Liberals restoring refugee health benefits cut by previous government

2016/02/19 Leave a comment

Fully expected: in the Liberal platform and Minister McCallum’s mandate letter. Another commitment met, another Conservative policy undone:

The Liberal government has restored refugee health-care benefits cut by the previous Conservative government.

Speaking at a joint announcement Thursday, Immigration Minister John McCallum and Health Minister Jane Philpott said the Interim Federal Health Program, which provides health-care coverage for asylum claimants and refugees, will be fully restored to pre-2012 levels.

“All refugee claimants and refugees will now be covered,” Mr. McCallum told reporters in Ottawa. “The system had disintegrated into something of such enormous complexity that it was virtually unmanageable.”

The Conservative government scaled back refugee health-care benefits in 2012, arguing that the cuts would deter “bogus” refugees from coming to Canada and save taxpayers money. The Federal Court eventually found that the changes were unconstitutional and ordered the government to reinstate the benefits, leading the Conservatives to restore some. The Tory government launched an appeal of the court’s decision, which the Liberals eventually dropped.

Before 2012, refugee claimants had their health-care costs covered by the federal government until their application for status was decided or they became eligible for provincial health-care coverage.

The health-care benefits will be fully restored as of April 1, according to Mr. McCallum. The coverage will include hospital and physician services, while coverage for supplemental services, such as vision, urgent dental care and prescription drugs, will be similar to what provinces and territories provide to Canadians on social assistance.

Dr. Philpott said the return to the pre-2012 program will “simplify everything.”

“There will be one path. Refugees, … whatever category they will fall into, they will be eligible for the basic levels of care in addition to some supplementary levels of care. And this will help refugees, it will help health-care providers and it will help Canadians,” she said.

The government’s announcement comes months after it committed to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, who were already receiving health-care coverage. An exemption in the 2012 law ensures that refugees being settled as a “result of a public policy or humanitarian and compassionate considerations on the minister’s own initiative” receive full access to health-care benefits.

The government also announced an expansion of the program to cover certain services for refugees who have been identified for resettlement before they come to Canada. Starting April 1, 2017, those services will include coverage of the immigration medical examination, pre-departure vaccinations, services to manage disease outbreaks in refugee camps and medical support during travel to Canada.

Source: Liberals restoring refugee health benefits cut by previous government – The Globe and Mail

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The Liberals are blowing up the citizenship system again. Why? Kheriddin

2016/02/10 Leave a comment

While I agree with Kheiriddin on the importance of language, she ignores that language and knowledge were assessed by previous Liberal governments, albeit with significant integrity and consistency problems which Conservative reforms largely addressed.

While political considerations play a role (as they did with the previous government), Liberal MPs are also likely responding to constituent and supporter representation from those ridings with significant numbers of immigrants and visible minorities – which the Liberals won overwhelmingly.

But the Conservative reforms created another problem: a declining rate of citizenship take-up and a dramatic fall of some 30 percent in the number of immigrants applying for citizenship over the past three years.

We do not yet know what will be in those ‘radical changes’ (my ‘transition advice,’ drafted before the election, Citizenship: Getting the Balance Right (October 2015) highlights possible changes).

So the question for the current Government, is to find the right balance between facilitating citizenship (making it accessible) and making it more meaningful in terms of language, knowledge and residency, and in so doing, consult, engage and listen to the range of views of what that balance should be:

Lack of language proficiency also hurts elderly immigrants. It makes them dependent on family and isolates them from the wider community. Immigrant women in abusive relationships often have nowhere to turn because they lack the language skills to get help from police, a shelter or social workers. Language barriers are a frequent problem cited by immigrant women’s rights advocates — and it doesn’t stop being a problem at age 54.

The solution is not to have every government worker learn every minority language, as some might suggest. It’s to empower immigrants with the basic language skills they need to live, thrive and participate in Canadian society.

The Liberal proposal ignores another very basic truth, one which Quebecers know all too well. Language amounts to more than words. Language is culture. Learning a language brings with it knowledge of the culture that produced it, and engenders an appreciation for that culture. It allows the speaker to connect to that culture, to feel part of it. It’ll be interesting to see how Quebec reacts to any such changes, as the province has maintained its own immigration requirements for years — including French proficiency.

