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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What is birthright citizenship and what happens after the Supreme Court ruling?

2025/06/30 Leave a comment

Ongoing and further undermining of checks and balances:

After the Supreme Court issued a ruling that limits the ability of federal judges to issue universal injunctions — but didn’t rule on the legality of President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship — immigrant rights groups are trying a new tactic by filing a national class action lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two immigrant rights organizations whose members include people without legal status in the U.S. who “have had or will have children born in the United States after February 19, 2025,” according to court documents.

One of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, William Powell, senior counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, says his colleagues at CASA, Inc. and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project think that, with the class action approach “we will be able to get complete relief for everyone who would be covered by the executive order.”

Source: What is birthright citizenship and what happens after the Supreme Court ruling?

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Theo Argitis: Canada’s great immigration experiment is ending 

2025/06/20 Leave a comment

Good take:

For nearly the first time in our history, Canada’s population growth has come to a near standstill. Remarkably, the state of things is such that we are celebrating this as a policy success and long-overdue correction.

Statistics Canada released its quarterly population estimates, showing the country grew by 20,000 people in the first three months of this year. That’s the third weakest quarterly increase in data going back to 1946—and less than one-tenth the average quarterly gain over the past three years.

Four provinces and one territory—Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, and Yukon—actually posted population declines.

The numbers reflect the dramatic reversal of policy late last year by the former Trudeau government, when it abruptly tightened permit approvals for international students and foreign workers after overseeing record immigration levels since 2021.

Under the plan, the intake of new permanent residents, or what the government calls immigrants, would be lowered from 485,000 in 2024 to 365,000 by 2027.

The number of non-permanent residents living in Canada—which had increased five-fold since 2015 to more than 3 million—would be cut by about one million over two years.

That post-pandemic rush of newcomers exacerbated housing shortages, strained public services, and disrupted the job market. It was perhaps the worst policy error of the past two decades, and in need of correction.

But, ironically, the sharp reversal in policy is now creating its own problems, impacting everything from demand for cell phones and banking services to funding for universities and colleges.

The whole episode has been a mass social experiment that will be studied for years.

“You’re going to see a ton of research on this, no question, because it’s like this little experiment here in Canada that no other country has done to this extent,’’ said Mikal Skuterud, a labour economist at the University of Waterloo and director of the Canadian Labour Economics Forum. “And there’s all kinds of dimensions to how this impacted the economy.”

The latest numbers suggest the government’s curbs are beginning to work. While still elevated, the number of non-permanent residents has started to decline—down almost 90,000 from its peak in September. The number of permanent residents, or immigrants, is now running at an annual pace closer to 400,000, down from nearly half a million.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has essentially adopted the Trudeau plan, which if successful will keep the current population steady at about the current 41.5 million level over the next two years. It would mark the first time since Confederation in 1867 that the country saw zero population growth.

Yet when viewed over the full horizon, the curbs will simply bring the average population growth rate for the decade back to about 1.3 percent, which is much closer to historical norms. We’re simply correcting a major policy anomaly.

Looking back, it’s too early to know for certain what effect the population surge had on wages and joblessness, according to Skuterud, who notes that younger Canadians, in particular, may have borne the brunt of it, given they tend to compete with newcomers for entry-level jobs.

What’s less in dispute is how the immigration surge lowered average living standards.

The evidence suggests that looser entry requirements over recent years brought in lower quality workers. Because of this, the economy failed to grow in line with population. The size of the pie didn’t grow fast enough to keep up with the number of people trying to take a slice.

The end result was the erosion of public confidence in immigration, which could linger in Canadian politics for years.

This is particularly true among younger Canadians, who now appear more open to curbing immigration levels. For many, tighter labour markets and more affordable housing—not higher population numbers—are the priority. Slower immigration supports those goals.

So, how did the government misjudge the situation so badly? And is there a lesson here for the Carney government?

Part of the problem stemmed from the unique distortions of the pandemic. The government overestimated labour shortages and then overcompensated by opening the immigration floodgates.

But there was also a broader miscalculation. Trudeau emerged from the pandemic with renewed ambitions and a belief that he had an expanded mandate to pursue transformative change, including on the immigration front.

Ambition, however, has a way of outpacing reality. And overshooting is always a risk when leaders grow too confident in their ability to enact change.

Carney is now putting forward an ambitious agenda of his own. Whether he’ll draw any lessons from Canada’s great immigration experiment remains to be seen.

