner is somewhat of a bulldog in her questioning.

As to DM Kochhar’s letter asking MPs to be more respectful of public servants in their questioning, and to be mindful of the risks of posting edited clips that target them, I recall former DM Fadden having the same concerns some 15 years ago or so, albeit in a safer social media environment:

Immigration Minister Lena Diab sparred with her Conservative critic at a tense House of Commons committee meeting Thursday as the two disagreed on everything from immigration levels and deporting non-citizen criminals to what kind of salad they prefer.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner put Diab in the hot seat throughout her two-hour committee appearance, grilling Diab about her file and accusing her of being “a very bad minister” when she struggled to give a clear answer on whether she will use powers under the government’s pending C-12 legislation to mass extend temporary visas.

A section in that bill gives the government the ability to stop accepting applications or cancel, suspend or change documents for an entire immigration class — something critics on both sides of the issue say could be abused either to turbocharge the number of newcomers or cancel visas en masse.

Asked if she plans to use that power to keep more people in Canada rather than expelling them when their visas expire, Diab said “that’s not the purpose” of the legislation but wouldn’t say how it would be used.

A frustrated Rempel Garner interrupted Diab.

“When you ask a question I think you should be able to have decency to let someone respond,” Diab said.

“I don’t like your word salad, it’s true. You are a very bad minister,” Rempel Garner said.

“You know what, I prefer fattoush and tabouleh to your salad, at any time,” Diab said.

“That is the oddest thing any immigration minister has said at this committee. It’s very weak and will likely be added to your performance reviews,” Rempel Garner said.

“It’s my culture,” said Diab, who is Lebanese Canadian.

At one point, another Liberal MP, Peter Fragiskatos, stepped in as the two exchanged words.

Rempel Garner said she wasn’t speaking to him about these issues.

“He’s going to have your job,” she said to Diab of Fragiskatos, suggesting the minister was about to be shuffled out of cabinet. “I’ll likely be having this conversation with him in a couple of months.”

Rempel Garner also asked Diab about some recent non-citizen criminals getting more lenient sentences so they can avoid deportation.

Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, a permanent resident or foreign national can be deemed inadmissible if they engage in “serious criminality,” which includes any crime that results in being sentenced to prison for more than six months.

In one recent case an Indian national paid for sex with what he thought was a teenager at a Mississauga, Ont., hotel. That teenage girl was actually an undercover cop.

The man was ultimately sentenced to a conditional discharge for committing an indecent act and was sentenced to 12 months of probation, including three months of house arrest. Rempel Garner said the man should have been dealt with more harshly by the courts and ultimately deported.

Asked if she will send a message to judges that are letting non-citizen criminals off easy to avoid being forced out of Canada, Diab said that’s not her role.

“Sentencing decisions are made independently by the courts,” she said, while assuring the Conservative critic the government will remove foreign criminals when appropriate.

“So, you’re pro-raper,” Rempel Garner asked provocatively.

“The courts have already indicated that serious offences will be dealt with seriously,” Diab said, while adding she wasn’t familiar with the case Rempel Garner raised.

“Can’t you just say it’s wrong and we’ll look into it?” Rempel Garner asked in return. “You just defended a guy who sexually assaulted somebody. It’s rampant in our justice system.”

“A wise person once told me you debate the issues and the policy and you don’t debase the individual,” he said, urging his colleagues to follow that mantra.

Deputy minister cites cases of bullying

The meeting started with the committee chair, Julie Dzerowicz, reading a letter from Diab’s deputy minister — the top bureaucrat in the department — saying some public servants have been subjected to bullying and intimidation after appearing before the committee.

That letter, written by Harpreet Kochhar, relayed that some unnamed politicians have posted videos of the public servants testifying at the committee, and they have been targeted online and in person as a result.

Dzerowicz said Kochhar was concerned about the “well-being” of these government workers who he said have endured “significant harassment and abuse” and “hostile emails.”

