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interesting...
http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=674
| quote: | Tory Bill brings in sweeping changes to Immigration and Refugee Protection Act
Posted by admin on Mar 23rd, 2008
The proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act just tabled by the government are part of Bill C-50, the budget bill.
· Because the amendments are part of the budget bill, they are likely to be passed, because defeating the bill will bring down the government.
· The amendments increase the discretionary powers of immigration officers by changing a couple of instances of “shall” to “may”:
a) s. 11 currently says an officer “shall” issue a visa if the applicant meets the requirements of the Act – this is changed in the bill to “may” issue a visa.
b) s. 25 currently says that the Minister “shall” examine an H&C application – this is changed to “shall” examine the H&C application if the applicant is in Canada, but only “may” examine the application if the applicant is outside Canada.
· The amendments provide the department with the “shredding” option (i.e. the possibility of simply not processing certain applications) in the case of economic applicants and H&C applicants outside Canada. The “shredding” option does not apply to Family Class, refugees overseas or applicants in Canada.
· For the “shreddable” applications, the Minister will be able to issue instructions: establishing categories of applications to be processed, determining the order in which the applications should be processed, fixing a limit on the number to be processed, and providing rules for repeat applications. The applications that are not processed can be retained, returned or “otherwise disposed of” (ie. shredded). So far, the Minister has not explained what categories they plan to introduce.
· The amendments address two different issues:
a) the fact that there is a limit on permanent resident visas issued each year, but no limit on the numbers of applications, leading to a growing backlog of applications.
b) the fact that the law currently requires the examination of all H&C applications. This is a matter of visa office workload, not pressure on permanent resident numbers.
· The elimination of the right to have an overseas H&C application examined is a serious concern. CIC constantly refers to H&C as the appropriate recourse for cases that fall through the large cracks in the law. For example, separated refugee children in Canada cannot apply for family reunification with their parents and siblings. CIC’s response: make an H&C application. Or families unfairly separated by R. 117(9)(d) (excluded family member)? CIC’s response: make an H&C application. With these amendments, there will no longer be a legal right to have those applications examined by a visa officer.
Janet Dench, Canadian Council for Refugees
Move on budget bill could force election: NDP against including immigration changes
GLORIA GALLOWAY From Thursday’s Globe and Mail. March 19, 2008 at 9:23 PM EDT
OTTAWA — The New Democrats are preparing to force Stéphane Dion’s Liberals to take the country into an election or vote for a bill that lawyers say will strip transparency from the immigration system and deny basic rights to foreigners hoping to come to Canada.
Olivia Chow, the NDP Immigration critic, said yesterday that she will introduce an amendment to omnibus 136-page budget legislation that includes two pages of changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act – a law bought in by the Liberals in 2002.
Because they are included in the budget bill, the proposals will not get separate debates in Parliament, nor will they be examined by a House of Commons committee. But they will be considered a matter of confidence.
Voting against the bill – or voting for Ms. Chow’s amendment – would plunge the country into an election.
“It should be a separate immigration act so that there is decent consultation and discussion. Instead, it just gets stuck in a budget implementation bill where it doesn’t belong,” Ms. Chow said. As a stand-alone bill, she said, it would not be passed by the minority Parliament.
The Liberals have ducked every opportunity to take down Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. Maurizio Bevilacqua, the Liberal immigration critic, was unwilling to say yesterday that his party is prepared to take the plunge. But he is no fan of what is being proposed.
“It is incredible that they went as far as they did. It’s absolutely astounding that they would do this,” he said. “It’s just bad public policy.”
Immigration Minister Diane Finley defends the changes, saying something must be done to fix a system that is not working.
“In some places, we are only now starting to process applications that we received six years ago,” she said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
“In the meantime [the applicants] have gone somewhere else, they have decided not to come to Canada, they may even have passed away. But under the existing legislation, we have to process that application from start to finish anyway. That is not responsible. It’s not a good use of taxpayers’ money and it’s certainly not helping us to get the immigrants that we need.”
The minister said that, once the changes have been explained to members of Canada’s immigrant communities, they agree that they are good news for newcomers.