So why are the Liberals doing this, and why now? The likeliest explanation is the crass one: They’re doing it for the votes. Just as the Conservatives avidly courted immigrants’ support over the last decade, the Liberals are determined to take it back. Chen represents Scarborough North, the riding with the highest percentage of visible minorities in the country, at 90.1 per cent. McCallum represents Markham-Thornhill, which has the third-highest number (82 per cent) of visible minorities in the country, and where 50.1 per cent of residents were born in Asia as of the 2011 census. The second-highest visible minority population (87.6 per cent) is in the riding of Brampton East, Ont., which is also represented by a Liberal, MP Raj Grewal.

McCallum is right in saying that these would be “radical” changes; they surely are, for all the wrong reasons. They do nothing to strengthen immigrants’ sense of belonging to Canada, or the linguistic duality of our country.

In fact, in their zeal to erase every single vestige of Conservative policy, the Liberals are actually betraying the legacy of their own party. Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau championed bilingualism and enshrined English and French minority rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While he also supported multiculturalism, he made sure his children became fluently bilingual. One would hope all Canadian kids — and their parents — would have that same chance under the Liberal party in 2016.

The Liberals are blowing up the immigration system again. Why?

Filed under C-24, Citizenship, Citizenship Act Tagged with ,

McCallum promises ‘radical changes’ to Citizenship Act | hilltimes.com

2016/02/09 Leave a comment

No details yet on the ‘radical changes’ promised but a strong indication of Liberal caucus concerns, which seem primarily around language assessment.

However, Minister McCallum’s mandate letter only had three commitments:

  • Work with the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to repeal provisions in the Citizenship Act that give the government the right to strip citizenship from dual nationals.
  • Eliminate regulations that remove the credit given to international students for half of the time that they spend in Canada and regulations that require new citizens to sign a declaration that they intend to reside in Canada.

But a clear signal of intent to do more.

I find it somewhat amusing that after being critical of some of the changes to citizenship made by the previous government, I now find myself defending them on language assessment:

Immigration Minister John McCallum says the government will be “producing radical changes” to the Citizenship Act in the next few weeks. Liberals have been telling him that the government should eliminate the language requirement for new immigrants to apply for Canadian citizenship, which was brought in by the Conservatives in 2014 as part of the controversial Bill C-24.

Mr. McCallum (Markham-Thornhill, Ont.) told The Hill Times that he’s aware of the concerns and will make an announcement in a few weeks. “We’re going to be producing radical changes to the citizenship bill,” Mr. McCallum said. “We’re going to be announcing the details of those changes in just a few weeks.”

Liberal MPs told The Hill Times that although they want new immigrants to acquire proficiency in both or at least one of the two official languages of Canada, it’s also a question of fairness, saying the language requirements disenfranchise new immigrants from their right to take part in the political process.

“It’s a big problem the way the system has been set up under the previous government for language requirements,” said rookie Liberal MP Shaun Chen (Scarborough North, Ont.) whose riding has the highest visible minority population of 90.1 per cent, in the country.

But in some cases MPs said new immigrants fail to achieve the required proficiency for a variety of reasons. For example, some immigrants come to Canada under the family sponsorship program, as parents or grandparents and may not have any knowledge or a limited understanding of English or French. At that age, MPs said, it becomes an uphill battle, for some, to learn a new language. Also, when new immigrants move to Canada, the first priority for them is to provide for their family and take care of the expenses and a significant number take up any odd job to earn a living which can mean they don’t have the time to learn a new language, MPs said.

“Often times, families are sponsoring elders and grandparents at a very elderly age. It’s very challenging and difficult for them to be at such a high proficiency of English or French. To me, it makes sense for us to [adopt a system] that’s more inclusive,” said Mr. Chen. “It’s helpful to families that need to sponsor, for example, grandparents. Those new Canadians play an important role to look after children to be there and to support the family and, absolutely, it’s something that we will need to revisit and look at.”

Canadian citizens have a significant number of advantages over permanent residents, including the ability to work, participating in the political process by voting and running for political office, having a passport that makes it easy to travel internationally, and having the right to get consular support overseas.

….Liberal MPs Darshan Kang (Calgary Skyview, Alta.) and Sukh Dhaliwal (Surrey-Newton, B.C.) also told The Hill Times that they are in favour of eliminating the language proficiency test as a requirement to apply for Canadian citizenship.

