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

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Conservative government’s immigration formula could result in lower immigration, Tory MP says

2024/04/16 Leave a comment

Some insights into their thinking, including comments wanting “real, reasonable objective metrics” related to housing, healthcare and jobs and “I don’t want my government determining which values it supports and which it doesn’t.” But of course, the previous conservative government didn’t move the needle either on foreign credential recognition:

The Conservative party’s plan to tie immigration numbers to available jobs and homes could result in a lower immigration target, an MP says.

Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec said a Conservative government wouldn’t set an arbitrary number, but rather one that takes into account what the country can sustainably accommodate. This could end up lowering immigration, he said.

“Whatever it comes out to, that will be the number,” Kmiec said on The Andrew Lawton Show. “If it’s lower, it’s lower. If it’s higher, it’s higher.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre previously said in an interview that immigration had to be tied to key economic numbers reflecting the labour and housing markets.

Kmiec said that under a Conservative government, those calculations wouldn’t just involve permanent immigration but also temporary resident immigration.

“The problem isn’t the permanent residency ones, those PR numbers are often quoted by individuals. In Canada, about 45% to 55% of those, depending on the year, are people who are actually physically in Canada already,” said Kmiec.

“They are just changing their status from studying, from working here on a temporary work permit and they’re becoming permanent residents of Canada, hopefully, on the pathway to becoming citizens and joining the Canadian family.”

Kmiec said it’s “ridiculous” that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has only recently concluded that Canada’s immigration levels have far outpaced what the country can absorb.

“I guess he doesn’t read any of the briefing notes or documents that come up his way,” Kmiec said.

The Calgary MP pointed out how it was Trudeau himself who appointed the various immigration ministers responsible for the country’s explosive population growth. 

“When he reshuffled his own cabinet, you had this bizarre situation where the previous immigration minister could not let go of his department. He was saying that ‘things are a mess,’ that’s a direct quote and the new minister said ‘things are out of control.’ They’ve been fighting it out in public between the senior immigration minister and the junior immigration minister,” said Kmiec.

“Now the prime minister has weighed in and accused his government of basically failing on the job and that they’re not competent obviously, except he’s the one who appointed everybody. He’s been in charge for almost nine years now and they broke the immigration system. It’s nice of him to recognize that he broke it,” he added. 

When asked if the immigration calculation should be restricted to just economic indicators, instead of factoring in things like Canadian values as well, Kmiec said he was wary of introducing new things that “are not fixed.”

“I don’t want my government determining which values it supports and which it doesn’t and the reason I don’t like it is that for the last nine years, that’s been the Liberal government of Canada,” said Kmiec. 

“I believe things like healthcare, housing jobs, all Canadians can get behind that and be like, ‘yeah, those are real, reasonable objective metrics.’ There’s no subjectivity to them, you either have those services or you don’t.”

According to Kmiec, the immigration debate should be about whether the inputs are correct or not, instead of the number itself, saying, “if you want more immigration, build more housing.” 

It’s a question of changing policies to get more houses built and for cheaper. The same logic should apply to Canada’s healthcare system. 

Kmiec feels policies that don’t allow skilled workers like doctors and nurses who come to work in Canada are the reason for our strained healthcare system. 

“We have over 20,000 internationally trained doctors who cannot practice their profession,” he said. “Same thing for nurses. The country of origin lost a nurse and we didn’t gain a nurse.”

Source: Conservative government’s immigration formula could result in lower immigration, Tory MP says

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Ottawa accused of failing to crack down on unethical immigration consultants

2024/04/15 Leave a comment

Yet another policy fail?

….Earl Blaney, a licensed immigration consultant from London, Ont., said “mass volumes of immigration applications are submitted overseas by unauthorized immigration representatives,” adding that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is well aware of the situation.

In 2019, through an omnibus budget bill, the government gave itself the authority to create a regime of penalties, including fines, to deal with violations by anyone providing advice to people making immigration and citizenship applications.

IRCC, in a parliamentary reply three weeks ago to Senator Don Plett, the Conservative leader in the Senate, said the department had not yet imposed any fines on consultants because “the compliance regime for immigration and citizenship consultants is not yet in force” and “the regulatory authorities to do so do not yet exist.”

Paul Chiang, the parliamentary secretary to Immigration Minister Marc Miller, said in the reply that there had been delays in implementing the regime, partly owing to the pandemic.

The department is currently working with the Department of Justice to draft the regulations, and the regime is expected to be in place between this fall and the winter of 2025, he said.

Mr. Plett accused the government of “incompetence” and said he plans to raise the delay in the Senate next week.