Ms. Chow, who met yesterday in Toronto with representatives of more than 30 different immigrant groups and organizations, disagrees. “They are up in arms,” she said.
Toronto lawyer David Garson said the Conservative proposals would “eviscerate” the Immigration Act.
The Conservatives want the immigration minister to be able to cap the list of people waiting to be accepted into Canada – a list that is more than 900,000 names long. They would allow the government to reject an applicant that had been approved by immigration officers. And the minister could make decisions about immigration policy that, under the current system, require regulatory changes, Mr. Garson said.
“We live in a democracy governed ostensibly by a set of rules and regulations that we have come to be familiar with,” Mr. Garson said. “If you go around those to determine how you best can deal with something in a government, I think that you are circumventing our democratic system.”
Ms. Finley takes issue with the allegation that there is a lack of transparency to what she is trying to achieve. The bill requires that any priorities set by the minister be published in the Canada Gazette, she said. |
http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/350074
| quote: | Immigration changes unfair, critics charge
Proposals embedded in budget bill would give minister power to deny or speed applications
Mar 24, 2008 04:30 AM
Nicholas Keung
Immigration/Diversity Reporter
Proposed changes to the Immigration Act may allow the overhaul of Canada's immigration system, but critics fear they could also allow Immigration Minister Diane Finley to ram through changes without parliamentary – and public – oversight.
Legal experts and immigrant advocates made their reservations known after the Conservative government announced plans to change the six-year-old Immigration and Refugee Protection Act by asking Parliament to relinquish its decision-making power on immigration policies to a single person – the minister.
Since Bill 50 was introduced this month, Finley has been touting it as a way to reduce the 800,000-case backlog and cut long waiting times for immigration applications.
But critics, while commending the government's political will to tackle the decade-old backlog, said they were caught off guard by the secrecy surrounding the new provisions.
The bill would allow the minister to discard applications from specific countries, reject applicants who otherwise meet all immigration criteria, and accelerate some applications, allowing queue-jumping.
Worst, applicants couldn't appeal.
Lawyer Lorne Waldman said the approach goes against the points system that was introduced in the late 1960s to make the system non-racist and accountable.
"This new change will undo all of this by allowing the minister to override the established criteria by directing that whole categories be not processed and by giving the minister the power to direct that applications be processed despite them not meeting the objective criteria," Waldman warned.
The bill could also terminate the processing of humanitarian applications from overseas and limit the number and type of applications each person could file.
All these scenarios could happen via "minister's instructions" that circumvent the traditional process of public consultations, parliamentary committee reviews and oversight, critics charge.
"Nothing could be further from the truth," Finley said yesterday on CTV's Question Period. "We have to make it easier to get more people here faster. We have a backlog right now that the previous government ballooned from 50,000 to 800,000. It has since grown to 900,000."
Finley said the changes will help fill jobs that go empty while qualified people wait, as well as provide the option of faster processing for applicants from troubled areas.
The amendment is contained within the 2008 budget implementation bill, which means it would take a confidence vote to defeat the new provisions. That fact alone is alarming, said prominent immigration lawyer Gordon Maynard.
"It doesn't allow proper debate of the content. The opposition parties have to accept it or face an election. It just isn't fair," he said.
"It's a worry. It's a concern because these changes aren't made without reasons. Someone would have thought it out. What targets do they have in mind? They are not seen in the legislation."
The current law obliges the immigration department to consider, process and decide all applications to ensure every foreigner who meets the requirements is entitled to enter Canada. The new provisions give the minister the right to discard applications or retain them permanently – allowing the department to chop the backlog with no legal consequences.
The legal and advocacy community is campaigning against the changes and NDP immigration critic Olivia Chow (Trinity-Spadina) has vowed to introduce a motion to delete the amendment when Parliament resumes this month.
But Gerri MacDonald, president of the Refugee Lawyers' Association of Ontario, isn't hopeful.
"The Conservative government put in all these unwanted provisions in a budget bill knowing that the opposition doesn't want to force an election," she noted.
"It is disturbing." |
hmm... to be taken with grains of salt due to traditionally anti-conservative reporting, or something to be concerned about?
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Now THATS hot!