“Why don’t we let those individuals who are part and parcel of this economy, that are part and parcel of building Canada, the Canada we all aspire, why should they be denied a right to participate in our democratic process which is the fundamental difference that Canadians have over many other countries that we have come from,” said Mr. Dhaliwal, who came to Canada as an immigrant from India and whose riding has a 70.2 per cent of visible minority population. Mr. Kang’s riding has a 59.6 per cent of visible minority population.

Mr. Griffith, however, said that language proficiency is a critical element of a new immigrant’s integration and success in a new country. He said that he’s in favour of requiring new immigrants to learn English or French but also said that if new immigrants over the age of 54 are not able to learn either of the languages, this requirement should be waived.

“If you don’t learn English or French, depending on where you are, you’re basically hurting yourself. It means you’re not going to be able to integrate properly, you’re not going to be able to help your kids with school work, and everything like that. If you start to waive the language completely, you’re basically not helping people succeed in the society,” said Mr. Griffith.

Source: McCallum promises ‘radical changes’ to Citizenship Act | hilltimes.com

Filed under Citizenship, Citizenship Act, Language, Revocation Tagged with ,

Liberal MPs put heat on McCallum to address immigration processing ‘mess,’ say lengthy delays ‘unacceptable’

2016/02/02 Leave a comment

Not surprising, the range and nature of complaints (which may have been a factor among visible minority voters during the recent election) but turning this around takes time:

Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship John McCallum has been under intense pressure at recent national caucus meetings from Liberal MPs who want him to address the “mess” in the processing times of immigration applications, which in some cases is taking more than six years for family class applications.

“This is not acceptable. We have to do something about it,” Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal (Surrey-Newton, B.C.) told The Hill Times.

In the last two national caucus meetings—Sunday, Jan. 24 and Wednesday, Jan. 27—about 20 MPs spoke up, in total, in both meetings, Liberal sources told The Hill Times. Liberal MPs told Mr. McCallum (Markham-Thornhill, Ont.) that, up until the last election, Conservatives were to be blamed for the slow processing of applications because they were in power. But Canadians now want to know what the Liberals have done to speed up the processing times in the last three months, according to Liberal sources. During the Jan. 24 caucus meeting, Mr. McCallum and his departmental officials conducted a briefing for MPs about the causes of the delay and introduced them to some departmental resources that can help MPs in serving their constituents on immigration files.

Sources told The Hill Times that Liberal MPs recognize that Mr. McCallum and the Immigration Department is focused on the politically sensitive Syrian refugees file, but they also want swift action on Immigration applications in the regular streams.

During the last election campaign, the Liberals had promised to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of last year, but they missed the deadline and are now aiming to achieve this goal by the end of February. As of last week, about 14,000 have arrived in Canada. Because of the high-profile domestic and international implications of the Syrian refugee file, Mr. McCallum and the Immigration Department have been in the media spotlight for months. The Syrian refugee crisis is considered the biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II and it’s estimated 12 million have been displaced as a result of the civil war in Syria.

Meanwhile, the Immigration application processing times are different for different categories including family class, economic class, refugee and humanitarian and compassionate classes.

In the case of parents and grand parents sponsorship applications, the department is currently processing the ones that were filed on or before Nov. 4, 2011, according to the departmental website. The processing time for spouses or common-law partners living inside Canada is 26 months and for the ones outside of Canada is 17 months.

In the economic class, if an application was filed between 2008 and 2010, the processing time is 67 months while for the ones filed between 2010 and 2014, is 13 months.

Canada takes in about 260,000 immigrants each year in all categories, combined. The statistics were not available for last year, but in 2014, 66,661 received Canadian immigration in the ‘family class’ category, 165,089 in the ‘economic class’ category and 23,286 in the ‘refugee class’ category, according to the departmental website. In 2013, Canada took in a total of 259,023 immigrants including 81,843 in family class, 148,155 in economic immigrant class and 23,831 in refugees class.

In interviews last week, Liberal MPs told The Hill Times that about 60-70 per cent of their constituency work is immigration related and specifically for family class applications.

Mr. Dhaliwal said that Mr. McCallum, who also served in former the Cabinets of prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, has assured MPs that he understands and recognizes the processing of applications and will take steps to speed things up.