….But Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec said consultants “practising outside the country cannot be reasonably monitored by their college,” which is a problem.

Source: Ottawa accused of failing to crack down on unethical immigration consultants

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Conservative immigration policy should focus on the goal of citizenship: Tory critic

2024/04/13 Leave a comment

Still fairly general but nevertheless interesting and relatively non-controversial. However, the possible transfer of additional immigration powers to Quebec, and further devolution to other provinces such as Alberta, bears watching. Will also be interesting to see how strong a line a Conservative government will take with respect to temporary workers given business community pressures:

Conservative immigration policy should be focused on the ultimate goal of citizenship, the party’s critic on the file said Thursday while moderating a panel in Ottawa.

Tom Kmiec criticized the sharp increase in temporary residents in Canada, as a large number of potential immigrants compete for few permanent resident opportunities. 

“We don’t want people just to come here, work here for a few years, and then leave,” Kmiec said in an interview after the panel at the Canada Strong and Free Network conference.

“You can see the numbers are getting worse and worse and worse.”

The panel members explored politically conservative solutions to Canada’s ballooning population growth, which the Liberal government admits is becoming unsustainable. 

Canada should focus on integrating people into Canada on permanent basis, Kmiec said.

That means moving beyond immigration targets and filling labour gaps to an approach that focuses on making newcomers part of “the Canadian family,” he said.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller promised in March that Ottawa would put a “soft cap” on the number of temporary residents allowed to come to Canada. Those targets are expected to be set in September. 

Miller also levelled out the number of new permanent residents expected to come to Canada in 2026, putting at least a temporary halt to year-after-year increases to immigration levels. 

But the fix will require focusing on the experiences people have when they come to Canada, including reducing massive processing backlogs, Kmiec said. 

“Immigration is not accounting,” he said.

There has not been enough emphasis on citizenship in recent years in Canada, Aaron Wudrick, the director of the the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s domestic policy program, told the panel. 

The system has largely become an economic exercise, he said. 

The Liberals have come under increased scrutiny over the last year for some of the consequences of the rapidly increasing number of temporary residents, including the impact on the availability and affordability of housing. 

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has suggested the possibility of tying immigration levels to new housing starts in response. 

That would likely mean lowering immigration levels, at least temporarily, Wudrick said, but doing so will have consequences.

“A lot of businesses in this country have a difficult time filling low-wage work, the solution has been to import cheap labour,” he said. 

When that low-cost labour is no longer available, prices are likely to go up, he said. 

“There’s not a magic bullet, where we’re just going to cut the numbers and suddenly all these problems are going to go away.”

Quebec Conservative Leader Eric Duhaime, who also appeared on the panel, advocated for giving provinces more control of the immigration in their jurisdictions.

Quebec already sets its own immigration targets, and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has argued her province should have the same power.

The federal Conservative policy on that will likely be part of the party’s next election platform, Kmiec said.

“That’s something being actively debated, I think, within the (conservative) movement more broadly,” he said. 

Source: Conservative immigration policy should focus on the goal of citizenship: Tory critic

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with , ,

Most immigrants with deportation letters are still in Canada, CBSA figures show

2024/02/14 Leave a comment

As Raj Sharma pointed out on X, “Overstay often receive “voluntary departure orders” which are not removal orders and many that receive the former can and have regularized status (in Canada marriage/common law, refugee claim, H&C, etc).” So numbers likely overstated and it would be helpful to have a breakdown between “voluntary” and “mandatory” departure orders:

Most people living in Canada who have been sent deportation letters in the past eight years are still in the country, according to official figures disclosed by the Canada Border Services Agency.

The figures show that 14,609 people were sent letters informing them they are facing deportation between 2016 and May last year.

But 9,317 of those were still living in Canada last year, including 2,188 people sent deportation letters in 2016 and 2017.

Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec, who received the figures in an answer to a parliamentary question he asked last May, said they suggest a lack of enforcement. He said they are a symptom of a “broken immigration system” and are contributing to an erosion in public confidence.

The figures show that 3,087 people – fewer than a quarter of people sent deportation letters since 2016 – have been removed from Canada….

Source: Most immigrants with deportation letters are still in Canada, CBSA figures show

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Record levels of international students straining Canada’s housing supply further

2023/08/12 Leave a comment

Not much new but confirms problems. Bit rich of Universities Canada to state that “Solving the housing crisis will require collaboration among all levels of government…” while ignoring the complicity of universities in increasing demand:

Record numbers of international students coming to Canada is making the already inflated cost of housing worse, said Steve Pomeroy, a policy research consultant and senior research fellow at Carleton University’s centre for urban research.

