Courts unlikely to provide fifth extension to Ottawa to address Lost Canadians before November, says immigration lawyer

2025/07/15 Leave a comment

Extension unlikely to be needed as adequate time in fall session. Government should improve C-3 by adding a time limit of five-years to meet the 1,095 day physical presence requirement, not the current open ended provision (the Don Chapman specific airline pilot example in contrast to the vast majority of likely applicants):

Parliament needs to “just get on with it” and address the issue of “lost Canadians” through amendments to the Canada Citizenship Act, according to Jenny Kwan, NDP critic of citizenship and immigration.

She told The Hill Times that she wonders if a judge would have the patience to grant the federal government a fifth extension on a court order requiring action before the current November deadline.

“This is astounding. What the current situation is right now is that Canada’s Citizenship Act,
with respect to lost Canadians, is in violation of the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms], and [Bill
C-3] will make it Charter-compliant,” said Kwan (VancouverEast, B.C.).

“I don’t know how much patience [the judge] will have to continue to see delays in the
passage of the bill to make it Charter-compliant.”

Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab (Halifax West, N.S.) tabled Bill C-3, an Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025), in the House on June 5. The House rose for the summer on June 20, pausing the bill’s progress until Sept. 15, when the next parliamentary sitting begins.

If passed, the bill would reverse a change to the Citizenship Act made by then-Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper in 2009 that introduced a “first-generation limit” when it came to citizenship status. Since that 2009 amendment, a Canadian citizen who was born outside of Canada cannot pass citizenship status on to their child if that child was also born or adopted outside the country.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice declared in December 2023, that the first-generation limit was unconstitutional on the grounds that it unjustifiably limited mobility and equality rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. At that time, the Court gave the federal government a deadline of six months to fix the law through legislation. This deadline was later extended on four occasions, with the current deadline set as Nov. 20, 2025.

Kwan described Bill C-3 as “a significant piece of legislation that needs to be done,” in an interview with The Hill Times. The bill is nearly identical to the former Bill C-71, which was introduced in May 2024, but died on the order paper when Parliament was prorogued on Jan. 6, 2025.

Kwan argued that a Conservative filibuster in the fall sitting that delayed progress in the House contributed to death of Bill C-71. “Basically, nothing got through, and [Bill C-71] also died on the order paper. So, in this round, it will depend on whether or not the Conservatives will continue to play political games ahead of lost Canadians,” said Kwan.

The Hill Times reached out to Conservative MPs including citizenship and immigration critic
Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill, Alta.) and Brad Redekopp (Saskatoon West, Sask.), a member of the House citizenship committee, but did not receive a response by deadline.

Bill C-3 would amend the Citizenship Act to automatically grant Canadian citizenship to anyone who would be a citizen today were it not for the first-generation limit. The bill would also introduce a “substantial connection test” for Canadian citizens born outside of Canada who wish to pass on citizenship to their children born abroad. Going forward, the bill would allow access to citizenship beyond the first generation, so long as the parent has spent at least 1,095 cumulative—not necessarily consecutive—days in Canada prior to the birth of their child.

Redekopp told the House on June 19 that Conservatives have significant issues with Bill C-3, and criticized the substantial connection test of 1,095 non-consecutive days as “not substantial at all.”

“It is a very weak way to commit to being a Canadian citizen and then to confer that citizenship onto children. It is not a real test of commitment because the days do not have to be consecutive,” Redekopp told the House. “Also, people need to understand the current situation in our country. They need to live here to understand how things are and some of the issues we have right now in our country … People do not know that if they are living in another country.”

Kwan argued that objections to the non-consecutive 1,095-day minimum don’t make sense.

“Take, for example, a person who’s a pilot, right? You travel all the time. You could be a seond-generation born and you’re a pilot. You fly out of Canada regularly as a pilot, and then that means you’re leaving Canada all the time. So, does that mean to say that they can never get a Canadian citizenship? That doesn’t make any sense at all,” she said.

“You have to recognize the fact that we live in a global society now. Canada is a global country, and people move. You have to make sure that is addressed in such a way that fits the times of today.”…

Source: Courts unlikely to provide fifth extension to Ottawa to address Lost Canadians before November, says immigration lawyer

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Critic calls out border bill’s proposed new cabinet powers on immigration

2025/06/07 1 Comment

As expected. Suspect that the over-reach of the Bill with respect to civil liberties will over shadow concerns of immigration and refugee advocates:

An NDP critic says a provision in the federal government’s border security bill that would give cabinet the power to cancel immigration documents looks like an attempt to “mimic” measures deployed by the Trump administration in the U.S.

“It seems to me … this piece of legislation is Canada’s attempt to mimic some of those measures that the United States is adopting. I actually never thought that this day would come where Canada would go down that road,” B.C. NDP MP Jenny Kwan told The Canadian Press.

“However, it is here, and meanwhile the government is saying, ‘Don’t worry, trust us.’”

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said that the immigration minister would only be able to exercise the power to cancel, suspend or alter immigration documents in an “emergency” and after being granted the authority through an order-in-council.

“The tools are in place to ensure the minister of immigration has additional tools to ensure that in a modern era, for example, whether it’s a pandemic or issues around cybersecurity, she will have the tools to make those decisions,” Anandasangaree said during debate on the bill Thursday.

