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.
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.