The letter, shared with CBC News, relays Kochhar’s fear that MPs posting “short, decontextualized clips of committee appearances” by bureaucrats could lead to violence.

“One of our colleagues was recently confronted in a public space by an angry individual referencing material shared online,” Kochhar wrote.

“I want to implore all committee members from all parties to be very cognizant of how we use the information from this committee, whether it’s online or offline,” Dzerowicz said, adding she doesn’t want appearing before a committee to be a “security risk.”

Rempel Garner said Kochhar was trying to “censor” Conservatives and stop them from questioning the department about what she described as a failed immigration policy.

“I will not be silenced,” she said, saying she will fight to get the government to “do the right thing” on this file.

“Giddy up,” she said.

Diab was ostensibly before the committee to talk about the government’s immigration targets for the coming years — figures that were included in the recent federal budget, an unusual move given they are generally delivered publicly by the minister….

Source: ‘You are a very bad minister,’ Conservative immigration critic says at tense committee meeting

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Deportations to be reported to Parliament each month under Conservative changes to border bill 

2025/11/28 Leave a comment

Hard to argue against more data but the Government and NDP rejected a similar amendment in the case of C-3 (citizenship). But yes, quarterly and annual reports are more informative in terms of trends but given that all IRCC immigration-related data sets are released monthly on open data, same should apply here and on open data, not reports to parliament:

Ottawa would have to report to Parliament every month on the number of foreign nationals who have been deported, including those with criminal convictions, under changes to the government’s border bill pushed through by the Conservatives. 

A slew of amendments to Bill C-12, including boosts to immigrationenforcement, passed in a marathon meeting of the Commons public safety meeting on Tuesday evening, where MPs scrutinized the bill until midnight. 

The committee voted for detailed monthly reports to Parliament on the number of deportations, including on where people came from and their age and gender, despite objections from a senior border official who argued that quarterly or annual reports would paint a clearer picture.

The amendment, proposed by the Conservatives, follows a report earlier this year that hundreds of convicted criminals facing deportation have gone missing. …

Source: Deportations to be reported to Parliament each month under Conservative changes to border bill

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C-3 Citizenship: My Submission Arguing for the need for a time limit

2025/09/29 Leave a comment

Citizenship C-3 CIMM SubmissionDownload

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Minister Marc Miller under fire over controversial immigration levels plan for Canada

2024/11/27 Leave a comment

Good account of the discussion. But don’t agree that the plan is controversial for most Canadians apart from the various immigration interest groups:

Appearing before the House of Commons immigration committee on Monday to pitch the controversial plan, Miller was under fire from the right for the lack of details on how to ensure temporary residents with expiring status will voluntarily leave Canada and from the left for scapegoating migrants for the country’s affordability and housing crisis. 

“You’re not giving me much confidence or Canadians confidence that you have a plan,” said Tom Kmiec, immigration critic for the opposition Conservatives, who repeatedly questioned Miller how his department is going to ensure people do leave when their time is up.

“You haven’t provided any information on the means. How are you going to do it? You say you have partner organizations. You’re working with people. What are you actually doing? What’s the process? How are you going to ensure people abide by the visa conditions?”

In response, Miller said there are many ways that people leave the country and the majority of people do. And if they don’t, he added, border agents will investigate and remove them from Canada.

He admitted an increasing number of study and work permit holders have sought asylum in the country to extend their stay, but people are entitled to due process and be assessed if they have a legitimate need to seek protection.

When pushed by the Bloc Québécois how the federal government was going to respond to an anticipated surge of irregular migration from the U.S. under the incoming Trump administration, Miller said a cabinet working group is developing a contingency plan but he’s not going to roll it out in public.

Last month, Ottawa unveiled a three-year immigration level plan that will reduce the annual intake of permanent residents by 21 per cent to 395,000 next year, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027. It will also slash the temporary population including international students and foreign workers to 445,901 in 2025 and to 445,662 in 2026 but will increase it modestly by 17,439 in 2027.