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner said the legislation contains several “poison pills” that threaten people’s civil liberties. 

This includes the ability for Canadian Security Intelligence Service and police to access customer information from online service providers in certain circumstances.

“The government has not shown Canadians any specific situation, any specific evidence or circumstance in granular detail about why we should be giving up our civil liberties to a government that unlawfully used the Emergencies Act,” Rempel Garner said during Thursday’s debate.

This is in reference to to a 2024 Federal Court ruling that found the government’s use of the Emergencies Act was unreasonable to breakup the 2022 “Freedom Convoy” protests against COVID-19 public health measures.

The government has appealed this ruling. 

Bloc Québécois MP Claude DeBellefeuille said that her party plans to support the bill at second reading so it can be studied by the public safety committee.

Speaking in French, she said the bill needs to be examined closely because it looks to give new powers to government ministers, law enforcement and even Canada Post.

Immigration Minister Lena Diab said Wednesday the legislation is designed to address “one-off” situations like a pandemic or some other “exceptional circumstance.”

“I think people, Canadians should feel safe that we are putting in all these safeguards, but again, as I said, it’s all part of protecting our country and protecting our system that we value and protecting people that come here because we want to ensure that they are successful as well,” Diab said.

Bill C-2 also proposes giving the immigration minister the power to pause the acceptance of new immigration applications and cancel or pause processing of the current inventory of applications in the event of an emergency.

Julia Sande, a human rights lawyer with Amnesty International Canada, said immigration applicants could lose a lot of money because the legislation doesn’t oblige the government to refund affected people.

“People give up their entire lives, in some cases, their life savings or their family’s life savings. People go into debt just to be able to come here,” she said. “And so to have the government be able to pull the rug out from under wide groups of people is concerning.”

Kwan said the proposed new powers are problematic because cabinet decisions are made in secret and there’s no firm definition of an “emergency” in the legislation.

“I don’t accept that the Liberals say, ‘Don’t worry, we’re the good guys, so trust us.’ I’m sorry, that is just not acceptable,” she said, adding there’s no way to know what a future government might do with this power.

The text of the legislation says that if the minister “is of the opinion that it is in the public interest to do so,” they may trigger the power to cancel, suspend or alter immigration documents through a cabinet order.

“They’re saying in an emergency, but that’s not what’s written. They said if they’re in the opinion that it’s in the public interest … that could really be anything,” Sande said.

“In the fall, we saw migrants and refugees being scapegoated for the housing crisis. And so, you know, what’s in the public interest?”

Last year, then-immigration minister Marc Miller said plans to reduce the number of permanent and temporary visas issued would help stabilize the housing market.

U.S. President Donald Trump has used national security as justification for a host of immigration measures that involve detaining and deporting people, including university students who have condemned the war in Gaza.

Sande said the proposed bill “attacks” the right to seek asylum by making it harder for migrants to make a claim if they are entering Canada from the U.S., or have been in the country for more than a year.

“They’re talking about fentanyl, they’re talking about guns and then all of a sudden they’re attacking the right to asylum,” Sande said.

“They are completely different things and it’s difficult for civil society, for experts to respond when there’s so many things going on.”

Source: Critic calls out border bill’s proposed new cabinet powers on immigration

Filed under C-3, Citizenship Tagged with , , , , ,

‘An ordeal that doesn’t end’: Lost Canadians’ citizenship at risk with Parliament suspended

2025/01/14 Leave a comment

More on C-71 and impact of prorogation:

Shortly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suspended Parliament on Monday, Carol Sutherland-Brown’s phone started ringing.

The calls were coming from other people whose families have been caught up in the longstanding “lost Canadians” fiasco and are concerned about the fate of the highly anticipated citizenship reforms proposed in Bill C-71.

The Ottawa grandmother and others have been fighting to reclaim the citizenship rights taken away from their families under Canada’s current second-generation cut-off rule, which denies automatic citizenship to children born abroad because their parents also happened to be born overseas.

More than a year ago, an Ontario court found the law unconstitutional and gave the federal government six months to change it to make it Charter-compliant. The Liberal government introduced Bill C-71 to fix the problem, but the deadline has already been extended three times, to March 19.

This legislation would automatically confer Canadian citizenship on people born abroad before the changes are enacted to a Canadian parent who was also born abroad. Anyone born outside the country subsequently would need to prove their foreign-born Canadian parent had a “substantial connection” with Canada by meeting a residency requirement.

With the prorogation of Parliament until March 24, the bill has now died on the order paper, and a new one would have to be tabled when the House returns. It would be subject to the legislative process from scratch again.

The lost Canadians’ families fear that if a confidence vote follows, as expected, it will topple the Liberals and usher in a Conservative government. It was a Conservative government that brought in the second-generation citizenship cut-off in 2009 to begin with.

“This has been an ordeal for me and for the other families, an ordeal that doesn’t end,” said Sutherland-Brown. Her daughter was born in Saudi Arabia, and two grandchildren were born in the U.K. As a result, the grandchildren lost their Canadian citizenship rights by descent. “We don’t know what a new government will do.”