Source: Theo Argitis: Canada’s great immigration experiment is ending

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Inside Trump’s Extraordinary Turnaround on Immigration Raids

2025/06/16 Leave a comment

Another TACO moment, forced by reality and resulting political pressure by the base:

On Wednesday morning, President Trump took a call from Brooke Rollins, his secretary of agriculture, who relayed a growing sense of alarm from the heartland.

Farmers and agriculture groups, she said, were increasingly uneasy about his immigration crackdown. Federal agents had begun to aggressively target work sites in recent weeks, with the goal of sharply bolstering the number of arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants.

Farmers rely on immigrants to work long hours, Ms. Rollins said. She told the president that farm groups had been warning her that their employees would stop showing up to work out of fear, potentially crippling the agricultural industry.

She wasn’t the first person to try to get this message through to the president, nor was it the first time she had spoken to him about it. But the president was persuaded.

The next morning, he posted a message on his social media platform, Truth Social, that took an uncharacteristically softer tone toward the very immigrants he has spent much of his political career demonizing. Immigrants in the farming and hospitality industries are “very good, long time workers,” he said. “Changes are coming.”

Some influential Trump donors who learned about the post began reaching out to people in the White House, urging Mr. Trump to include the restaurant sector in any directive to spare undocumented workers from enforcement.

Inside the West Wing, top White House officials were caught off guard — and furious at Ms. Rollins. Many of Mr. Trump’s top aides, particularly Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, have urged a hard-line approach, targeting all immigrants without legal status to fulfill the president’s promise of the biggest deportation campaign in American history.

But the decision had been made. Later on Thursday, a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tatum King, sent an email to regional leaders at the agency informing them of new guidance. Agents were to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.”…

Source: Inside Trump’s Extraordinary Turnaround on Immigration Raids

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Lalande | Here is a two-step plan to rebuild Canada’s economy and it isn’t centred on our natural resources

2025/06/13 Leave a comment

Step One repeats the previous tired messages, Step Two looks more sensibly looks forward on how to capitalize on the Trump administrations attacks on universities, scientists and researchers:

Canada’s premiers and prime minister want the world to know that they are ready to build: pipelines, a revitalized military, new high-speed transit, an energy corridor.

But if Canada is to build a truly national economy and to effectively respond to the Trump administration’s economic instability and isolation, it needs a larger, more skilled, and more adaptive workforce.

And there is a clear, achievable two-step strategy we must take to get there.

Step One

The first strategy is to reverse course on the government’s immigration cuts and to build a smart, long-term population strategy.

Last fall, the federal government announced a 20 per cent reduction in immigration levels in its 2025—2027 levels plan. It was a short-term political decision that will leave long-term economic scarring. Research from the Parliamentary Budget Officer shows this policy will reduce Canada’s nominal GDP by $37 billion over just three years. As detailed in Century Initiative’s latest report, cutting immigration accelerates economic decline by constricting labour supply and choking growth.

This contraction is unfolding against the backdrop of a demographic “perfect storm”: a rapidly aging population, a declining fertility rate, and severe labour shortages across critical sectors.

We can’t build the strongest economy in the G7 if our workforce is shrinking, particularly in high-growth sectors.

Canada cannot navigate this storm without a serious plan. We need strategic, well-managed immigration designed not only to meet immediate gaps but to build the long-term foundation for shared prosperity.

Realizing this vision will require purposeful collaboration between different levels of government, including building on intergovernmental successes like the provincial nominee program. Further, business, academia, and civil society all have a role to play leveraging their respective reach, resources, and networks.

This is the plan that enables every other plan. Infrastructure. National defence. Clean tech. Housing. None of it is possible without a strong tax base and a skilled, growing talent pool.

Step Two

The second strategy is to launch a targeted U.S. talent attraction strategy.

Flagrant and damaging threats from the Trump administration against Harvard and other academic institutions, the defunding of research institutions like the National Science Foundation, the gutting of visa programs, and the political targeting of international students have all weakened America’s standing as a magnet for innovation.

Taken together, these actions have opened the door in the global war for talent. As the saying goes, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

But we ought to capitalize on that mistake. As the U.S. turns inward, we should position ourselves as a global safe haven for scientists, entrepreneurs, and students who no longer feel welcome — or funded — south of the border.

This means being strategic about research opportunities, targeting U.S. universities with visa programs and recruitment campaigns for high-performing graduates. 