“He [Mr. McCallum] has publicly said and he has privately said that he’s going to fix and fix [this issue] once for all. The pressure is on and this is one of the toughest ministries and tasks to handle and John McCallum comes up with a lot of experience behind him. He’s a thoughtful individual and working on this file. We are trying to help him by giving our input and he’s consulting people,” said Mr. Dhaliwal.

Source: Liberal MPs put heat on McCallum to address immigration processing ‘mess,’ say lengthy delays ‘unacceptable’ | hilltimes.com

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Ottawa will seek to settle more Syrians in French communities, says McCallum, Overall settlement challenges

2016/01/20 Leave a comment

Challenge has shifted to bring refugees here to settling them:

Immigration Minister John McCallum says the federal government is looking to settle newly arrived Syrian refugees in more French-speaking communities across the country.

McCallum says more than 90 per cent of refugees that have arrived in Canada speak neither English or French.

That creates what he calls a blank slate for refugees and provinces to teach newly arrived Syrians either of Canada’s two official languages.

McCallum says where refugees end up living will depend on which communities have the resources to resettle the 10,000 that have arrived since November — and 15,000 more that are scheduled to arrive by the end of February.

The Liberals promised during the election campaign to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015.

Once in office, they changed that goal, citing the realities of moving all those people in a short period of time, including inclement weather that didn’t always make flights possible.

The last of the first 10,000 Syrians arrived about a week ago; McCallum says the government will “easily” hit its deadline of bringing a further 15,000 refugees into the country by the end of February.

“We can deliver one, two, three, four, even five flights per day so the challenge is no longer to get the refugees here,” McCallum said.

The new issue facing the government is to resettle those Syrians into Canadian communities, he added.

“The challenge today going forward is to receive them well, to help them find a place to live, a job, language training, all of those things and that involves working with provincial governments and municipalities on the settlement side.”

Further indications of the shifting nature of the challenge:

As Ottawa places thousands of Syrian refugees in hotels and shelters while they hunt for permanent housing, private sponsorship groups are clamouring for families to help.

The disconnect, say critics, is a disservice to the government-assisted families cramped inside the not-so-welcoming temporary accommodation and to the eager community volunteers who have raised the money and have everything ready to receive the newcomers for a new life in Canada.

“The sponsorship group I chair has been ready since mid-December, but there had been no offers. My group is one of 18 affiliated with the Rosedale United Church. No one is getting any referrals,” said former Toronto Mayor John Sewell.

“I suspect there are three or four hundred sponsorship groups in Toronto who are ready to take families, if the government will only refer them to these groups.”

On Tuesday, two cities — Vancouver and Ottawa — said they are halting their reception of government-assisted Syrian refugees as settlement agencies there try to work through housing bottlenecks.

Syrian refugees eligible for resettlement to Canada must first be vetted by the United Nations refugee agency before being referred to Canadian officials abroad and assigned to the three different streams: fully supported by the federal government, private sponsors and the blended class with responsibilities shared between the two.

The government gets the first dip into selecting the eligible refugees recommended by its visa posts and the leftovers are then put into a pool of profiles for the selection of the 100 faith and community groups that hold refugee sponsorship agreements with Ottawa.

Local sponsorship groups that were formed after the Liberal government launched the massive Syrian resettlement plan in November, must partner with the sponsorship agreement holders.

According to Brian Dyck, chair of the Sponsorship Agreement Holders’ Association, some 300 Syrian refugee profiles have been posted since the beginning of January and they were quickly snapped up by his members.

“The matching system was designed for small-scale sponsorship interest. To adapt it to the current public interest is a big challenge,” Dyck explained.

Refugees wait in hotels while sponsorship groups clamour for families to help

Filed under Refugees Tagged with ,

Immigration minister reviewing refugee loan program

2015/11/30 Leave a comment

Interesting – going beyond the mandate letters and platform:

The federal Liberal government will consider reforming a loan program that requires refugees to cover the hefty cost of their flights to Canada, Immigration Minister John McCallum said Friday.

Officials revealed earlier this week that the 25,000 Syrian refugees to enter Canada by February won’t have to pay the cost of their flights and pre-flight medical screening.

While that decision was praised by B.C. opposition MPs and some refugee aid groups, they said the policy should extend to all refugees. They argued that people fleeing persecution already face major challenges finding homes, work and language training, so the last thing they need is to have to service an interest-bearing loan of up to $10,000.

McCallum, in an interview with The Vancouver Sun, said his officials will brief him in coming days on the loans program and present him with options to change it.