Lawyer Sujit Choudhry, who represented lost Canadians in the successful court challenge, said the government has two options: to go before the court for another extension or let the citizenship law be declared unconstitutional.

However, both are problematic.

While there have been similar precedents where the government was granted extensions to comply with court orders, he said the requests were made because Parliament was dissolved and an election was called, and not due to prorogation.

“The question in March will be whether this is the time for this to come to an end , or whether, given the unique political circumstances, some more time should be given,” said Choudhry. “What will the government say in court? Well, they’d say a dissolution is imminent, but it hasn’t happened yet.” 

If Ottawa lets the deadline lapse and the two-generation cut-off is thus voided, affected lost Canadians could just come reclaim their citizenship. If the court cuts the government some slack and grants another extension in light of the circumstances, the uncertainty will continue.

“During that extension period, we could very well be in an election, in which case, no bills could be passed,” said MP Jenny Kwan, immigration critic of the opposition NDP, and a staunch supporter of the bill.

“After the election, whoever forms government would have to take further actions to be compliant with the court decision. We have to remember that it was the Conservatives who brought in this unconstitutional provision 15 years ago.”

In 2009, the then-Conservative government changed the citizenship law and imposed the second-generation cut-off on Canadians born abroad, after Ottawa had faced a massive effort to evacuate 15,000 Lebanese Canadians stranded in Beirut during Israel’s month-long war against Hezbollah in 2006.

The $85-million price tag of the evacuation effort sparked a debate over “Canadians of convenience.” The government abolished the existing “substantial connection” regime and adopted a blanket rule that denies the first generation born abroad the right to pass on citizenship by descent outside Canada to the second generation born abroad. 

Tunisian-born Majda Dabaghi, whose two children were born in France and hence can’t be Canadian citizens by descent, is concerned about a Conservative return to power given the party’s efforts to block C-71 and a similar bill previously. (The Conservative party didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

The cut-off rule “was a racist response to the evacuation of dual nationals out of Lebanon,” said Dabaghi, who has continued to vote in Canadian elections after she left Canada in 2007 for a job in international law in the U.K. 

“They have done everything humanly possible to filibuster the passing of the legislation, both in the form of Bill C-71 and earlier in the form of Bill S-245. They have put their own politics and political gamesmanship above sound policy, people’s lives and our Constitution.”

Calling Bill C-71 “a crucial piece of legislation,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller also blamed the Conservatives for stalling it. While his office would not say if the government will request that the court grant another extension, it said “Minister Miller is confident that a Liberal government would reintroduce this important bill to the House once resumed.”

Although Christina Matula’s two children — born in England and Hong Kong — are Canadian citizens, she said she’s fighting for their rights to explore the world and work abroad without having to worry about where to start a family.

And she said both the Liberals and Conservatives are at fault because the former also failed to prioritize and expedite the introduction and passing of the bill despite the court order in December 2023.

Her children, now 17 and 14, have attended Canadian international schools, participated in Terry Fox runs and visited family in Canada every summer and Christmas, said Matula, whose family now lives in Finland.

“My children are Canadian by descent and have strong ties to Canada,” she said “I want them to have clear and fair criteria to prove their connection to Canada, so they can have the same rights as Canadian-born and naturalized citizens.”

Source: ‘An ordeal that doesn’t end’: Lost Canadians’ citizenship at risk with Parliament suspended

Filed under C-71, Citizenship Tagged with ,

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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Liberals, NDP urge Conservatives not to stall citizenship rights for ‘lost Canadians’

2023/11/16 Leave a comment

The original bill, S-245, focused on the narrow remaining group and small number of “lost Canadians”, born between 1977 and 1981 who failed to reaffirm their citizenship by the age of 28.

The NDP and Liberals abused the regular process by expanding to the scope to essentially gut the first generation cut-off, without the committee being able to go through the normal review process for effectively was a new bill, with far vaster implications for citizenship given the larger number of people affected.

The Conservatives are right to engage in delaying tactics on process as well as substantive grounds given that the government and the NDP initiated “playing political games” by using this backdoor shortcut:

But the NDP’s immigration critic Jenny Kwan accused the Conservatives of stalling its progress and “playing petty political games,” including filibustering debate at committee, to reduce its chances of becoming law.

She accused the sponsor of the Senate bill in the Commons, Conservative MP Jasraj Singh Hallan, of slowing the bill’s passage in the House by twice switching its scheduled third reading debate with another bill. Mr. Hallan and Tom Kmiec, the Conservative immigration critic, would not comment.

“Canada needs to fix the lost Canadians issue once and for all. The Conservatives were wrong to strip the right of parents to pass on their Canadian citizenship to their second-generation-born-abroad children 14 years ago,” she said. “In the case of William and Jack Cowling, it means they do not have the legal status to work in Canada and the family farm that has been in their family for six generations is now in jeopardy.”