While appropriately managing international student capacity, we should simplify employment pathways for international students and postdocs in tech, AI, clean energy, and health sciences.

Settlement services should be rolled out in partnership with cross-border companies who are willing to relocate here. And regional accelerator hubs should bolster our fastest-growing sectors — connecting immigration, innovation, and talent with opportunity.

Canada’s greatest asset isn’t just our natural resources or trade deals — it’s our ability to build a fair, open, future-ready society. That takes people. And in this moment, when the U.S. is retreating from talent, science, and global leadership, we have the opportunity — and responsibility — to step up.

Source: Opinion | Here is a two-step plan to rebuild Canada’s economy and it isn’t centred on our natural resources

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Bonner: Repairing the fray: Improving immigration and citizenship policy in Canada

2025/05/28 Leave a comment

Hard to understand why a former staffer with exposure to immigration issues, could advance such naive, politically and in some cases, judicially unrealistic proposals in response to some of the legitimate policy concerns and failures that he points out.

Some examples. Government reorganization into a super ministry would result in significant transition processes and distract from substantive issues. Would any international campaign focussed on values discourage those with other values? No country has had success with pro-birth strategies. Differential time requirements for citizenship would be Charter non-compliant:

….Immigration has been a good thing in the past. It should be in the present and future, too.

This study has three main parts: (1) an exposition of the economic and cultural challenges of mass immigration (including a short history of immigration policy in Canada), (2) a comparative analysis of other immigration systems that we can learn from, and (3) a series of policy options for improving the Canadian system.

To repair Canada’s frayed immigration system, this study makes the case for the following recommendations:

1. Lower the annual permanent residency target to a more manageable level (e.g. 200,000).

2. Strengthen the process of deportation for any non-citizen found guilty of violent crime, supporting terrorism, or expressing hatred for Canada.

3. Execute an international campaign to discourage immigration by anyone unwilling or unable to respect our founding cultures and unwilling or unable to integrate.

4. Prioritize international students pursuing courses of study of high importance to our labour market and supply chains.

5. Re-engineer the points system to emphasize language, age, and domestic education.

6. Consolidate all “population” ministries to create the Ministry of Human Resources Canada (MHRC).

7. Make the main mandate of MHRC to ensure that economic immigration serves the national interest.

8. Require MHRC to implement a pro-birth strategy.

9. Lengthen the time requirement for citizenship, except for immigrants from peer English- and French-speaking countries.

10. Phase down and abolish the Temporary Foreign Worker Program permanently.

11. Establish a uniform standard of credential recognition in self-regulating professions and skilled trades.

We have the right and the obligation to raise the value of Canadian citizenship, and to demand more of our citizens. Above all, however, efforts at integration should proceed not from a dislike of other places, but from a love for Canada….

Source: Repairing the fray: Improving immigration and citizenship policy in Canada

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Geoff Russ: Mark Carney can’t be trusted to get immigration under control

2025/03/31 Leave a comment

Example of any number of articles and commentary by Postmedia columnists warning that the appointment of Mark Wiseman, and to a lessor extent, Marco Mendocino, mean that PM Carney will continue the same high immigration policies of Trudeau. IMO, too early to tell, whether he would continue or expand the restrictions of former Minister Miller, or not. But certainly Wiseman’s appointment could be interpreted as such:

Donald Trump and his tariffs will not be the only key issue that determines who will be prime minister after April, 28. Canada has been plagued by a diverse set of problems for years, all of which will be remembered by voters on election day, including immigration.

Prior to Trump’s election and his decision to threaten Canada, one of the biggest controversies in Canada was the abrupt end of an uncontested pillar in Canadian political culture — immigration. It crumbled as if struck by a sledgehammer after just a few years of the Trudeau government’s careless mass-immigration policies.

The numbers laid bare illustrate Canada’s resulting issues of scarcity. Simply put, Canada is not built to sustain half a million newcomers per year.

Stephen Harper’s government admitted roughly 250,000 permanent residents per year between 2006 and 2015. The Trudeau wave saw those numbers increasing from Harper’s pre-2015 levels, to an average around 334,000, with four years (2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023) exceeding 341,000, at a time when Century Initiative, lobby group that advocates for dramatically higher immigration levels, was at the height of its influence in Ottawa.

In 2018, representatives of the Initiative lamented that Canada’s annual intake of about 310,000 people per year would only increase the population to 53 million by 2100, and called for an increase to 450,000 to reach the goal of 100 million.

