Proposed amendments in Canada’s immigration laws: Though government has defeated an NDP motion but Liberals final vote may trigger an election

Just before an expected second reading on Budget Implementation Bill (Bill C-50) this week, a recent confidence vote on the Bill defeated an amendment declaring that Bill C-50 should not be allowed to proceed for second reading because it contains policies (or proposed changes in immigration laws) that "fail to recognize that all immigration applicants should be treated fairly."

This amendment into the Bill C-50 was introduced by NDP immigration critic MP Olivia Chow in order to prevent the federal government's controversial amendments to Canada's immigration laws from passing with the federal budget. These controversial amendments propose greater selection powers to the minister to limit the number of new immigration applicants and allow the government to fast-track applications from the types of immigrants it wants, such as skilled workers, and freeze applications from others.

The House of Commons voted 201:68 against an NDP motion. If the NDP amendment had passed, it would have killed the budget bill along with the controversial immigration reforms.

The main reason of this survival was the support of main opposition Liberal party that voted in this confidence motion with ruling Conservative party. Despite having voted in the favor of proposed changes in Canada’s immigration laws, the Liberal party denounced these changes as regressive and anti-immigrant, and announced to further study the amendments because they have opportunity (at time of final reading) to defeat the legislation if necessary.

Remember, if the budget bill passes its second reading this week, it will then be reviewed by the House Standing Committee on Finance for a period of up to 60 days, before it will be returned to the House of Commons for third reading. At that time, political parties will have another chance to oppose the bill before it goes to Senate. If the bill passes Senate approval, it will become law.

After its defeat in declining to give second reading to Bill C-50, NDP leader Jack Layton has announced to table a new motion that will split the budget bill into two bills by separating the budget reforms and proposed immigration reforms. This new motion would allow the House Standing Committee on Finance to study, fix or remove the immigration portion of Bill C-50.

Meanwhile, the Liberals has decided to present their amendments to the proposed immigration reforms at the standing committee and confident that their amendments will pass with the support of the other opposition parties. If these amendments were rejected, then Liberals may go against the proposed immigration reforms during the final reading. This possible situation may trigger an election in Canada in coming June.

Quebec announced new measures for the integration of immigrants into the job

The Quebec provincial government has announced to invest $68 million over the next three years for the implementation of many labor market measures, which will help internationally trained newcomers to the province find work in their field of specialty more quickly.

As announced, more than $22 million will be used each fiscal year through to 2011 for the implementation of 18 labor market measures that have been designed to open the doors of employment for foreign trained newcomers and will contribute to the growth of businesses in the context of globalization.

Of the $68 million, $6 million over three years has been earmarked for one of the eighteen measures known as Challenge Montreal. This Internet website project will invite partners in the labor market of Montreal to mobilize in order to capitalize more on the professional skills of Montreal and their immigrants so that companies in the metropolis in search of skilled and competent rally. This website project is expected to bring significant impact in Montreal that is the home of around three quarters of total newcomers to the province.

Moreover, the Regional Council of labor market partners Montreal will be assigned responsibility to provide regional leadership to find answers to problems employability of people with immigrant backgrounds. The Council, with the CRE, the City of Montreal and the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, in particular, will propose ways to improve the existing service offering.

In addition to this $68 million funding, the Department of Immigration and Cultural Communities have already invested substantial sums in services francization and integration of newcomers. In 2006-2007, Department devoted for this purpose more than $50 million in Montreal. The Ministry has also signed an agreement of $4.5 million over three years with the city of Montreal for the implementation of an action plan on the integration of immigrants in French in the Montreal community.

Canada announces new funding to support the advancement of newcomer youths and their families

To help newcomers settle, adapt and integrate into Canadian society, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), in partnership with provinces, territories and settlement providers, has been delivering programs and services to migrants and providing stakeholders necessary funding to support these initiatives.