Source: Liberals, NDP urge Conservatives not to stall citizenship rights for ‘lost Canadians’

Filed under Citizenship, Citizenship Act Tagged with , , ,

‘Culling’ bad actors capitalizing on tuition fees more effective than capping student visas in bid to fix housing crisis: immigration lawyer

2023/08/31 Leave a comment

Good long read. Insights from Nanos particularly of interest as well as suggestions by immigration lawyer Betsy Kane, albeit hard to implement given the various interests involved:

As politicians trade shots over who is to blame for Canada’s housing crisis, immigration lawyer Betsy Kane says “the finger-pointing” should be aimed at the schools actively recruiting “anyone and everyone who has the money to get here” without ensuring an adequate supply of student housing. Rather than capping the number of student visas, she says the government should instead tighten the criteria under which institutions are permitted to host them.  

However, NDP housing and immigration critic Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.) says a cap would simply be more of the Liberals “tinkering around the edges” of the housing crisis, and “if they want to point fingers, they should look at themselves in the mirror,” and admit that their current housing strategy is, at best, inefficient, and, at worst, a failure.

On Aug. 21, during the Liberals’ cabinet retreat in Prince Edward Island, Housing Minister Sean Fraser (Central Nova, N.S.) suggested the federal government may need to consider a cap on its international student program, which has seen “explosive growth” since the Liberals took office in 2015. 

Currently, there are more than 807,000 international students with study permits in Canada, up from 352,330 in 2015.

“There are good private institutions out there, and separating the wheat from the chaff is going to be a big focus of the work that I try to do with [Immigration Minister Marc] Miller,” Fraser said, adding that “when you see some of these institutions that have five, six times as many students enrolled as they have spaces for them in the building … you’ve got to start to ask yourself some pretty tough questions.”

In an interview with CBC’s The House later that week, Immigration Minister Marc Miller (Ville-Marie–Le Sud-Ouest–Île-des-Soeurs, Que.) said Canada is on track to host around 900,000 international students this year, and while he did not commit to Fraser’s suggestion, he said a cap was not “the only solution to this.” 

Miller also cast blame on a number of “illegitimate actors” exploiting the system, and while he declined to “name and shame,” he said many of those actors were within the private market.

While Fraser cautioned against blaming newcomers for “housing challenges that have been several decades in the making,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre (Carleton, Ont.) accused the Liberals of doing just that.

“[Prime Minister Justin Trudeau] thinks if you’re afraid of your neighbours, you might forget that you can’t pay your rent. This is what demagogues do,” Poilievre said at an Aug. 23 press conference on Parliament Hill. “He wants Canadians to forget all that and blame immigrants. He wants to divide people to distract from his failings.”

Kane, vice-president of government relations with the Canadian Immigration Lawyer Association, told The Hill Times it was “a bit unfair” to blame the high number of international students for putting pressure on the housing market.

“What we’re seeing is the result of colleges and universities leveraging the International Student Program in order to capitalize on the tuition that they’re able to charge,” Kane said. “As Minister Fraser said, we need to cut ‘the wheat from the chaff’ and figure out which institutions aren’t attempting to deliver high-quality education but rather to capitalize on the higher tuition fees.”

Kane said the government could reduce the number of students in other ways, including narrowing the eligibility or designating so-called “trusted educational institutions” that can demonstrate they are delivering programming that can translate to valuable labour market skills and job opportunities.

“By culling the number of institutions and increasing the financial wherewithal students must demonstrate to qualify, you’re in essence capping the number without capping all international students,” Kane explained, adding that the government could also look to tighten further the criteria for which programs of study are eligible to receive applications by international students.

“We don’t necessarily need more international graduates with a one- or two-year business administration diploma,” Kane said. “But we do need graduates in the trades and transportation.”

Additionally, Kane said those institutions should have a greater responsibility to ensure that there is sufficient housing to accommodate students, pointing to similar responsibilities imposed on employers looking to bring in temporary foreign workers. 

Kane also noted that a cap on international students and the Liberals’ targets for new permanent residents were “two different sides of the [immigration] coin.”

“There’s always a risk of a backlash to any type of newcomer … but many of the cohort of individuals being selected as permanent residents are already here as workers and students who can demonstrate that their education, language skills, and work experience will translate into helping our economy,” Kane explained. “So what the government is saying is that in favour of letting us achieve our overall permanent immigration goals, we may have to limit the intake of our temporary residents.”

‘Collision’ between increased immigration and housing market stress ‘a major risk’ for Liberals, says pollster Nanos

While a plurality of Canadians have historically supported greater immigration, Nik Nanos, CEO and chief data scientist for Nanos Research, said that a recent survey conducted by Nanos between July 30 and Aug. 3 for Bloomberg News suggests a majority of Canadians believe increasing the annual immigration targets from 465,000 in 2023 to 500,000 by 2025 would have a negative (42 per cent) or somewhat negative (26 per cent) impact on housing prices. Only one in five believe it will have a positive (eight per cent) or somewhat positive impact (12 per cent).

“Canadians are not against immigration, but they do understand that when you bring over [400,000] to 500,000 new people into the country every year, they have to live someplace,” Nanos told The Hill Times, comparing the immigration targets to adding the population of cities like Kitchener, Ont., every year.

“These are pretty significant numbers,” Nanos continued, adding that the average Canadian doesn’t need to be an expert on immigration or housing to know that those newcomers are going to put more pressure on the market.

According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Canada needs to build 5.8 million new homes by 2030 to tackle housing affordability. The current pace of building puts the country on track to construct just 2.3 million homes by then.