Created by former McKinsey executive, Dominic Barton and former BlackRock executive Mark Wiseman, Century Initiative publicly endorsed the Trudeau government’s moves to take in 500,000 new immigrants per year by 2025.

However, the scheme rapidly lost all political currency as the population influx rocked Canada. Immigration-driven demand for housing and services vastly outstripped the supply of both, resulting in a palpable decline in affordability and access to health care, schooling and social services.

Between 2015 and 2024, Canada’s ranking in the Human Development Index plummeted from 9th to 18th, while the country fell behind Italy in the average growth of real GDP per capita.

Western governments since the Great Recession have tried to claim that large-scale immigration is an unambiguous economic benefit. Given the state of the economies of Canada, Germany, and others that embraced mass immigration, immigration has not been a silver bullet to remedy slow growth and stagnation.

Immigrants themselves are not at the root of Canada’s long-standing problems. However, it is also clear that increasing their numbers in such a deliberate fashion failed to make Canada more competitive or improve the lives of its citizens.

There has not been a meaningful increase in the numbers of engineers, physicians, and software developers. In essential services like health care, the ratio of family doctors in relation to the general population has actually worsened. Rather, Canada has imported hundreds of thousands of unskilled international students who stock shelves, deliver food, and flip hamburgers for minimum-wage.

On the other hand, academic institutions have become dependent on this new class of economic immigrant, who often enters the country on a student visa to attend suspect career colleges while paying exorbitant international student fees.

This is not an economic climate that breeds dynamism or healthy growth. Canada needs to be a top choice for highly-skilled immigrants, which means having attractively affordable housing and quality services, neither of which have been rapidly deteriorating.

Even if the restrictions on foreign credentials are loosened in Canada, few trained doctors or dentists from India or South Africa will pick Toronto over Dallas as long as the latter offers substantially higher paycheques and cheaper housing.

In-fact, just 46 per cent of immigrants are now choosing to receive Canadian citizenship, compared to 72 per cent in 1996. Last fall, Ipsos found that just over one quarter of all newcomers plan on leaving Canada within two years, with many citing the lack of affordability. This they have in-common with younger Canadians, many of whom are resigned to bleak and leaner lives than those enjoyed by their parents.

It is therefore concerning that Mark Carney has brought on Century Initiative co-founder Mark Wiseman as an advisor, whose name is ironic considering the results of his lobby group’s ideology. Canadians do not want Century Initiative-inspired ideas anymore, with nearly 60 per cent of residents polled last summer wanting substantially less immigration.

Unlike Europe, where mass-immigration has resulted in a slew of cultural and social clashes between asylum seekers and the established population, the pushback to immigration in Canada still mostly stems from economic factors, particularly housing.

Nonetheless, Wiseman’s presence on the prime minister’s team is political poison. He once even publicly endorsed pushing the Century Initiative’s agenda, even if it caused outrage in Quebec.

For many Québécois, their future is a major source of concern as their demographic place in North America shrinks. The prospect of more mass immigration could be the landmine that blows up Carney’s current run of goodwill in Quebec.

Without Quebec, Carney has little hope of winning a majority government, and even a parliamentary plurality is uncertain. Within hours of Wiseman’s involvement being announced, both the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois went on the attack, in both official languages.

Pierre Poilievre himself attacked the Century Initiative as striving to “bring in people from poor countries in large numbers, to take away Canadian jobs, drive wages down and profits up,” and that Canada should only admit people who can be actually housed and employed

Wiseman’s role will harden the perception that Carney is merely feigning a Liberal shift back to the centre under his leadership. It was a misstep that undercuts Carney’s credibility on immigration caps, which he has nominally pledged to maintain until housing is expanded.

To their credit, the Liberal government significantly scaled back the annual immigration numbers in Trudeau’s final months as PM, if only due to public backlash. A new leader, and Trump’s blustering, has gifted the Liberals a huge opportunity to reinvent themselves as the defenders of the country, while sidestepping hard questions about their thus far poor record in government.

Mark Carney is saying and promising all the right things to pull the Liberals back towards the centre and a genuine pro-growth agenda, earning him plaudits across the political spectrum, even from conservatives. However, if he continues to surround himself with the same crew of advisors and cabinet ministers who sailed Canada into a lost decade, can Carney truly be the captain to right the ship, least of all on immigration?