The biggest strain on Canada’s housing market, he said, isn’t only the rising rate of permanent residents, with more than 400,000 permanent residents in 2022, and the Liberal government determined to hit 500,000 a year in the next couple of years. Those coming here seeking temporary residence, either temporary foreign workers or international students, are fuelling rental price increases.

“Temporary foreign workers and students are going to be renters, as opposed to owners,” he said.

Average rents nationally jumped more than 10 per cent last year and are expected to rise again this year, although rents in hotter markets, such as Toronto and Vancouver, are up significantly more.

Data released earlier this year by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) show 807,750 international students with valid student visas studying at Canadian post-secondary institutions as of the end of 2022. At 30-per-cent higher than the 617,315 students in 2021, it’s now at the highest level it’s ever been.

With the exception of 2020, where numbers were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s complement of international students historically saw between six to nine per cent growth annually.

Pomeroy said universities are driving the numbers as a way to generate more revenue, because they can charge international students much higher tuitions.

“In Ontario, university tuition fees are frozen, grants are frozen, but the only variable that universities have to generate new revenues is international students, so they naturally go and chase those,” he said.

More visiting students, he said, create inordinate demand at the very bottom of the rental market, where there’s already a tight market for low-income workers, fixed-income seniors and those who rely on social assistance.

Benjie Rustia, an official with an international immigration and study agency located near the Philippine capital of Manila, said his international-student clients know that coming here means fighting a tight entry-level rental market.

“They are well informed by their relatives or friends in Canada,” he told the National Post.

“Making informed decisions is the basic aspect for the process for international students, and are based on thorough research and understanding.”

Late last month, news of an international student from India found living under an east Toronto bridge brought attention to the problem, and highlighted concerns from advocates that Canada’s affordability crisis is rendering increasing numbers of foreign students homeless.

Most international students coming to Canada flock to Ontario, which in 2022 saw over 411,000 foreign students enrolled in the province’s post-secondary institutions.

British Columbia ranked second with 164,000 students last year, followed by Quebec with 93,000, Alberta with 43,000 and Manitoba with 22,000.

While India’s 319,130 international students rank as Canada’s biggest cohort, followed by China with 100,075, the Philippines is seeing big bumps in the number of their students coming here.

Canada issued 25,295 study permits to Filipino students to study here in 2022, a 76-per-cent increase from the 14,355 visas issued to students from that country in 2021.

As of June 2023, 11,400 permits were issued to students from the Philippines.

Rustia said his clients typically search for schools that offer on-campus residence living or look for schools near where they can stay with friends and relatives already in the area.

News reports on Wednesday described long wait-lists for on-campus housing at Calgary universities, with 740 students waiting for housing at the University of Calgary, and the city’s Mount Royal University establishing a waiting list for their 950 dorm rooms for the first time in the school’s history.

Solving this problem, Pomeroy said, could be done by striking partnerships between schools, governments and developers.

“If the government was smart, it would say ‘OK, we’re causing the problem by giving out these visas to international students, how can we solve this problem,’” he said.

“Let’s work with the universities, let’s work with the private developers for some incentives and stimulus.”

He suggested using existing programs, such as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s rental construction financing initiative — which provides low-cost loans to encourage rental apartment projects — to encourage student-centred rental construction to keep the pressure of local residential rental markets.

“You can wait until folks get displaced and they’re in the homeless shelter and we intervene and provide supportive housing and wraparound services to help them get out of shelters at significantly high cost, or we could build 1,000 units of student housing with no cost to government,” Pomeroy said.

A statement to the National Post from Universities Canada, a post-secondary institution lobby group, agreed the federal government should be doing more to address the issue.

“Solving the housing crisis will require collaboration among all levels of government, and universities remain willing partners in these efforts,” wrote interim president Philip Landon.

“Universities Canada urges the federal government to meet its commitments, as set out in the National Housing Strategy, to reduce homelessness, construct new homes and provide Canadians with access to affordable housing that meets their needs.”

Canada’s universities, he wrote, are doing more to approve and build more on-campus housing, as well as provide resources to help students access off-campus living space, as well as developing “innovative housing models” to relieve local rental market pressures.

Emails to Immigration Minister Marc Miller went unacknowledged.

Tom Kmiec, the Conservative party’s immigration and citizenship critic, said that the current government’s housing and immigration policies are leaving newcomers on the streets.

“More homes were being built in 1972 when Canada’s population was half of what it is today,” he said in a statement.

