The federal government is reimposing some visa requirements on Mexican nationals visiting Canada, a senior government sources tell Radio-Canada and CBC News.
The new rules will take effect on 11:30 p.m. ET on Thursday.
Quebec Premier François Legault has been calling on the federal government to do more to slow the influx of asylum seekers into his province. Last week, he said Ottawa should bring back the visa requirement for Mexican travellers.
The U.S. government also has been asking Ottawa to bring back the visa requirement to curb a sharp increase in illegal crossings from Canada into the United States.
Mexicans currently don’t need a visa to travel to Canada, but they do have to obtain visas to enter the U.S. American border officials say some Mexican nationals are using Canada’s visa-free rule to fly into the country and then cross illegally into the United States.
The new visa requirement is expected to affect roughly 40 per cent of all Mexican travellers to Canada, a government source told Radio-Canada.
The Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper imposed a visa requirement on Mexico in 2009 to stem the flow of asylum claims. The Trudeau government relaxed it in 2016.
The new rules won’t amount to a complete return to the pre-2016 rules. Mexican nationals with certain types of U.S. visas and those coming to Canada on study or work permits won’t have to obtain Canadian visas.
Mexican nationals who received valid visas under the previous system at any point within the last ten years won’t have to reapply under the new requirements.
The new visas will apply for a ten-year period and will allow a traveller to enter Canada multiple times and stay for up to six months at a time. Customs officers will have discretionary power to limit the duration of the visa or the number of visits, one source said.
U.S. President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speak at the conclusion of the North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico City, Mexico, January 10, 2023. López Obrador has threatened not to attend the next summit if he feels Mexico is not being treated fairly. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
The government isn’t expected to announce the new visa requirements until Thursday.
But on Wednesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused Canada of attempting to act unilaterally on immigration measures.
“They are in negotiations to reach an agreement so that we can control migratory flows from Canada,” he said in Spanish during a press conference.
“We have acted generously with them, with the government of Prime Minister Trudeau, but they were already on the verge of applying unilateral measures.”
López Obrador also said he may not attend the next North American Leaders summit — set to take place in Canada — if he feels Canada and the U.S. aren’t treating his country fairly.
“If there’s no respectful treatment, I won’t go,” he said.
Quebec Premier François Legault has been calling on the federal government do more to slow the influx of asylum seekers into his province. (Sylvain Roy Roussel/Radio-Canada)
Legault has said asylum seekers are putting heavy pressure on Quebec’s social services and finances.
“Asylum seekers have trouble finding a place to live, which contributes to accentuating the housing crisis,” the premier said in his letter to Trudeau. “Many end up in homeless shelters, which are overflowing.”
He said organizations that help asylum seekers can’t keep up with the demand. Legault said the children of asylum seekers are also straining the resources of schools already facing shortages of teachers and space.
Legault’s letter said asylum seekers who are waiting for work permits receive financial assistance from Quebec. Last October, he said, roughly 43,200 asylum seekers received $33 million in aid from the province.
Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette welcomed the news but said Ottawa must still do more.
“It’s an important step forward, but it won’t solve everything. The number of asylum seekers accepted by Quebec is far too high and our services are beyond capacity,” she told reporters Thursday in French.
“The federal government must distribute the asylum seekers across Canada. Quebec bears a disproportionate share of the responsibility for receiving them.”
One source told CBC News that domestic issues were the main motivation for the change in policy, but U.S. pressure also played a role. Many migrants were being transported by criminal cartels with the objective of getting them into the U.S., the source said.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, seen here in an interview with CBC News chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton on Friday, has said the Biden administration has been asking Canada to consider putting back in place the visa requirements for Mexican nationals. (Mathieu Thériault/CBC)
U.S. officials have suggested that people who can’t get into the U.S. lawfully have an incentive to travel to Canada to try entering illegally. Human smuggling networks are cashing in, moving people who are fleeing poverty and violence in Mexico and using Canada as a pitstop on the way to the U.S.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data shows a spike in migrants entering the U.S. from Canada after Trudeau lifted the visa requirement in December 2016. There were 1,169 apprehensions of Mexicans the year before the requirements were lifted; the number nearly doubled to 2,245 in 2018, a year after the requirements were lifted.
Last year, the CBP recorded 4,868 apprehensions. Nearly 2,000 Mexicans have been apprehended at the Canada-U.S. border in the first four months of this fiscal year.
Those numbers are a tiny fraction of the number of apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border — nearly 580,000 last year. But the rise in apprehensions at the Canada-U.S. border was enough for U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to raise the issue during his visit to Ottawa last spring.
“We talk about this issue and many issues that impact the migration of people,” Mayorkas said in an interview with CBC News Network’s Rosemary Barton Live at the time.
“I think that’s a decision that the Canadian officials are going to make,” Mayorkas told host Rosemary Barton when asked about the prospect of Ottawa reinstating the visa program.
Demands for government intervention in Air Canada labour talks could negatively affect airline competition in Canada, the CEO of travel company Transat AT Inc. said.
“The extension of such an extraordinary intervention to Air Canada would be an undeniable competitive advantage to the detriment of other Canadian airlines,” Annick Guérard told analysts on an earnings conference call on Thursday.
“The time and urgency is now. It is time to restore healthy competition in Canada,” she added.
Air Canada has asked the federal government to be ready to intervene and request arbitration as early as this weekend to avoid disruptions.
Comments on the potential Air Canada pilot strike or lock out came as Transat reported third-quarter financial results.
Guérard recalled Transat’s labour negotiations with its flight attendants earlier this year, which the company said it handled without asking for government intervention.
The airline’s 2,100 flight attendants voted 99 per cent in favour of a strike mandate and twice rejected tentative deals before approving a new collective agreement in late February.
As the collective agreement for Air Transat pilots ends in June next year, Guérard anticipates similar pressure to increase overall wages as seen in Air Canada’s negotiations, but reckons it will come out “as a win, win, win deal.”
“The pilots are preparing on their side, we are preparing on our side and we’re confident that we’re going to come up with a reasonable deal,” she told analysts when asked about the upcoming negotiations.
The parent company of Air Transat reported it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31. The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
It attributed reduced revenues to lower airline unit revenues, competition, industry-wide overcapacity and economic uncertainty.
Air Transat is also among the airlines facing challenges related to the recall of Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines for inspection and repair.
The recall has so far grounded six aircraft, Guérard said on the call.
“We have agreed to financial compensation for grounded aircraft during the 2023-2024 period,” she said. “Alongside this financial compensation, Pratt & Whitney will provide us with two additional spare engines, which we intend to monetize through a sell and lease back transaction.”
Looking ahead, the CEO said she expects consumer demand to remain somewhat uncertain amid high interest rates.
“We are currently seeing ongoing pricing pressure extending into the winter season,” she added. Air Transat is not planning on adding additional aircraft next year but anticipates stability.
“(2025) for us will be much more stable than 2024 in terms of fleet movements and operation, and this will definitely have a positive effect on cost and customer satisfaction as well,” the CEO told analysts.
“We are more and more moving away from all the disruption that we had to go through early in 2024,” she added.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