“I think the collision of increasing the number of immigrants and the stress on housing is a major risk for the Liberals,” Nanos said, adding that the Liberals are primarily responsible for putting the two issues on their current path.

“The Liberals created this policy, so they have to take responsibility for the repercussions in terms of pressure on housing and other social welfare programs,” Nanos continued. “They need to work with the provinces and municipalities in order for this policy of bringing in more newcomers to work well and to have the least amount of disruption.”

‘Pointing fingers’ at newcomers, students no substitute for effective housing strategy, says NDP MP Kwan

Kwan called the apparent “change in tune” from Fraser since being sworn in “disconcerting.” While speaking to reporters outside Rideau Hall on July 26, Fraser “[urged] caution to anyone who believes the answer to our housing challenges is to close the door on newcomers.” Kwan said that trying to divert blame to any one group in need of housing is not the solution. 

“The problem is not new people; the problem is the government and a lack of programs and measures that need to be in place to provide housing to both Canadians and newcomers alike,” Kwan said. “Unless [the Liberals] face the music and admit what they are doing is deficient, and in some cases a complete failure, we’re going to keep having this problem.”

However, it is not just the current Liberal government that Kwan says bears responsibility for the current housing crisis, pointing to the actions of consecutive governments of both stripes in the early 1990s—first the Progressive Conservative government under Brian Mulroney and then Jean Chrétien’s Liberals—who began reducing spending on housing, and cut the federal co-operative housing program before eventually pulling the plug on building any new affordable housing units entirely.

Rather than capping the number of international students admitted into the country every year, Kwan said the government should require universities and colleges to provide affordable student housing.

“We know that international students pay exorbitant fees to apply and then pay a significant amount more in tuition fees,” Kwan said, noting the schools had come to rely on that source of income due to a lack of sufficient funding from the provinces.

Kwan said the federal government should play an equal partner with the provinces and schools in funding those student accommodations, and also suggested the Liberals could tie the number of permits an institution could receive to the number of homes they can actually provide.

However, Kwan said that would simply be more “tinkering around the edges” of the problem.

“What we need is the government to deliver on a real housing plan, and that means taking bold action to make real investments,” Kwan said, noting that the federal auditor general’s November 2022 report on the National Housing Strategy provided “riches of embarrassment.” 

She also pointed to testimony from CMHC president Romy Bowers at a Dec. 5, 2022, House Human Resources, Skills, and Social Development Committee meeting, where Bowers said the CMHC’s goal of all Canadians having a “home they can afford and [that] meets their needs” by 2030 is “aspirational.”

“It’s like our moonshot. It’s like our North Star that guides our activity. It’s likely that we’re not going to achieve it, but we feel that there’s a lot of value in trying for it,” Bowers told the committee.

Kwan said if that was Canada’s approach to homelessness and the housing crisis, “it isn’t a wonder that we’re failing.”

“[The NDP] is calling on the government to build more social housing, co-op housing, and community housing that once upon a time was built by the federal government, and we need to get back to doing that,” Kwan said, noting that building was only half of the solution. 

The second half would require increased efforts to safeguard the dwindling stock that Canada has left.

“Canada is losing low-cost rental housing stock to financialized landlords, buying up low-cost rental apartments only to subsequently reno- or demo-evict the current tenants,” Kwan explained, pointing to a recent study by Steve Pomeroy, a housing research consultant and senior research fellow in the Centre for Urban Research and Education at Carleton University. 

Pomeroy’s study found that while the National Housing Strategy included plans to build 16,000 new affordable units per year, four existing units were lost for every unit built. 

“We can’t build fast enough if that rate of loss is allowed to continue,” Kwan said. “We have to stop the bleeding.” 

The NDP is calling on the federal government to create an acquisition fund for non-profits to hold existing stock in a land trust in perpetuity, as well as a moratorium on acquiring those units by “financialized landlords.” Kwan said that Canada could follow the lead of nations like New Zealand that have introduced mortgage “escalators” that increase the required down payment on second and third homes, which would also have the added benefit of levelling the playing field for first-time home buyers.

“To fix the housing crisis, the right to housing needs to be principal, and the government needs to ensure they have a plan commensurate with that to deliver,” Kwan continued. “Minister Fraser said everything is on the table, and there’s no rock he won’t turn … how about tackling the hard stuff and not tinkering around the edges?”

Source: ‘Culling’ bad actors capitalizing on tuition fees more effective than capping student visas in bid to fix housing crisis: immigration lawyer

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Trudeau says orderly immigration system is needed, after deaths of eight migrants

2023/04/05 Leave a comment

Confidence might also be increased if the government could demonstrate a more prudent and realistic approach to immigration levels. Arguably, the rapid increase in temporary workers and students, significantly more than Permanent Residents, uncapped and not in the annual levels plan, is by itself another manifestation of less than orderly immigration:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is reiterating the importance of an orderly immigration system as police investigate the deaths of eight migrants, including two toddlers, in the Mohawk territory of Akwesasne last week.

Last month, Canada negotiated a deal with the United States to turn away asylum seekers at unofficial border crossings like Roxham Road, closing a long-standing loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement.