Source: Geoff Russ: Mark Carney can’t be trusted to get immigration under control

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Mooney: I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

2025/03/20 Leave a comment

Horrific example of bureaucracy at work, implementing the cruel and flawed policies of the Trump administration:

There was no explanation, no warning. One minute, I was in an immigration office talking to an officer about my work visa, which had been approved months before and allowed me, a Canadian, to work in the US. The next, I was told to put my hands against the wall, and patted down like a criminal before being sent to an Ice detention center without the chance to talk to a lawyer….

And that’s when I made a decision: I would never allow myself to feel sorry for my situation again. No matter how hard this was, I had to be grateful. Because every woman I met was in an even more difficult position than mine.

There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.

If someone is a criminal, I agree they should be taken off the streets. But not one of these women had a criminal record. These women acknowledged that they shouldn’t have overstayed and took responsibility for their actions. But their frustration wasn’t about being held accountable; it was about the endless, bureaucratic limbo they had been trapped in.

The real issue was how long it took to get out of the system, with no clear answers, no timeline and no way to move forward. Once deported, many have no choice but to abandon everything they own because the cost of shipping their belongings back is too high.

I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didn’t have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.

I met a family of three who had been living in the US for 11 years with work authorizations. They paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards. Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check, but this time, she was told to bring her whole family. When they arrived, they were taken into custody and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center.

Another woman from Canada had been living in the US with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she hadn’t had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?

One woman had a 10-year visa. When it expired, she moved back to her home country, Venezuela. She admitted she had overstayed by one month before leaving. Later, she returned for a vacation and entered the US without issue. But when she took a domestic flight from Miami to Los Angeles, she was picked up by Ice and detained. She couldn’t be deported because Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportees. She didn’t know when she was getting out.

There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home. She then came back to the US on a new, valid visa to finish her master’s degree and was handed over to Ice due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa.

There were women who had been picked up off the street, from outside their workplaces, from their homes. All of these women told me that they had been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months. One woman’s daughter was outside the detention center protesting for her release….

The reality became clear: Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.

Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.

The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.

This is not just my story. It is the story of thousands and thousands of people still trapped in a system that profits from their suffering. I am writing in the hope that someone out there – someone with the power to change any of this – can help do something.

The strength I witnessed in those women, the love they gave despite their suffering, is what gives me faith. Faith that no matter how flawed the system, how cruel the circumstances, humanity will always shine through.

Even in the darkest places, within the most broken systems, humanity persists. Sometimes, it reveals itself in the smallest, most unexpected acts of kindness: a shared meal, a whispered prayer, a hand reaching out in the dark. We are defined by the love we extend, the courage we summon and the truths we are willing to tell.

Source: I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

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Christopher Dummitt: Canadians need a proud, not guilt-ridden Canada

2025/03/18 Leave a comment

Ongoing arguments for a needed correction:

…The second key element of any national cultural policy ought to be a more realistic approach to pluralism. Canadians live in a country of different ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. We aren’t unified. But the fundamental error of the last decade was to do diversity wrong — to engage in a downward spiral of national subtraction. Out of a well-intentioned, but horribly mistaken desire to protect certain historically marginalized groups, we kept demoting our national heroes out of a belief that they “harmed” people in the present.

A pragmatic pluralism would recognize that one people’s hero will be another’s villain. This absolutely should not mean dishonouring anyone because one group says they are hurt.

Heritage harm is a choice. No one has to be offended when they walk into a school named after someone whom they don’t respect. Conservatives aren’t psychologically damaged when they fly out of Pearson airport. Nor do Liberals suffer when they tour the Diefenbunker. Francophones don’t need to avert their gaze as they drive through Durham region just because Lord Durham once advocated for their assimilation. And a Wendat/Huron Canadian doesn’t need to feel threatened when driving past Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory just because the Mohawk people once wiped out Huronia.

Any Canadian party that wants to be seriously considered as a defender of the nation should promise a pragmatic pluralism which builds up and doesn’t tear down our country. Each group of Canadians should be allowed to keep their historical heroes. Instead of tearing down John A. Macdonald statues, a new federal government should promise to raise statues of figures like Tecumseh or Big Bear. Canada is a diverse country. We can have a diverse set of historical heroes. No one gets a veto. Individual Canadians can choose to be harmed by a name if they want — but our national government needs to be bigger than this — stronger and more resilient.