“I don’t know what the options are, but I’m telling you this is a policy that we’re certainly considering changing,” he said.

The government’s Immigration Loans Program, created in 1951, provides up to $110 million a year in loans for travel and costs immediately after arrival, like rent deposits and buying work tools. It has a 91-per-cent payback rate.

Refugees can take up to six years to pay, depending on the loan amount, and the interest rate this year was 1.38 per cent. In some cases, loans are interest-free for one to three years, and federal officials will make alternative arrangements if borrowers are having trouble making payments, according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

Source: Immigration minister reviewing refugee loan program

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Canada’s acceptance rate for Syrian refugees around 90 per cent: Ottawa

2015/11/28 Leave a comment

Some useful background data on Syrian-refugee acceptance rates:

Canada has rejected just two UN-referred Syrian refugee cases because of security concerns over the past 22 months.

The two cases represent 13 people, according to Immigration Department figures. That means more than 99 per cent of the 1,128 cases referred to Canada between January, 2014, and Nov. 3, 2015, were not of sufficient concern to be blocked for security reasons. It’s not clear how many were turned down for other reasons. The cases do not include privately sponsored refugees.

Over all, Canada’s acceptance rate for Syrian refugees has been “around 90 per cent,” said Immigration spokeswoman Nancy Caron. The figure includes both United Nations-referred and privately sponsored refugee streams.

The low number of security-related rejections presents a contrast to estimates in the United States, where officials said they expect their admission rate for Syrian refugees will “edge up” above 50 per cent. But it is also an indication of why Canada’s border services agency and the RCMP have expressed confidence in their ability to assess 25,000 refugees over just a few months.

According to a source, plans for the coming wave of government-sponsored Syrian refugees destined for Canada assume an acceptance rate of about 90 per cent. A case can include more than one person, as families tend to apply together.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister John McCallum said in an interview he did not know the current acceptance rate for Syrian refugees, nor could he predict what it might be in the future. When asked about the divergence with U.S. estimates, Mr. McCallum did not have an explanation.

“All I can tell you is we are focused on the most vulnerable. We interview all those applicants with great care. The officials will readily put to one side anyone for whom they have a reasonable suspicion but I cannot tell you what percentage of the people they meet that would be,” Mr. McCallum said.

Source: Canada’s acceptance rate for Syrian refugees around 90 per cent: Ottawa – The Globe and Mail

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Court told to freeze citizenship revocations in terror cases

2015/11/18 Leave a comment

No surprise and consistent with campaign pledge and mandate letters:

The federal government is walking away from a legal battle over attempts to strip Canadian citizenship from dual-nationals convicted of terrorism offences.

Lawyers for the government recently asked the Federal Court to suspend proceedings in two cases brought by Canadians convicted of terrorism-related offences who had been told by the previous Conservative government they would lose their citizenship.

As a respondent in the cases, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship cannot abandon the litigation but, instead, asked for and was granted adjournments while it re-examines a policy that featured prominently in last month’s federal election.

“The Department will work with Minister (John) McCallum on the urgent review of the policy and legislation related to the new citizenship revocation provisions,” media relations adviser Nancy Caron said in an email.

She repeated the line used by then-Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau during a campaign leadership debate, when he argued that Stephen Harper, prime minister at the time, had breached a fundamental principle of citizenship with Bill C-24, which allows the government to rescind the Canadian citizenship of dual nationals convicted of certain serious offences.

“The prime minister has been clear that ‘a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,’ and he doesn’t support the revocation provisions that have a different impact on dual citizens than other Canadians,” said Caron.

In September, former Ottawa radiology technician Misbahuddin Ahmed took the government to court over a July 2015 decision to strip him citizenship.

Ahmed, 31, is currently serving a 12-year sentence in a medium-security federal prison for his role in the planned terrorist attacks foiled by the Project Samosa investigation. If he lost his citizenship, he would have been deported to Pakistan upon his release.

In a Charter challenge, he claimed the attempt to rescind his Canadian citizenship violated his right to safety of the person because he would be deported to a place where he would likely be at risk of mistreatment. He also argued the law offended the principles of justice because the sanction was introduced only after he was convicted.

Now, these issues will not likely be tested in court, as the government is expected to rescind the provisions in C-24 — even as France moves to expand its powers to revoke citizenship from dual nationals.

