Canadian immigration by the numbers

By Amanda Shendruk - Monday, March 4, 2013 at 12:53 PM - 0 Comments

Last week the federal government released its preliminary 2012 immigration statistics. Check out the graphic below for a brief overview of some of its findings.

Bureaucrats make last-minute pitch to save refugee health benefits

By Stephanie Levitz - Monday, January 7, 2013 at 4:12 PM - 0 Comments

OTTAWA – Civil servants in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration had to scramble to make the case for preserving some refugee health-care benefits destined for the government’s cost-cutting axe, newly released documents show.

And they were forced into a last-minute pitch to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to save part of the interim federal health program, despite having argued some eight months earlier that the proposed policy was flawed.

The series of emails and memos released under Access to Information laws seem to contradict Kenney’s assertion in June that benefits for resettled refugees were never meant to be axed. Continue…

Minding the ministerial perception

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 14, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

The Citizenship and Immigration Department has spent $750,000 monitoring ethnic media coverage—including perceptions of the Immigration Minister and coverage during the last election.

“A series of interviews and appearances by minister Kenney and his representatives were strong contributors to the upswing in the ministerial image,” says a report from May 5, 2010, under a pie graph titled “Minister Overall Perception.”

The ministerial perception charts were weekly fixtures in the lengthy media monitoring reports in the spring of 2010, when the minority Conservatives were on a constant election footing.

Mr. Kenney’s office says it was not involved in the department’s media monitoring decisions.

Government aims to strip Canadian citizenship from 3,100 it says cheated system

By The Canadian Press - Monday, September 10, 2012 at 10:35 AM - 0 Comments

OTTAWA — The federal government plans to revoke Canadian citizenship from 3,100 people it says cheated on the process.

It’s also looking at thousands of others who may have obtained or maintain permanent residence fraudulently.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says cheats will be stripped of citizenship and residence status.

He says it’s part of a three-year crackdown on immigration fraud.

So far, he says, federal agencies have removed or denied admittance to more than 600 former permanent residents linked to the fraud investigations.

They have denied about 500 citizenship applications where the applicants did not meet residence requirements and almost 1,800 applicants linked to cheating have simply abandoned their citizenship applications.

What Terry Olayta might have said, had she made it to committee today

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 10:55 AM - 6 Comments

… based on what she told the Philippine Reporter last week, that is:

Terry C. Olayta:
(Coordinator, Caregiver Resource Centre)
Ruby Dhalla destroyed herself through her own actions and behaviour towards this complaint against her. She threw herself down the drain. All the evidences she produced are evidences against her and her family and served her own destruction.

Example: The letter showing that her mother paid cash, the letter admitted the worker received the documents from her brother Neil. Is that not stupid? Whether it’s Ruby, her mother or brother who returned those documents it’s still within the turf of Ruby Dhalla, the government official who should not be ignorant of the law.

We already had waited enough, brainstormed enough. We the caregivers here at the Cross Cultural have always been prepared to show up at Queen’s Park or to Labour and the Federal, to fax barrage, call the offices, continue the awareness education information.

ITQ is trying to find out just why she and the other witness scheduled for the second hour didn’t make it to this morning’s meeting. We’ll keep you posted!  Our bet: Overzealous Hill security; that, or nobody bothered to give them the details of when/where to show up. Yes, it would be much juicier if it involved one of those shadowy pro- or anti-Ruby conspiracies that, we’re assured, are orchestrating the show from behind the scenes, but we’re betting on Occam’s razor carrying the day.

GallowayWatch: Okay, it's not just us. This whole CIC/CBSA thing really is confusing.

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 10:16 AM - 81 Comments

According to Barbara Jackman, who is heading up the Galloway border ban legal team, the decision to bar him from entering the country does seem to have been preemptive.

In an emailed response to a query from ITQ, she notes that Galloway “did not need to apply for a visa to visit Canada”, although she suggests that he could have informed the Canadian High Commission of his upcoming visit “as a matter of courtesy”.

Even if that turns out to be the case, however, it doesn’t really explain the apparent involvement of the Canada Border Services Agency:

What is unusual about the ‘refusal’ is that [name deleted], the Immigration Program Manager at the High Commission in London did not just say “we” consider you inadmissible but said that the preliminary assessment of the Canadian Border Services Agency was that he is inadmissible. I have never seen an overseas refusal rely on the Canadian Border Services. It is the Canada Immigration who make decisions on applications for admission to Canada, not that it appears there even was an application for admission.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m really looking forward to reading the full injunction request, which his lawyers will presumably release within the next day or so. At the very least, that should least answer the question of which department, agency or minister is ultimately responsible for the initial finding of inadmissibility.