The reduced targets are meant to achieve a population decline of 0.2 per cent in each of the next two years before returning to a population growth of 0.8 per cent in 2027. However, it’s predicated on the assumption that 1,262,801 temporary residents would leave the country voluntarily next year, and another 1,104,658 in 2026.

Earlier on Monday, a coalition of advocates and migrants demanded the opposition parties reject the Liberal government’s plan to slash immigrationand expel 2.36 million temporary residents with expiring status in the next two years. Some of them also attended the committee meeting with protest signs saying “Don’t deport us! Don’t be racist!”

Sarom Rho of the Migrant Rights Network said fewer permanent resident spots mean further temporariness and exploitation for vulnerable international students and temporary workers.

“They hide the fact that the super-rich are making record-breaking profits while the majority of us go hungry, that corporate landlords are buying up housing stock to manufacture scarcity and that the public institutions we value so deeply, like health care and education, are being … sold by the pound to private profiteers,” she told a news conference.

“By reducing immigration, Prime Minister Trudeau is affirming the racist idea that migrants are responsible for the affordability of housing crises.”

Jenny Kwan, the NDP’s immigration critic, said successive Conservative and Liberal governments have brought in more and more temporary residents to reduce migrants’ rights and make them more vulnerable.

What the federal government needs to do, she said, is to rein in corporate interests that are profiteering off people’s basic needs and also invest in housing, health care and infrastructure for all Canadians. 

“You blame (migrants) as though somehow they created the housing crisis when in fact successive governments abdicated their responsibility and entirely just relied on the private sector to provide the housing,” said Kwan. “When are you actually going to take up responsibility and do what is right?” 

Miller said temporary residents are meant to be here temporarily and there’s no “automatic guarantee” for permanent residence.

“A lot of institutions have entertained explicitly or implicitly a sense of false hope that people will become immediately a Canadian citizen,” he said. “My heart does go out to those who have had that false hope entertained. But the reality is that not everyone can stay here.”

Source: Minister Marc Miller under fire over controversial immigration levels plan for Canada

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“In Demand Yet Unprocessed: Endemic Immigration Backlogs” – Citizenship Government response

2024/04/19 Leave a comment

The section of the government response to CIMM’s study of backlogs, citizenship ceremonies and oath. My understanding, however, is that in practice applicants are assigned the ceremony type automatically (virtual being the default) but can request an in-person if they prefer. Last time I checked based upon public IRCC data, about 90 percent of applicants had virtual ceremonies.

And of course, IRCC’s “seeking to increase the percentage of clients that complete the Oath in-person in 2024-2025” is meaningless unless its open data operational data includes the numbers of new citizens by virtual and in-person ceremonies:

7. That IRCC make clear to all individuals that it is their choice to choose the citizenship ceremonies process best suited to their needs; and that while in-person ceremonies should be the default option, virtual ceremonies should also be allowed; and further, that any self-administered oath of citizenship be subject to robust integrity measures. Agree in Principle

The Government agrees in principle with the recommendation that the Department make it clear to clients that they may choose the citizenship ceremony format best suited to their needs, and that any self-administered oath of citizenship be subject to robust integrity measures. Canada welcomed a record number of 364,166 new citizens in 2022-2023, compared to approximately 248,000 in 2019-2020 (pre-pandemic), enabled in part by the implementation of virtual ceremonies (also called video ceremonies) and related efficiencies.

As of July 2022, IRCC resumed holding in-person ceremonies while maintaining virtual ceremonies, as a stream of service delivery that provides efficiency, timely service, and flexibility to clients as they can accommodate more clients from coast to coast to coast, including those in rural and remote regions. Clients are invited by the Department to either an in-person or virtual ceremony, based on operational considerations, but can request a change of format (e.g. from virtual ceremony to an in-person ceremony or vice-versa) and the Department makes best efforts to accommodate client preference.

Virtual ceremonies have contributed to a significant reduction in grant inventories, while modernization initiatives, such as online electronic applications for most grant of citizenship applications and electronic citizenship certificates, have reduced and continue to reduce processing times with a return to service standards projected for spring 2024.

A number of factors, including volumes of clients served and costs would be impacted if in- person ceremonies were set as the default option. Instead, the Department is seeking to increase the percentage of clients that complete the Oath in-person in 2024-2025 as well as clarify that all individuals have the opportunity to request the citizenship ceremony format that best suits their needs, subject to availability.

In addition, the Department continues work to modernize Canada’s Citizenship Program to improve client service, increase processing efficiencies and enhance program integrity. As the Citizenship Program continues to modernize, the Department will reflect on the feedback received from Canadians, and incorporate this into the assessment of options and decisions on a way forward.

Source: “In Demand Yet Unprocessed: Endemic Immigration Backlogs”

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Deadline should be set to clear Canada’s immigration backlogs: committee

2023/12/16 Leave a comment

Perhaps members also need to consider the impact of their recommendations on increased complexity and workload (not to excuse completely IRCC!):

Members of the House of Commons immigration committee say the government should set a deadline to clear immigration application backlogs and appoint an ombudsperson to hold the department accountable.

The committee has released a substantial report on immigration backlogs that includes 40 recommendations to ease the waits for potential newcomers.

As of the end of October, the Immigration Department had more than 963,000 applications in the backlog, which represents 43 per cent of all applications in the system.

The committee says the government should set a deadline to clear the backlog and allow people to see the status of their case online.

The committee is also echoing decades-long calls for an ombudsperson to oversee the department, supervise processing times and order changes as needed.

A majority of MPs on the committee is asking for more resources to be put toward processing applications and answering questions from applicants, though Conservatives said in an addendum to the report that more money would not solve the backlog problem.

Source: Deadline should be set to clear Canada’s immigration backlogs: committee

Link to report: https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/CIMM/report-18/

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Standing committee votes to reconnect ‘lost Canadians’ with their #citizenship

2023/04/21 Leave a comment

In parallel with the court case.

The previous retention provisions (age 28) were complicated and difficult to administer consistently and many did not avail themselves of these provisions, whether due to not being aware or not important to them at the time.

Degree of connection tests, while possible, would likely prompt debate over the particular conditions.

And when I last did an analysis of Canadian expatriates using a variety of connection tests – paying non-resident taxes, maintaining a Canadian passport, etc – the number was significantly less than estimates of their overall numbers.

As always, practically impossible to reach all Canadians living abroad with messages regarding citizenship and other policies that may affect them.

When Emma Kenyon tried to file for her child’s Canadian citizenship after moving abroad for work, she was told to travel back to Canada to give birth in a hospital here.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Kenyon said this advice was offered at the height of Canada’s pandemic travel lockdown in 2020, and would have resulted in a significant salary loss and posed a health risk to her pregnancy.

Both Kenyon and her husband grew up in Canada, and wanted to pass down their Canadian citizenship to their expected child and the rest of their growing family. Their efforts have been met with lingering bureaucracy.

On Monday, April 17, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration voted to widen the scope of a new policy change to the Citizenship Act that aims to reconnect Canadians who were born abroad with their lost citizenship.

As it stands, Bill S-245 — which was introduced by Conservative Senator Yonah Martin in May 2022 — only gives some people their citizenship back, but not others.

The NDP’s amendments tabled on Monday will also include people like Kenyon, who fall outside of the bill’s scope — as it stood, the bill only allowed people born abroad between Feb. 15, 1977 and April 16, 1981 to reclaim citizenship.

The amendments were passed with 64 per cent of the committee in favour, while all votes against it came from CPC members.

CPC members opposed to Kwan’s amendment said they would use it as a bargaining chip for the party to push for their own agenda items like the reinstatement of in-person citizenship ceremonies.

“The NDP wants to seize this opportunity to fix ‘lost Canadian’ issues once and for all,” Kwan said in an announcement before the committee meeting.

She spoke alongside subject expert and author Don Chapman, Canadian Citizens Rights Councilexecutive director Randall Emery, immigration lawyer Sujit Choudhry, and people who would be affected by the policy change.

A history of the lost Canadians

In 2009, the then-Conservative government repealed parts of a 32-year-old section of the Citizenship Act that automatically revoked the citizenship of some Canadians when they turned 28, unless they re-applied for it.

But the arcane age 28 rule had not been clearly communicated to Canadians when it took effect in 1977. As a result second-generation kids awoke on their 28th birthday years later without their citizenship and the threat of deportation.

Last year, Opposition Deputy Leader, Conservative Senator Yonah Martin, expedited Bill S-245 through the Senate, to address “a small group of Canadians who have lost their Canadian citizenship or became stateless because of [these] changes to policy.”

It encompasses a specific cohort of lost Canadians that had already turned 28 before the rule was revoked, including only those born within a 50-month window.

On Monday, Kwan and those who spoke with her said the scope of the bill is still too narrow. The NDP’s amendments would include people, like Kenyon, who are currently told not to give birth abroad if they want to pass their Canadian citizenship on to their children.

At Monday’s announcement, Chapman noted the previous changes in citizenship policy reflected a UK-based model of identity laws that used to be popular in British colonies.

“Canada is the last country defending these laws,” he said.

Source: Standing committee votes to reconnect ‘lost Canadians’ with their …

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El-Assal on backlogs etc

2022/05/17 Leave a comment

Good and sound testimony before CIMM, with reasonable recommendations to improve transparency, accountability and collaboration (the harder of the three):

Canada’s immigration backlog stands at over two million people. It has nearly doubled since the start of the pandemic. The permanent residence inventory has grown from 400,000 people to 530,000 people. The temporary residence inventory has doubled to 1.2 million people, and the citizenship inventory has gone from 230,000 people to 400,000 people.

    The backlog is undermining Canada’s economic, social and humanitarian objectives. We have the lowest unemployment rate on record and over 800,000 job vacancies. The backlog hurts our economic recovery effort, since we can’t bring newcomers into Canada quickly enough to address our labour shortages. For instance, it’s now taking 31 months to process Quebec’s skilled worker applications and 28 months to process paper-based provincial nominee program applications, even though the service standard for both is 11 months.

    The backlog is keeping families apart. For example, although the service standard for spousal sponsorship is 12 months, it’s taking us 20 months on average to process outland applications.

    On the humanitarian side, Canada is making refugees and displaced persons live in discomfort for far longer than necessary, as we’re currently seeing with Afghans and Ukrainians. It is absolutely imperative that we get the immigration system back on track.

    Within the next decade, all nine million baby boomers will reach retirement age. We’re going to need more immigrants to grow our labour force, tax base and economy. However, other countries will win the race for talent if Canada continues to struggle to provide immigrants with certainty that we’ll process their applications quickly and fairly. This will be to the detriment of our economic and fiscal health.

    I’d like to provide three recommendations to the committee.

    First, we need more transparency. 

    The government should be mandated to provide monthly updates to the public on the state of immigration policy and operations. Immigration in Canada is far too important to be a black box. We should not have to rely on access to information requests, as has been the case during the pandemic, to remain informed about the immigration system. The monthly update should contain critical information, such as the government’s policy priorities and its backlog reduction plan, among other details that can help to restore the trust in our immigration system that was eroded during the pandemic. Providing monthly updates would also reflect well on the government. People are more understanding and forgiving when you’re honest with them.

    Second, we need more accountability. 

    An independent study should be commissioned to better understand the operations of the immigration system during the pandemic. Right now, we have many unanswered questions. What are the causes of this backlog? The pandemic alone can’t entirely explain the situation we’re in. For instance, express entry was designed to avoid backlogs, so why then do we have an express entry backlog? We need an evidence-based study that answers these sorts of questions and provides us with guidance to ensure such backlogs never happen again.

    Third, we need to work more collaboratively. 

    Major decisions have been made during the pandemic with little consultation, leading to avoidable consequences. We’re blessed to live in a country with many immigration experts from law, academia, think tanks, business and the settlement sector, among others. They are assets to our immigration system. 

    Hence, my final recommendation is that the government form a national advisory council on immigration. The council’s mandate would be to provide the government with technocratic advice to inform our country’s major immigration decisions. We’re a diverse nation with diverse immigration objectives; we need diverse views reflected in our immigration policy.

    To conclude, I want us to remember that among these two million people waiting in the backlog are future colleagues, friends, neighbours, voters, politicians, and business and civil society leaders. They are Canada’s future, and we must treat them with the dignity and respect that they deserve.

Source: https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/CIMM/meeting-21/evidence

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CIMM Citizenship delays call for Minister to appear [before end May]

2022/05/11 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see the response, and the degree to which information is forthcoming:

Given that significant delays in citizenship applications (over two years) risk disenfranchising Canadians who are waiting for their citizenship in order to vote, and this issue is particularly urgent in light of the June 2nd Ontario provincial election, the government should move quickly to address this issue so that all Canadians who are eligible for citizenship and who choose to apply are able to participate fully in our democratic life. In light of the situation, the committee requests the Minister appear before the committee for two hours by May 27, 2022 to outline actions taken and further actions intended.

Source: https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/CIMM/meeting-21/minutes

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Extend special immigration measures to other crises: House of Commons committee

2022/04/08 Leave a comment

Of note:
Canada’s treatment of Ukrainians fleeing war has been distinctly different to those fleeing other humanitarian crises, the House of Commons immigration committee said Wednesday, and MPs want that to change.
The committee voted Tuesday to issue a public statement, urging the government to provide the same special immigration measures it extended to Ukrainians to refugees from other regions.The statement reads that “time is of the essence,” and said the committee calls on the immigration minister to ensure Canada’s response to humanitarian crises in other regions “are treated with the same vigor as Ukraine.

Canada has expedited immigration applications from Ukraine and created an extraordinary program to allow Ukrainian citizens and their families to come to Canada and work or study for three years while they decide their next steps.

The program does not apply to non-Ukrainians who fled the country.

Canada has received 112,000 applications from people fleeing Ukraine and has so far approved more than 26,500, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said at a press conference Wednesday.

The MPs on the committee say the measures should also be available to Afghans who are still in their Taliban-controlled home country, and refugees from other regions facing humanitarian crises such as Yemen, Myanmar and China.Fraser didn’t address the committee’s request in his press conference, but did say Canada remains “extremely committed” to helping people escape Afghanistan.

Canada has so far welcomed 10,025 Afghans since August 2021, when the Taliban took control of the country.

In a statement Wednesday, a spokesperson for Fraser said refugee resettlement efforts, including initiatives in Afghanistan and Syria, can take years to implement and must be accounted for in the government’s annual immigration-level targets tabled in Parliament.

Meanwhile, consultations with the Ukrainian community reveal many wish only to come to Canada temporarily and then return home when it is safe“We will continue to look at more ways that Canada can settle refugees, complementary to our resettlement efforts,” spokeswoman Aidan Strickland said in a statement. “Each situation is unique and should be considered as such to ensure that Canada is responding accordingly.”

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi applauded Canada’s actions to bring Ukrainians to a safe haven, but also reminded government officials of other refugee crises.

In February, before Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine, the UN refugee agency counted about 84 million refugees and displaced people worldwide.

“Since then, that number has probably grown to well over 90 million. We must be in the region of 95 million now,” Grandi said at the press conference with Fraser.

Grandi was in Ottawa Wednesday to announce a new global task force, chaired by Canada, aimed at finding other ways to bring refugees to safe countries.

The initiative builds on a Canadian pilot program to allow skilled refugees to apply for permanent residency through economic channels. The idea is to bring additional refugees to the country, in addition to those welcomed through humanitarian processes.

The pilot removed some of the barriers that would traditionally have precluded refugees from applying for permanent residency in Canada through economic channels.

It was expanded late last year to accommodate 500 skilled refugees, and Fraser says he hopes to see even more welcomed under the program in the future.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan says the idea behind the pilot program is great, but she has noted some issues with the execution. For example, the program is supposed to include a loan option to allow refugees to meet the economic requirements to support themselves when they come to Canada, but that loan is not yet available.

Source: Extend special immigration measures to other crises: House of Commons committee

And a good op-ed by Naomi Alboim and Karen Cohl:

It is hard to rationalize the strikingly different approaches the Canadian government has taken to two major refugee crises in Ukraine and Afghanistan.

There have been benefits offered to Ukrainians looking to escape the Russian invasion, but not to Afghans fleeing the Taliban’s takeover, including authorization for emergency travel to enter Canada on a temporary basis with open work permits for up to three years. In addition, the government has promised to develop a family-reunification sponsorship program for both immediate and extended-family members.

There have also been benefits offered to Afghans, but not to Ukrainians, such as special programs for arrival as refugees with permanent residence and entitlement to all associated supports and services.

Certainly, the specific context of a refugee crisis can necessitate unique policy responses. But a common framework should be in place to provide similar support for individuals in crisis, with differences in treatment only where demonstrably justified.

The Canadian government has said that the “temporary residence” approach is justified by the assumption that most Ukrainians will return home. The reality, however, is that many Ukrainian refugees who choose to come to Canada can be expected to stay. No one knows how long the war in Ukraine will last, what the outcome will be, how much destruction will occur and whether or when it will be possible for individuals to return. The large Ukrainian community in Canada provides an added incentive to stay.

Indeed, an example from the past may foreshadow future decisions of Ukrainians coming to Canada. In response to the crisis in Kosovo in 1999, Ottawa initiated emergency airlifts of Kosovars on the expectation that many would return home as soon as the situation abroad was resolved. They were provided with permanent residence to entitle them to supports and services while in Canada. Kosovars were also offered transportation to return home and funding to re-establish themselves there. Despite these incentives to return, and the absence of a significant Kosovar community in Canada, only 30 per cent did so.

It would therefore be well worth providing supports and services that meet the needs of new Ukrainian arrivals. Many people fleeing Ukraine are women with small children, so even with open work permits, they may not start work immediately, and many won’t be able to earn enough money to support the needs of the family. Support from the community will be invaluable in many cases, but it cannot be expected to carry the full load.

Although the federal government has announced that Ukrainians arriving as temporary residents will have access to national settlement services, they are not eligible for federal income support or interim health coverage normally provided to refugees, leaving it up to individual provinces to decide on access to health care, schools and income support.

Afghans, for their part, need emergency travel authorization and reunification of extended-family members. Such measures would help to compensate for the fact that the implementation of the two special programs for Afghan refugees has been slow and rife with problems, and that private-sponsorship applications remain blocked.

Many Afghans are at greatly increased risk from having helped Canada in Afghanistan, and many have fled to neighbouring countries that don’t want them and are unable or unwilling to provide support. Ukrainians are in a horrendous situation, but they are at least being welcomed by EU countries who want and are able to help them. Some Afghans were airlifted to Ukraine from Afghanistan. Yet, even these Afghan refugees are not entitled to Canada’s new policies, which are available only to Ukrainian nationals.

We see no justification for Canada to offer such different treatment to two groups coming to our country at around the same time. Some observers have already begun to wonder if the policy differences have been influenced by race, religion or political benefit, and the lack of limits to the number of Ukrainians being allowed to enter Canada only fuels that argument. The perception is heightened by the fact that crises under way in Africa and elsewhere have gotten no special response at all.

Canada needs a common refugee framework that includes expedited entry and permanent residence, eligibility for supports and services and reunification of extended family members. Fair and equitable responses – for any refugee group – will help people in need of protection to make the transition to a successful life in Canada, no matter how long they choose to stay.

Source: Canada needs a unified approach for people fleeing Ukraine and Afghanistan

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