The deal means people will be turned away from the border no matter where they try to cross. The aim is for people to make their asylum claim in the first country they land in, whether it be Canada or the United States.

Migrant advocates warned the new rules would push people to take even greater risks in their efforts to cross the border, like using smugglers and moving to even more remote crossings.

A week later, the bodies of eight people were pulled from the St. Lawrence River after they tried to make it into the U.S. from Canada by boat.

The prime minister called the deaths a tragedy, but said Canada needs to maintain public confidence in the immigration system.

“When people take risks to cross our borders in an irregular fashion or if they pay criminals to get them across the border, this isn’t a system we can have confidence in,” Trudeau said in French at a press conference in Val-d’Or, Que.

Canada is prepared to welcome more immigrants than ever, he said, “but we’re going to make sure that it’s done in the right ways, appropriately.”

The government’s immigration plan says between 410,000 and 505,000 people will become permanent residents this year, which would be the highest number in recent history.

But since COVID-19 border restrictions lifted in 2021, the number of asylum claims has significantly surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Cities and provinces, particularly Quebec, have said the number of families claiming asylum have put pressure on local services.

Despite the recent clampdown at the border, the federal government set aside $1 billion for temporary shelter and health-care coverage for asylum seekers.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan called on the government to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement Monday, saying it was negotiated in secret and without consultation.

“I do fear that people will die,” said Kwan at a press conference at the irregular border crossing near Emerson, Man.

She was joined by Seidu Mohammed, a bisexual man from Ghana, whose asylum claim was rejected in America. He spent a year in immigration detention before he crossed into Canada through an irregular border crossing.

If he didn’t, he fears he would have been deported to Ghana where sexual acts between consenting people of the same gender is against the law and people who identify as LGBTQ face discrimination and violence.

Mohammed said he was terrified when he heard about the new policy.

“It’s going to put a lot of immigrants and refugees in danger, and they’re going to lose their lives from this,” he said.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser called the deaths of the migrants in Akwesasne horrific, and said they have caused him to think about changes.

“I don’t have an announcement on a policy change today, but I can reassure you that I’m thinking very deeply about what shifts we ought to be making in Canada,” he said, reflecting specifically on the fact that the two children who died had Canadian passports.

The children were one and two years old.

Fraser said the government is looking at putting money toward some of the root causes that push people to make perilous journeys through irregular border crossings in the first place, but repeated the prime minister’s message about the importance of an orderly system.

“We want to do what we can to promote opportunities for people to come through regular pathways so they know that they’re going to be able to arrive in Canada safely, whether that’s through our refugee programs, whether that’s through our economic programs to be reunited with their families,” Fraser said at a press conference in Calgary.

Source: Trudeau says orderly immigration system is needed, after deaths of eight migrants

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Immigration to Canada hits record high in 2022

2023/01/05 Leave a comment

Some cheerleading along with critical comments on housing affordability and IRCC service delivery. Numbers more than twice as high given temporary residents (workers and students):

Canada took in a record number of immigrants last year, a result of a federal planto compensate for a lack of new arrivals in the first year of the pandemic, and to make up for the country’s aging population and holes in the work force.

The country added just over 437,000 new permanent residents in 2022, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). This topped the department’s target for the year, as well as the previous high of 405,000, reached in 2021.

Immigration now accounts for three-quarters of Canada’s population growth. The federal government’s immigration plan calls for the admission of 1.45 million more new permanent residents over the next three years, which is equivalent to 3.8 per cent of the country’s population

The majority of the permanent residency spots have been set aside for economic immigrants, a term for newcomers who either have money to invest, or specific desirable skills, or can demonstrate that they are capable of opening businesses.

The federal government has said immigration is crucial for the economy, and that it accounts for as much as 90 per cent of labour force growth in Canada.

But critics of the plan have raised questions about the effects of higher immigration targets on the country’s already-unaffordable urban housing markets. And it is unclear whether Ottawa’s plan will help make up for shortages of labour in low-paid fields such as accommodation, food services, retail and health care assistance.

NDP immigration and housing critic Jenny Kwan said the federal government has missed an opportunity to give temporary foreign workers and undocumented workers permanent resident status. This would give them access to taxpayer-funded health care and allow them to live and work anywhere in Canada, indefinitely. (Temporary foreign workers are typically restricted to one employer and not allowed to switch jobs.)

“The government must stop relying on vulnerable workers and give them the protection of permanent status and ensure their rights are respected,” Ms. Kwan said in an e-mailed statement.

The flood of new permanent residents is expected to bring new homebuyers and renters to communities across the country. That could increase activity in the residential real estate market, which has slowed since early last year, when borrowing costs jumped with a rise in interest rates.

“There is little debate that strong population growth goes hand-in-hand with strong real home price gains over time,” said Douglas Porter, Bank of Montreal’s chief economist.

Mr. Porter analyzed the relationship between population growth and home prices in 18 developed countries. He found that countries with the fastest population growth during the decade leading up to 2020 – such as New Zealand and Canada – had greater home price inflation than those where populations remained stable or decreased.