What’s more, a third key promise ought to be the adoption of a culturally mature notion of diversity. Canada hasn’t always looked the way it does today. People in the past didn’t think the same or act the same. A responsible national government would take pride and celebrate this diversity.

Canada’s prehistory was dominated by Indigenous peoples who have fascinating histories that long-predate the origins of Canada itself. We ought to celebrate these histories. And this shouldn’t mean just pretending that pre-contact Indigenous peoples were benign environmental-loving hippies. We should tell the more accurate and much more fascinating stories of conflict and war and struggle.

From the time of New France up to the 1960s, most Canadians could trace their ancestors back to two places — France and the British Isles. This is just a fact of history and demography. We don’t need to apologize for it. We were an overwhelming white western European colony. We shouldn’t expect our historical figures for much of our history to represent the diversity of multicultural Canada in 2025. They didn’t, and they don’t.

We could instead celebrate the amazing fact of Canadian governments in the 1960s — first under Diefenbaker and then under Lester Pearson — to remove racism from our immigration system. This was an astounding decision. Most groups, for almost all of human history, have wanted homogeneity — to insist on sameness. It’s not odd that Canada was similar before the 1960s, but it is quite amazing that Canada changed its tune. A build-it-up national cultural policy would celebrate this fact, and the Canadians who came before. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Our heritage should be about building up and adding on, not deleting.

Finally, a more mature approach to diversity would acknowledge that Canadians are sophisticated and not bigoted. They don’t have to share the same identity characteristics of our heroes to appreciate Canadian history. That kind of racial in-group thinking is a barrier to true national belonging. You don’t have to be Black to admire Viola Desmond. You certainly don’t need to be white or German-Canadian to be proud of Diefenbaker’s “One Canada vision” and his championing of a Bill of Rights.

Who will offer this proud Canadian vision? Which party will turn its back on the subtraction-heritage distraction of the last decade?

The way ahead ought to be clear: a vision of the country where pride and dignity comes first; a proud pluralism that allows every Canadian group to have its heroes and its stories; and a mature approach to diversity that assumes a resilient Canadian population, one that sees and celebrates our differences over time, and assumes that any Canadian, regardless of their background or when their ancestors arrived here, can share in the story.

Source: Christopher Dummitt: Canadians need a proud, not guilt-ridden Canada

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May: Transition How-Tos [Zussman]

2025/03/17 Leave a comment

Good list, drawing from Zussman. Rings true from my experience under the Harper government (Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism):

Here are a few do’s and don’ts from seasoned bureaucrats who’ve weathered many a transition:

This is a test of impartiality and neutrality. Many public servants have only worked for a Trudeau government and this will be their first transition. A new government, especially under a new party, may want to undo, change or scrap policies, programs and your pet projects. Don’t be attached to the programs you worked on — it’s not your role.

Zussman argues deputy ministers must ensure employees are prepared for these shifts and get “past the mindset that they have formed over the last decade and to think in different terms.”

Time for the PS to shine. Be well-prepared, do your homework, know the platform, and show you’re a committed, non-partisan public service that can be relied upon. That builds trust. Have some “early wins” ready for them. Don’t say things can’t be done.

Keep it professional. Don’t greet a new government like an overeager puppy. Don’t try to be their best friend or badmouth the outgoing one. Your role is simple: work with them, understand and implement their agenda, and recognize the legitimacy of their agenda. (They are elected. Public servants aren’t.) If you can’t live with that, it’s time to move on and leave.

Let them lead. Some incoming governments have been watching, planning, and know the system better than public servants assume. Treating them like rookies can backfire — especially if they’ve seen the bureaucracy in committee, dodging questions. “Let them lead the dance,” said one bureaucrat. They know what they want, and the public service’s job isn’t to teach them “government 101” but to deliver.

Expect skepticism. New coach, new game. One former deputy minister likened a newly elected government to a new coach who comes in because the previous leadership was seen as not delivering. So, expect the new government to be skeptical that the public service is up to the job and can execute its agenda. This skepticism is justified. Acknowledge and adapt to it. Demonstrate you can work under the new leadership and deliver its priorities.

Don’t assume you know what the new government’s relationship with stakeholders will be.

Don’t recycle the last government’s or minister’s contact list of stakeholders to call. That could backfire.

Be cautious.

Let the incoming team define its own relationships without speaking for the stakeholders.

Source: May: Transition How-Tos [Zussman]

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