The Canadian government has also asked for a suspension in a similar case brought by Saad Gaya, a 27-year-old convicted in the “Toronto 18” bomb plot. He is serving an 18-year prison sentence.

Gaya was born in Montreal and had never visited Pakistan, but could be deported there after serving his sentence because, the government had argued, his parents had passed their dual nationality on to him.

Before C-24, Canadian citizenship could be revoked only in cases of fraudulent applications — when a subject had obtained citizenship based on false pretences. The Tories expanded the conditions to include those convicted of terrorism, treason or participation in military action against Canada.

Source: Court told to freeze citizenship revocations in terror cases | Ottawa Citizen

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The niqab ban: 2011-2015 – The new Liberal government officially puts an end to the former Conservative government’s attempt to ban the niqab during the citizenship oath

2015/11/18 1 Comment

RIP:

The niqab’s emergence as an election issue was unexpected and odd, but perhaps fated–a consequence of the Conservative government’s own policy, its determination to defend the policy in court and the whim of the Federal Court of Appeal’s calendar.

Though seemingly popular, the ban on the niqab is now linked with the Conservative government’s defeat. “Voters—including many who supported him—were personally offended by Harper’s blatant effort to exploit the niqab issue as a divisive wedge in the campaign,” Ensight reported after the election. As a result of that defeat, history will record Bill C-75, an attempt to put the ban into law, as the last piece of legislation tabled in the House of Commons by the Conservative government—its tabling coming just hours before the House adjourned for the last time before the election, an entirely symbolic gesture of pre-campaign posturing. Both the sponsor of the bill, Chris Alexander, and the minister who tabled the bill on his behalf, Tim Uppal, were subsequently defeated on October 19.

The Liberal government’s decision to abandon its predecessor’s legal appeal does not seem to have roused much, if any, condemnation from Conservatives.

Source: The niqab ban: 2011-2015 – Macleans.ca

The formal press release:

“On November 16, 2015, the Attorney General of Canada notified the Supreme Court of Canada that it has discontinued its application for leave to appeal in the case of Minister of Citizenship and Immigration v. Ishaq. The Federal Court of Canada found that the policy requiring women who wear the niqab to unveil themselves to take the Oath of Citizenship is unlawful on administrative law grounds, and the Federal Court of Appeal upheld this ruling. The government respects the decision of both courts and will not seek further appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“Canada’s diversity is among its greatest strengths, and today we have ensured that successful citizenship candidates continue to be included in the Canadian family. We are a strong and united country because of, not in spite of, our differences.”

Earlier language by then Minister of Defence (and Multiculturalism) Jason Kenney:

“At that one very public moment of a public declaration of one’s loyalty to one’s fellow citizens and country, one should do so openly, proudly, publicly without one’s face hidden,” Conservative Jason Kenney told reporters in Calgary Wednesday.

“The vast majority of Canadians agree with us and that is why we will be appealing this ruling.” (September 15, 2015)

Source: Statement from the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and the Minister of Justice – Canada News Centre

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Conservative refugee health care cuts were ‘economically foolish,’ John McCallum says

2015/11/10 Leave a comment

New IRC Minister McCallum’s priorities (while he did not discuss citizenship in this article, he has mentioned dropping revocation for dual nationals in other interviews):

The new Liberal government has committed to reverse the cuts. McCallum said that while that change won’t happen overnight, it’s high on the government’s priority list when Parliament resumes on Dec. 3.

“I don’t know if it will be on the parliamentary agenda before Christmas, but what I can tell you is that certain things will happen quickly — in a few months, if not a few weeks. And one of those is refugee health care.”

Also high on McCallum’s priority list is the Liberal plan to speed up processing times for family reunification, as a part of a renewed approach to immigration.

“Probably the biggest commitment in our platform in the medium term … is to bring down those processing times for families,” said McCallum. “We’ve promised to have a new attitude where we welcome newcomers with a smile and not with a scowl.”

In the short-term, McCallum said the most pressing issue for his department is the Liberal commitment to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees in Canada by year’s end.

He said the government is still working toward that target, but is also determined to do proper security and health checks along the way. He said the public service is working “around the clock,” looking at every option to get Syrian refugees to Canada.

Source: Conservative refugee health care cuts were ‘economically foolish,’ John McCallum says | CTV News

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

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