But, considering the rise in borrowing costs, Mr. Porter said he believes that the influx of permanent residents will not immediately create a new pool of homebuyers. “Just as last year’s large population increase was unable to avert a double-digit drop in home prices, another large increase in 2023 won’t keep home prices from falling heavily again this year,” he said.

The typical home price across the country is down 10 per cent from February, 2022, when the market peaked.

Where Mr. Porter does expect the surge in newcomers to make a difference is in the rental market, where borrowing costs are less of a factor. Rents have already risen sharply over the past year, and he expects increased competition will push prices higher still.

The largest share of immigrants usually end up in major cities in Ontario, followed by cities in British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta. Last year was no different. Just over a quarter of new permanent residents intended to settle in the Toronto region, according to the most recent data from IRCC, which cover January, 2022, through October.

The government has said its immigration plan includes placing new permanent residents in small towns and rural communities.

In past years, people from southern and eastern Asia accounted for the largest share of immigrants to Canada. According to the IRCC data, this continued to be the case during the first 10 months of last year. During that period, nearly 110,000 new permanent residents were from India, nearly 30,000 were from China and about 20,000 were from the Philippines.

Canada also admitted nearly 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan in the first 10 months of last year, up from 8,570 in 2021. Ottawa has promised to bring at least 40,000 Afghans to Canada, under a pair of resettlement programs introduced around the time of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, 2021.

IRCC could have difficulty handling the large numbers of new permanent residency applicants. It has been dealing with a backlog of applications since 2021, when Ottawa bumped up its immigration targets.

Source: Immigration to Canada hits record high in 2022

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Immigration Minister says his department has shifted focus to international student visas as many await last-minute approval

2022/08/31 Leave a comment

Yet the latest example of management weaknesses at IRCC as it appears to lurch from one program backlog to another. The risk is, of course, that the shift in resources to address student visas will adversely impact other programs, leading to future negative headlines:

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser says his department has shifted its focus toward tackling backlogs in student visa applications, as many students who have been accepted to attend Canadian universities and colleges this semester wait nervously for their immigration approvals.

The minister made the comments Monday as part of the first news conference by the task force to improve government services. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the team of cabinet ministers in June when the federal government was facing heavy public criticism for failing to provide basic services, such as timely passport delivery or efficient traveller processing at Canadian airports.

Mr. Fraser said his department recently shifted its focus away from work permits to tackle the demand for student visas.

“We had been focusing over the course of the summer on processing as many work permits as possible to help address the labour shortage. We’ve made a pivot, and through the month of August, we expect that we’re going to process a little more than 104,000 additional study permits,” he said. “There has been an absolute explosion in demand when it comes to Canada’s International Student Program in recent years.”

The student visa delays recently prompted a complaint from the Indian High Commission in Ottawa. India is the largest source country for international postsecondary students.

In addition to Mr. Fraser’s update, Monday’s news conference included assurances from Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould that passport wait times had improved and an update from Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, who said delays and cancelled flights have been dramatically reduced.

Opposition MPs said the task force is little more than a public relations exercise. They also say some of the improvements in areas such as passports and travel delays can be attributed to the fact that the summer travel season is coming to an end.

As for the Immigration Minister’s comments about student visas, Conservative and NDP MPs said this is part of a continuing pattern of shifting focus from one crisis to another, which they say ultimately creates bigger problems for the system as a whole.

Conservative MP Jasraj Singh Hallan said the students awaiting visas are expecting to start classes shortly.

“There are many students that are still left in limbo in this immigration backlog,” he said. As for the task force, he said many of the members are the same ministers who are ultimately responsible for the service issues.

“This task force really hasn’t shown or done anything yet,” he said.

NDP MP Jenny Kwan said Canada’s immigration system, including student visa applications, is in a state of chaos. She said operating in a constant state of “crisis management mode” is not sustainable.

Ms. Kwan said there should be independent reviews of the key departments to determine why services are failing.

“The task force was established as a political cover-up,” she said.

International students from outside Canada pay tuition that is often more than two or three times higher than those paid by domestic students.

Naman Gupta, a 22-year-old student in New Delhi, India, was planning to attend York University this fall to pursue a postgraduate certificate.

His study permit has not come through and he said unless something changes in a matter of days, he’ll defer coming to Canada until the start of the January term. However the $17,000 in tuition he paid won’t be returned in the meantime, he said.

“It’s going to be tough. All my plans are held up,” Mr. Gupta said. “I’m pretty stressed.”

He said he expected the visa processing would have been expedited to ensure that students could arrive in time for the start of their courses.

“I would’ve appreciated if they could apply more compassion to the situation,” Mr. Gupta said. “The response is slow.”

Pallavi Dang, who lives in New Delhi, applied for her study permit in March. She’s disappointed that more than five months later she still hasn’t heard whether she will be approved. Department guidelines said respondents can normally expect an answer in eight weeks, and that current average processing times are about 12 weeks.

She said she had made plans to hand over her business while she was away, but now she’ll need to change course.

“All that planning is on hold,” Ms. Dang said. “I’m not able to take another step.”

Paul Davidson, president of Universities Canada, an umbrella group that lobbies on behalf of nearly 100 Canadian universities, said Canada trails countries such as Britain and Australia in visa processing.

He said there has to be more federal government investment in IT capacity to speed up processing.

“I think that’s really the solution,” Mr. Davidson said. “There’s all-party support for international students, there’s a good policy climate, but it’s the operational reality that needs to improve.”

Source: Immigration Minister says his department has shifted focus to international student visas as many await last-minute approval

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Immigration Canada acts to end racism, cultural bias among employees

2022/04/04 Leave a comment

Of note:

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is conducting a study to explore potential cultural bias shown by its employees when it comes to processing visa applications at the country’s points of entry, according to a department spokesperson.

The study comes in response to a survey examining workplace racism at IRCC released last year that revealed multiple reports of racist “microagressions” by employees and supervisors.

Participants interviewed said that some of the overt and subtle racism they have witnessed by both employees and decision makers at IRCC “can and probably must impact case processing.”

The department has also made it mandatory for employees and executives to take unconscious bias training, and instituted a requirement for senior staff to take a specific course on inclusive hiring practices as a prerequisite for obtaining their delegated authority to sign financial and staffing decisions.

In addition, said spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald, IRCC is appointing anti-racism representatives in each sector of the department to support the work of a newly-established Anti-Racism Task Force and has created a Black Employee Network to ensure Black voices are heard in driving change.

“We must actively fight racism and continue to work tirelessly to foster a culture of inclusion, diversity, and respect…but actions speak louder than words,” MacDonald told New Canadian Media through email.

MacDonald said IRCC will be hiring an independent firm to do an Employment System Review (ESR). The ESR will identify new solutions in core areas such as people management practices and accountability.

IRCC also plans to release its Anti-Racism Strategy and action plan later this year.

IRCC’s steps to combat racism and cultural bias come in the wake of critics arguing that that’s precisely what is contributing to a growing backlog of visa applications while exacerbating issues of racial discrimination and harassment in the workplace.

Jasraj Singh Hallan, a Calgary-area MP who serves as the Conservative Party’s shadow minister on immigration, told NCM the IRCC isn’t only plagued with racism and cultural bias when dealing with visa applications, but it is also struggling to stamp out racist workplace behaviour.

“I have been asking IRCC for several months now to reveal the number of disciplinary actions and investigations it has taken against employees, but have been unable to get answers,” he told NCM.

“The impact of racism and cultural bias in IRCC is contributing to massive backlogs in visa applications, refugee processing times and increased cost to the taxpayer.” The latest IRCC numbers show there are 1.84 million people waiting on decisions in its inventory as of mid-March.

Even as Canada struggles to address the processing delays, the country’s 2022–2024 Immigration Levels Plan aims to continue welcoming immigrants at a rate of about one per cent of Canada’s population. This includes 431,645 permanent residents in 2022 (an increase of about 21,000 people from its original plan), 447,055 in 2023, and 451,000 in 2024.

Respondents to the survey released last year pointed to the differences in visa refusal rates by country as an indicator that some form of bias must be at play.

The study also showed there’s growing concern that increased automation of visa processing will embed racially discriminatory practices in a way that will be harder to see over time.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) has filed a policy grievance against IRCC on behalf of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU) based on the disproportionate and adverse treatment of racialized members.

The grievance was filed on March 15, ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

“In this case, IRCC has shown they are incapable or unwilling to proactively address issues of racial discrimination and harassment when they arise, such as excluding racialized employees from hiring and promotional opportunities,” said the PSAC.

PSAC and CEIU are seeking several corrective and concrete measures to eliminate discrimination in the workplace and prevent discriminatory practices in the future. The unions are also calling for all affected members to receive compensation for damages.

PSAC is also supporting a Black Class Action Lawsuit brought by 12 federal public service workers, who identify as Black, Caribbean or of African descent.

The lawsuit reaches back 50 years, arguing the federal government perpetuated Black employee exclusion: the systemic practice of limiting skilled Black workers from career advancement opportunities.

The lawsuit has now grown to represent 1,300 plaintiffs, including past and present IRCC employees, who are seeking over $2.5 billion in damages.

Meanwhile, an internal IRCC memo, obtained by Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, shows that taxpayers are doling out between $9,915 and $33,738 depending on the determination of the eligibility of an asylum claim.

“The lower cost is incurred in cases where the asylum claim is accepted at the first hearing, while the higher cost relates to claims which are initially denied, and the claimant exhausts all appeal options and is ultimately removed from Canada,” the memo stated.

“You can expect the processing costs to go up given the increasing backlog,” Kurland told NCM.

“When the government doesn’t put in the necessary resources to process applications properly and in a timely fashion, Canadians end up paying for it anyway,” Kwan told NCM.

Kwan noted that in 2021, 23 per cent of appeals of Refugee Protection Division (RPD) decisions were overturned by the Refugee Appeals Division (RAD), with an additional 8.5 per cent sent back to the RPD to reassess their decision.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​The Refugee Appeal Division decides appeals of decisions of the Refugee Protection Division to allow or reject claims for refugee protection. A person whose claim is rejected by the RPD can ask the RAD to review this decision to assess whether the RPD was wrong.

“That’s a very high error rate and this doesn’t include federal reviews which will uncover even more judgement errors,” said Kwan.

Source: Immigration Canada acts to end racism, cultural bias among employees

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