“The Liberal government has failed to deliver on their housing promises and failed to come anywhere close to building the number of houses we need, leaving Canada short millions of homes and Canadians struggling to afford a place to live.”

Source: Record levels of international students straining Canada’s housing supply further

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Why Canada’s ‘citizenship on a click’ is proving controversial

2023/07/17 Leave a comment

Star coverage of the petition opposing self-administration of the citizenship oath:

Andrew Griffith says he used to drop by a citizenship ceremony whenever he felt depressed or frustrated at work.

The former director general at the federal immigration department says seeing new citizens walking the stage, being greeted by a uniformed RCMP officer and congratulated by a citizenship judge, reminded him of the importance of his work at the citizenship and multiculturalism branch.

“This is the one time that you actually get recognition for all that hard work and all that patience. Most people remember their citizenship ceremony,” he said.

“It’s like graduating from high school or university or other such moments. I think it really helps people have a sense of belonging and attachment to Canada.”

It’s why Griffith says he finds it troubling that the federal government is going to allow new citizens to take their citizenship oath online and on their own with a click on the keyboard rather than having to declare their loyalty to Canada before a citizenship judge.

In February, the federal government published the proposed change in the Canada Gazette. It is part of the modernization and digitalization of immigration processing in this country.

It said the online self-administration of the oath is expected to reduce the current citizenship processing time by three months and make it more accessible, because ceremonies are currently scheduled mainly on weekdays during working hours. According to the immigration department website, there are currently 308,000 citizenship applications in the system and the processing time stands at 19 months.

A chorus of prominent Canadian leaders, including former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, former Liberal immigration minister Sergio Marchi and former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi have voiced their opposition to the plan.

It has also prompted Griffith to start a petition to the Parliament, sponsored by Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec, demanding the government abandon the proposed change permitting what he calls “citizenship on a click.”

“There’s something meaningful about becoming a citizen. Citizenship is more than just sort of the paper process of having a Canadian passport and all the rights and responsibilities of Canadians,” he said. “It actually matters to the country. It matters to social inclusion, and I think it matters to all immigrants.”

During the pandemic, citizenship processing time doubled from the prior 12-month service standard. Officials brought in virtual citizenship ceremonies as of April 2020.

Since then, more than 15,290 of the ceremonies have been held online in front of an authorized official, generally a citizenship judge.

Kmiec, MP for the Calgary Shepard riding, said the government is trying to eliminate the backlog, but doing it at all costs.

“You click a button and you click your terms of reference the way you do it on your iPhone or on your Samsung. There’ll be no application that would be delayed, right? That’s why they’re doing it,” said Kmiec, who came to Canada from Poland with his family in 1985 and became a Canadian citizen in 1989.

“Why should these new citizens who pass their test and have all the time be robbed of having a special symbolic ceremony that’s required under the Citizenship Act?”

If the goal of the change is really to improve flexibility and accessibility for new citizens, Kmiec said, immigration officials should consider holding more citizenship ceremonies after hours or on weekends. An in-person ceremony should be made the default option, and virtual ceremonies are used only as a last resort, he added.

“You only get to swear an oath once in your life to Canada. That should be done in person. It should be a special ceremony. The government should honour you in this way,” said Kmiec. “I’ve never had anyone complain to me that they had to appear at a citizenship ceremony to become a citizen of Canada. Never.”

More than 700 comments were left on the notice of the citizenship change published in the Canada Gazette during the consultation period that ended in March.

Jenny Kwan, immigration critic for the NDP, says she, too, recognizes the significance of the in-person ceremonies but said people should have the option to do it online and that the proposed change would strike a balance.

An immigrant from Hong Kong, Kwan came to Canada with her family in the 1970s when she was nine. While she recalled the family’s excitement at their citizenship ceremony, she also saw the stresses her working-class parents experienced to make it to the event.

“They had to take time off work and we were a low-income family. For them to have missed work, it meant that they lost a day of income. And for a family of eight who’s struggling to survive, and for my parents to put food on the table, that was a big deal,” said Kwan, whose mother worked as a dishwasher and father did multiple part-time shift jobs to support the family.

“In offering alternatives for people to have their citizenship oath taken, I think this is an important consideration. I think that should be offered for new Canadians so that they can choose what is the best option for them.”

However, both Griffith and Kmiec say they fear many new citizens would simply opt for the self-attestation option given the convenience to do so.

“Of course, that’s the easiest thing to do. If they told you you’re going to have to wait maybe a few weeks and we’ll send you a paper copy, before you accept it, you’d say, ‘No, give me the digital,’” said Kmiec.