Just after a $36 million settlement funding for newcomer youths and their families in Toronto and high needs neighborhoods, another funding of more than $300,000 has been announced to help youth settlement services in the Peel region, which will support the advancement of new young Canadians and their full participation in the community.

The funding will be used to support Dixie Bloor Neighborhood Center’s innovative programs for newcomer youths and their families, and YMCA’s Newcomer Youth Leadership Development Program and the YMCA Newcomer Parent Workshop Series. These modern settlement services include language and job skills training, leadership development programs, mentorships, peer engagement and recreational activities that would be delivered through sports and the arts. Workshops for parents will help them understand how important it is for youth to participate in recreational activities and get a sense of youth culture and practices in Canada. These services are expected to be delivered to an estimated 120 newcomer youths in the Peel region.

Similarly, a new settlement funding of more than $2.7 million has been announced for the Canadian Ukrainian Immigrant Aid Society (CUIAS) to assist in delivering settlement services to newcomers in Toronto.

Besides supporting the essential settlement services such as referrals to community resources, advice and guidance, translation and interpretation, and group workshops on the Canadian legal, social, health and economic system, this funding will specifically be used to support (a) specialty language training for seniors and higher level language training, with a focus on writing skills, and (b) a pilot youth program which will include sporting, social, and recreational activities. This will include a new Youth Outreach Worker to provide social services to youth who have been harder to reach, such as Government Assisted Refugees and young people with mental or physical health challenges. This funding is expected to serve an estimated 3,000 people.

These funding for settlement, youth development programs and language training to Ontario are provided under the $920 million Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (COIA) over five years and are part of $1.4 billion package over five years to provinces and territories other than Quebec, which was committed by the Canadian federal government in budget 2006.

Canada wraps up more than 200 different ethnic origins but ‘Canadian’ is the most famous ethnic ancestry

Another breakdown from the 2006 census by Statistics Canada shows that the number of visible minorities in Canada has not only surpassed the five million mark for the first time in history but also increased at two times in last 15 years.

According to the Canada's Employment Equity Act, the term visible minority refers to "persons, other than Aboriginal persons, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour." As per this definition, Chinese, South Asians, Blacks, Arabs, Filipinos, Southeast Asians, Latin Americans, Japanese, Koreans and other visible minority groups such as Pacific Islanders are recognized as visible minority in Canada.

The growth in the visible minority population, driven largely by immigration from non-European countries, soared 26.2 per cent between 2001 and 2006 to nearly 5.1 million, five times faster than the 5.4 per cent increase in overall population. Now visible minorities accounted for 16.2 per cent or one in every six persons in Canada, up from 13.4 per cent at the time of previous census in 2001, and 11.2 per cent at the time of 1996 census. However, it is also a fact that one in three visible minorities was born in Canada, including nearly two-thirds of Japanese, and 44.3 per cent of blacks.

And if current immigration trends continue, it could be projected that Canada's visible minority population will account for one in five of the total population by 2017.

Nearly 96 per cent of visible minorities live in metropolitan areas, compared with just 68.1 per cent of the total population. They account for 42.9 per cent of Toronto's population and 41.7 per cent of Vancouver's, by far the highest proportions among all cities.

Visible minorities also tended to be younger than the population in general with a median age — half being younger and half older — of 33 years compared with 39 for the population as a whole.

South Asians – the largest visible minority group

These latest figures also revealed an interesting fact that, for the first time, South Asians became Canada's largest visible minority group in 2006, surpassing Chinese. Nearly 1.3 million people — a 38 per cent increase over 2001 — identified themselves in 2006 as South Asian, which includes Canadians who came from countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. They accounted for 24.9 per cent of the visible minority population and 4 per cent of the total population.

The number of people who identified themselves in 2006 as Chinese increased 18.2 per cent, and accounted for 24 per cent of visible minorities, while the number identifying themselves as black, the third largest visible minority, rose 18.4 per cent, and accounted for 15.5 per cent of visible minorities. Other visible minorities included Filipinos, making up 8.1 per cent of all visible minorities, Latin Americans 6 per cent, Arabs 5.2 per cent, West Asians 3.1 per cent, Koreans 2.8 per cent and Japanese 1.6 per cent.

A total of 83.9 per cent of the immigrants who arrived between 2001 and 2006 censuses were from non-European countries.

Ethnocultural Diversity

The report also noted that Canada has more than 200 different ethnic origins, which compares with just 25 in the 1901 census. In 1901, people who reported Aboriginal ancestries and British and French origins made up the largest share of the population. By 2006, there were 11 ethnic origins with more than one million people each.

The most frequently reported ethnic origin was Canadian, with just over 10 million or 32.2 per cent of the population giving that as their ethnic ancestry, including 5.7 million who gave no other ancestry and 4.3 million who included Canadian with another origin. The other most frequently reported origins, either alone or in combination with others were English, French, Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, North American Indian, Ukrainian and Dutch.

The highest proportion of people reporting their ethnic ancestry as Canadian include 60.2 per cent in Quebec, 46.2 per cent in Atlantic Canada, and in the other regions ranged from 23 per cent in Ontario to just 4 per cent in Nunavut.

Meanwhile, the proportion reporting multiple ancestries continued to rise, reaching 41.4 per cent in 2006, up from 38.2 per cent in 2001, and 35.8 per cent in 1996.

There is also a 33 per cent increase has been reported in "mixed" marriages or common-law unions involving a visible minority person with a non-visible minority or with a person from another visible minority. Such mixed unions accounted for 3.9 per cent of all unions, up from 3.1 per cent in 2001, and just 2.6 per cent in 1991. South Asians and Chinese were least likely to form a union outside their ethnic group.

Commuters and work clusters

The census found more Canadians go to work in the suburbs of major cities than in the past: Nearly 3.5 million worked in suburbs in 2006, a 12.2 per cent increase over 2001 and nearly twice the 5.9 per cent growth rate in the number of city workers, which were estimated at 2.8 million. Large suburban work clusters include Mississauga and Vaughan in Ontario, Laval in Quebec and Surrey in B.C. The census also found that more Canadians were travelling to work as a passenger or on public transit than in the past.

Canada announces new funding for youth initiatives and settlement services in schools and libraries in Toronto

To help newcomers settle, adapt and integrate into Canadian society, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), in partnership with provinces, territories and settlement providers, has been delivering programs and services to migrants and providing stakeholders necessary funding to support these initiatives.

For this purpose, a new settlement funding of over $36 million has been announced to help nineteen schools, libraries and community centers delivering settlement and integration services to new immigrants, specifically newcomer youth and their families, in the city of Toronto and in high needs neighborhoods.

With this unique funding, newcomer youths and their families will have access to innovative programs, which will ease their transition to life in Canada. These innovative programs will include mentorships and peer engagement that would be delivered through sports and the arts. The schools and libraries will staff 223 specially trained settlement workers in order to improve the delivery.

This funding will also expand the federal-provincial partnership on use of libraries to help newcomers finding training programs and job opportunities using computers and the Internet. This project was launched in 2006 on pilot basis. Another such great pilot project has been started recently at Vancouver Public Library (VPL), which will provide skilled immigrants with customized employment information that will help them find work in their chosen field.

Few of the partner agencies in the city of Toronto, who will receive major share of $36 million, include Catholic Cross-Cultural Services ($4,325,740), Center for Information and Community Services of Ontario ($2,575,207), Center Francophone de Toronto ($615,177), CultureLink Settlement Services ($1,724,903), North York Community House ($3,379,461) Thorncliffe Neighborhood Office ($6,717,229), Jewish Family and Child Services ($1,658,148), University Settlement Recreation Center ($271,717), Vietnamese Association of Toronto – Youth ($130,851) and Scadding Court Community Center ($128,387).

Similarly, a new settlement funding, totaling $450,000, has been announced for the New Canadians Center to assist in delivering settlement services to newcomers in Peterborough and the Kawartha region. This funding is expected to serve an estimated 400 people with settlement services such as language training, paraprofessional counseling and assistance in finding a job, including access to workplace training opportunities in bookkeeping, computer repair, the legal field, food services and other occupations.

These funding for settlement and language training to Ontario are provided under the $920 million Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (COIA) over five years and are part of $1.4 billion package over five years to provinces and territories other than Quebec, which was committed by the Canadian federal government in budget 2006.

Proposed amendments in Canada’s immigration laws: Bill delayed until next week; ignite debate over its net effects

Though the second (and final) reading on Bill C-50 was scheduled on March 31, 2008 in the ongoing 2nd session of 39th Parliament, but it has been postponed by the government until later this week or early next week.

This delay, as I think, could have some hidden political agenda, which would not be discussed here, but on the other hand, this postponement is providing an opportunity to businesses, policy groups, lawyers and advocacy groups to comment on the net effects of proposed legislation.

As this debate is getting fire in Canada, immigration groups and lawyers are overwhelmingly opposing the proposed changes to Canada's immigration laws. Their main concern is that the changes will give open-ended powers to the Immigration Minister to instruct the department. In their opinion, the legislation does not say what those instructions would look like because they would be made public only after the bill is passed by Parliament through a notice in the Canada Gazette. Departmental officials say the instructions would be solely focused on fast-tracking skilled workers to meet demand, but critics say the law as worded could allow instructions that block the processing of applications based on country of origin, race or religion thus promote a fundamentally unfair system. It will likely encourage the use of labor exploitation through temporary work permits. There are also objections to the changes relating to mandatory review of humanitarian applications.

Policy groups and major business organizations backing this initiative on simply one point: it would give officials the authority to prioritize and process immigration applications made under the skilled worker class according to Canada's labor market needs. This group has urged that immigration policy must work as an investment for the future of Canada, rather than simply put pressure on already stretched social programs. They are certain that the government is moving in the right direction by focusing on Canada's economic needs. Last year, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) issued a report on immigration and labor shortages in Canada that called for a reduction in immigration waiting times and more emphasis on skilled workers.

The two major political parties of Canada have their own specific agendas on this issue, however, NDP is quite clear and openly opposing the proposed changes in immigration laws. The Liberals, on the other hand, are not disclosing their position but it seems that they may abstain from voting.

It would further be important to note that if the proposed bill passed by the House of Commons at the end of this week or early next week, it will likely go to a Parliamentary Committee for consideration, which can take up to 60 days. If this would be the situation, the proposed bill may become the law in the end of May or beginning of June. However, I am not certain of a definitive timeframe.

Canada announces funding for Saskatoon to develop immigration strategy and help newcomers settle

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), in partnership with provincial governments and immigrant settlement service providing organizations, has been delivering programs and services for smaller communities across Canada wanting to attract immigrants and support their settlement and integration by their own for their growth and sustainability.

Recently, CIC has announced funding of $74,000 to help Saskatoon (Saskatchewan) promote and coordinate early settlement and integration support for immigrants and refugees moving to the city. The funding will basically support the development of mutual awareness, understanding and appreciation among racial, religious and ethnocultural groups as well as help newcomers with providing meaningful employment and entrepreneurial opportunities; coordinating and promoting existing services for newcomers; and helping newcomers integrate into the community.

Additionally, this funding will also help meet the recommendations of the report entitled Building Saskatoon to Become a Global City: A Framework for an Immigration Plan. This report provides the City of Saskatoon with a framework for developing and implementing an immigration action plan. It also provides guidance on what the city can do on its own and what it needs to do in partnership with other governments and stakeholders.

As part of its $1.4 billion ‘additional settlement funding package’ over five years to provinces and territories other than Quebec, Canadian government will provide Saskatchewan more than $5.5 million in basic settlement funding during 2008-09, an increase of more than $1.5 million over the previous year.