Settlement agencies are preparing for the arrival of tens of thousands of Ukrainians before the end-of-March deadline for those fleeing the Russian invasion to enter Canada on emergency visas.
The federal government has issued 936,293 temporary emergency visas since March 2022 for Ukrainians who want to work or study in Canada while they wait out the war.
A total of 210,178 people had actually made the journey to Canadaas of Nov. 28.
As many as 90,000 more emergency visa holders are thinking of coming before the deadline, pre-arrival surveys by Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada and Operation Ukraine Safe Haven suggest.
Operation Ukraine Safe Haven was formed to centralize communications between governments and settlement agencies responding to Ukrainians who arrived in Canada after the war began.
That would mark a considerable increase in the number of Ukrainian newcomers compared to past months, said Sarosh Rizvi, the organization’s executive director.
When Russia launched its violent invasion of Ukraine in 2022, millions of people escaped the country in search of safety. Canada took the extraordinary approach of opening its doors to an unlimited number of Ukrainians and their families with a new emergency visa program.
Compared to what’s in place for people who arrive as typical refugees, there were fewer built-in supports to help the Ukrainian newcomers get on their feet. Instead, community members stepped up to donate clothes and furniture, businesses offered people jobs and some people even opened their homes.
Even with all that goodwill, people still struggled to find a place for their families to stay while they got on their feet.
Now, as Ukraine approaches the second anniversary of the Russian invasion, that groundswell of support has waned.
“We don’t have the level of public interest that we did two years ago,” Rizvi said in an interview Wednesday.
Instead, the response has become more institutionalized, he said. That means the settlement sector is more prepared to respond now, but the expected influx will stretch its capacity.
“I think every element is about to be tested,” he said, from settlement staff to hotel capacity and even food banks.
The other challenge is finding people places to live, he said.
“There’s no great response to that right now. It remains a need and it is still being dealt with on an individual by individual basis,” he said.
The organization is trying to encourage people who choose to come before the deadline to consider settling in smaller communities where housing is easier to find and more affordable.
Another group dedicated to helping Ukrainians navigate the immigration system called Pathfinders for Ukraine is also trying to connect with people abroad and help them decide if coming to Canada is the right decision for them.
With supports drying up in some European countries, Ukrainians who don’t want to return to the war may be tempted to come to Canada now, even if it’s not quite the right fit, said the group’s founder.
“It’s a resource-intensive, costly, emotionally distressing decision to make that move across an ocean,” Randall Baran-Chong said in an interview.
“For many people, Canada is the right choice, but for many of them it’s not.”
There are a few factors that give people a better chance at success in Canada, he said, including how adaptable people are and whether they have family in Canada, speak English or French, are eager to work and have a nest egg to tide them over until they get a job and pay the considerable cost of rent.
Canada had initially set the deadline to enter Canada for March 2023, but the immigration minister at the time, Sean Fraser, extended it by another year just days beforehand.
The Immigration Department saw a huge spike in people picking up and moving to Canada ahead of that initial deadline, documents obtained from the department under the Access to Information Act show.
Nearly 8,000 people with the emergency visa arrived in the last week of March 2023 alone.
There was also a last-minute rush to apply right before the government closed the program to new applications in July, the documents show.
The figures leave Baran-Chong with the impression that people may be motivated to make good on the visa before they lose the chance.
“I think by the end of this month, we’ll have a sense of how many people are actually thinking of exercising it, but we’ve already heard people talking about the move since probably September or October,” he said.
People with the special visa who arrive after March 31 can still come to Canada, but they won’t be eligible for the three-year work or study permit under the program, and won’t be entitled to any financial or settlement supports.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 18, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