“You’re not going to pay much attention to it. You’ll just click the button and you’ll carry on.”

The online petition is open until Oct. 10 and must collect at least 500 signatures during that period. The Clerk of Petition would then validate the signatures and issue a certificate so it can be presented in the House. The government must then respond to the demand within 45 days.

“Depending on the quality of the response, I’m going to follow up with the minister. I’m not going to let this go,” Kmiec said.

Source: Why Canada’s ‘citizenship on a click’ is proving controversial

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , , , ,

Citizenship oath at the click of a mouse would cheapen tradition, Tory critic

2023/03/20 Leave a comment

Nice to see the opposition raising the issue as this change requires a political discussion. Sent my Canada Gazette submission to both the Conservatives and NDP, with no reaction from the NDP to date.

Hard to take Minister Fraser’s assertion that “they will still have an opportunity to participate in an IRCC-organized citizenship ceremony shortly after they complete their citizenship” seriously when the main rationale is to reduce the number of ceremonies to save a minuscule portion of the cost of the citizenship program. The inclusion arguments are more of a smokescreen than substantive.

Clearly Minister Fraser doesn’t understand and appreciate how powerful the ceremonies are to new Canadians (and many existing Canadians) in terms of meaningfulness and sense of belongin:

The Conservative immigration critic says a proposal to allow people to become a Canadian citizen with the click of a mouse “cheapens” an otherwise special moment for newcomers.

“Citizenship by click is not citizenship,” said Calgary MP Tom Kmiec.

“They’re really cheapening citizenship purely for political motivation, to reduce their backlogs.”

The federal government is seeking feedback on a plan to let people take the Oath of Citizenship online, rather than attend an officiated ceremony.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser first floated the idea in January 2022 as a way to speed up processing times, which would have someone “self-administer a digital oath by signed attestation, and celebrate their citizenship at a later date.”

Yet the proposal published in the Canada Gazette late last month would instead allow someone to skip the ceremony entirely.

Fraser did not specify why the proposal had changed, nor who came up with the idea. But he said COVID-19 created a backlog that even virtual ceremonies can’t quickly clear.

“For those people who choose to do an online self-attestation, they will still have an opportunity to participate in an IRCC-organized citizenship ceremony shortly after they complete their citizenship,” Fraser said on Friday, in his first public comments on the proposed regulatory change.

Fraser added that those who have waited years for citizenship would be able to take their oath faster under that process, and he rejected claims it would cheapen the moment.

Kmiec said the ceremonies are a big deal for people like him who were not born Canadian. Kmiec, who immigrated from Poland, still recalls taking his oath in 1989, and said the tradition shouldn’t be diminished as a way to deal with an administrative backlog.

“These are very low-cost events; these are mostly retired civil servants, serving judges and ex-judges who do the actual ceremony,” he said.

“The way they’ve done this tells me that they’re embarrassed by it, because I’d be embarrassed by it too.”

Kmiec argued the backlog stems from Liberal incompetence in administering programs, rather than the pandemic. He is also critical of the lag after newcomers they take the oath, at which point they relinquish their permanent-residence card and await their citizenship certificate in the mail, which can be used to apply for a passport.

“There are some process changes they could do to actually make people’s lives easier,” he said.

In any case, Canada’s former director-general of citizenship and multiculturalism, Andrew Griffith, said the department should have issued a press release about the proposed change instead of “trying to slip it by.”

Griffith retired after a career with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and Canada’s foreign service, and said the phrasing in the regulatory proposal and the lack of public-opinion research suggests it’s aimed at reducing costs rather than making things more convenient for applicants.

“It’s driven by the desire to reduce, if not eliminate, ceremonies, virtual or physical. And it’s pretty explicit,” he said.

“One gets the impression as a former bureaucrat that maybe the officials who had to draft the stuff weren’t really that keen.”

Griffith noted that the 1946 Citizenship Act explicitly called for ceremonies that instil the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship, as Canada carved out an identity separate from Britain following the Second World War.

“It’s really an abuse of the process, because it goes against the grain of what the Citizenship Act was designed to do,” he argued. “It really goes against one of the fundamental objectives of citizenship.”

The comment period on the proposed change closes on March 27.

If approved, the changes to the citizenship regulations would come into effect at early as June, at a cost of about $5 million.

Source: Citizenship oath at the click of a mouse would cheapen tradition …,

Un serment de citoyenneté en ligne déprécierait le rituel, soutient l’opposition

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , , , ,