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Trudeau pushing softer approach to temporary visas, less focus on risk of overstaying
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s pushing Canada’s immigration system to soften its approach to processing visa applications and put less focus on the risk of visitors overstaying their short-term visas.
“We’re also trying to do a better job around temporary visas,” Trudeau said Friday.
“The system — I’ll be honest — is still based around, ‘Prove to me that you won’t stay if you come,’ right?” he said, arguing that it is easier for applicants to “convince” immigration officials to grant them visas if they have “a good job and a home and a house and a good status back home.”
On the other hand, people who are strongly motivated to be in Canada for family reasons could be seen by officials as more likely to overstay, he suggested: “If your mom talks about how much she loves you and just wants to be there (in Canada), and you’re there all alone, that’s scary.”
Trudeau made the remarks Friday during an hour-long meeting with about 25 Algonquin College nursing students in Ottawa. Many of them told him they are international students, and a handful mentioned visa issues.
During a question-and-answer session, one international student recounted being hospitalized for seven months and feeling isolated. She told the prime minister her mother had tried twice to get a visa to come visit her, but both applications were rejected.
Trudeau responded that it is vital for Canadians to have faith in the integrity of their immigration system. But he also suggested that he had asked Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to take a less defensive posture when issuing visas.
“We have to stop saying ‘Well, it would be a bad people, a bad thing, if these people were to choose to stay,'” Trudeau said. “Our immigration minister, Sean Fraser, is working very, very hard on trying to shift the way we look at immigration and make sure that we’re bringing people in.”
The prime minister told the student that the Immigration Department made the wrong call in deciding not to admit her mother.
“It would seem unfair to Canadians and to all sorts of people if there was a back door. These are all the things we’re trying to balance,” Trudeau said. “But I absolutely hear you. Your mom should have been able to come and see you.”
Trudeau added that the federal immigration system is challenged by Canada’s need to fill labour gaps and by numerous crises abroad that are causing people to flee their homes.
Trudeau also said Ottawa has to do a better job helping immigrants thrive. Otherwise, he said, Canadians’ warm feelings toward immigration could chill.
“An anti-immigration party would have a hard time succeeding in Canada, because so many Canadians understand how important that is,” Trudeau said. “We need to protect the fact that Canadians are pro-immigration.”
For example, he said there must be enough housing stock for newcomer families to establish themselves without breeding resentment among the Canadian-born population. But he suggested immigration could also help solve that problem.
“There’s a labour shortage in the construction industry and building houses. So as we bring in more people who can build houses, we will solve some of the housing shortage,” said Trudeau.
“There are solutions in this. Part of it is shifting the attitudes. Part of it is also just improving our ability to process (applications) using proper digital means and computer means.”
Fraser’s office confirmed that work is underway to look at how Ottawa issues visas for relatives of people already in Canada.
“Reuniting families is a pillar of Canada’s immigration system,” the minister’s spokeswoman, Bahoz Dara Aziz, said in a statement. “We continue to be guided by principles of fairness and compassion, and work to explore all avenues possible in bringing people together with their loved ones.”
Canada’s visa denials and processing delays have made global headlines in the past year, with citizens of developing countries finding themselves unable to attend global conferences hosted in Canadian cities.
This week, the International Studies Association went public with its struggles to get visas for hundreds of people set to attend a Montreal conference next month.
Despite presenting plane tickets, income data and evidence of funding they received to attend the conference, many attendees, including panelists, have been denied on the grounds that they can’t demonstrate a likelihood of returning home when the event is over.
The issues follow an uproar last year over the denial of visas for multiple African delegates to the International AIDS Conference, also held in Montreal, which had some accusing Canada of racism.
Data updated Tuesday show that visa applications take an average of 217 days to process for people based in Britain. It’s 212 days for people in France.
While citizens of those countries don’t need visitor visas to come to Canada, academics from many developing countries who are based in Paris or London do need a visa to attend a conference Canada.
The Immigration Department did not respond to the concerns until after The Canadian Press published an article Wednesday.
“IRCC works collaboratively with organizers of international events taking place in Canada to help co-ordinate processing of temporary resident visa applications for delegates or participants to Canada,” spokesman Jeffrey MacDonald said in an email.
“We are committed to the fair and non-discriminatory application of immigration procedures. We take this responsibility seriously, and officers are trained to assess applications equally against the same criteria.”
The department said the complexity and accuracy of information in a visa application can influence how quickly IRCC processes it, in addition to the staffing and resources of offices that handle the requests.
But the department also noted that the processing times it posts online are often not “reflective of reality.”
That’s because the estimate is based on how long it took officials to process 80 per cent of applications in the previous six to eight weeks. Those include long-backlogged cases.
“Processing times can be skewed by outliers, in particular applications from our older inventory that were previously on hold for a long period of time and are now being processed,” MacDonald wrote.
“Once this backlog of applications is cleared, we will start to see processing times more reflective of reality.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 11, 2023.
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We're still stockpiling reusable bags. Big grocers have adopted solutions, but experts have concerns – CBC News
Canada’s plastic bag ban has had an unintended consequence: a proliferation of reusable bags piling up in basements, closets and, eventually, landfills.
“They’re everywhere,” said environmental researcher Tony Walker. “We’re drowning in them, and we shouldn’t be.”
To combat the problem, several of Canada’s big grocers have introduced solutions. Last week, Walmart launched a free national recycling pilot program for the retailer’s reusable blue bags. Competitors Sobeys and chains owned by Loblaw Companies Ltd. use recyclable paper bags for grocery delivery.
But some environmental experts argue that paper bags are also problematic and that the best solutions are those that help customers actually reuse their reusable bags.
“We just can’t keep giving [them] out,” said Walker, a professor at Dalhousie University’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies in Halifax. “We’re only meant to have a few of them, and we’re meant to use them until they fall apart.”
In late 2022, the federal government rolled out a ban on the manufacture, import and sale of several single-use plastics, including checkout bags. The regulations are being contested in court, but in the meantime, they remain in effect.
The regulations have made single-use shopping bags scarce in Canada, but they’ve also led to the proliferation of reusable bags, especially for grocery delivery.
“It just creates more waste, which is what we’re trying to avoid in the first place,” Walmart customer Udi Sela said in a CBC News interview in late 2022.
At the time, Sela, who lives in Maple, Ont., estimated his family had acquired about 300 reusable Walmart bags via grocery delivery.
“We can’t return them, we can’t do much with them.”
Now, a little more than a year later, Walmart has launched a pilot project to address the problem.
It allows customers to pack up their unwanted reusable Walmart blue bags and ship them — at no charge — to a facility where they’ll get a second life.
How it works
According to Walmart, bags in good condition will be laundered and donated to charity, primarily Food Banks Canada. Damaged bags will get recycled into other materials. Reusable bags typically can’t go in blue bins because they’re costly and difficult to recycle.
Customers must sign up for Walmart’s program, and enrolment is limited.
Jennifer Barbazza, Walmart’s senior manager of sustainability, said the retailer will fine-tune the details as the program progresses.
“[We] know that some customers have more reusable bags than maybe they need,” she said. “One of the things that we’re really excited to learn about from the pilot is customer acceptance and customer feedback.”
Reusable bags are living rent free in closets and car trunks across the country. Most major retailers made the switch away from single-use plastic bags about a year ago, but it’s taking time for some customers to catch on. They’re forgetting to bring their bags with them, and buying more every week.
Udi Sela has already signed up.
“I definitely think it’s a step in the right direction,” he said in an interview on Friday. “It’s something that needed to be done a while ago. God knows we’ve got a ton of bags kind of piled up.”
He said he’s concerned that some customers may find mailing the bags a hurdle. However, it’s not deterring Sela, who soon plans to ship hundreds.
Passing the buck?
Not everyone is keen on Walmart’s project. Emily Alfred, a waste campaigner with Toronto Environmental Alliance, said donating the bags to the food bank is just passing on the problem.
“We need to remove waste from the system entirely, and just sending these somewhere else for someone else to deal with is not really a solution,” she said.
Alfred said a better option is a program Walmart piloted in Guelph, Ont., in 2022. For a fee, customers could check out reusable bags from an in-store kiosk and later return them to be cleaned and reused.
“That’s a real circular reuse system,” she said.
Walmart’s Barbazza said the retailer is continuing to explore different reusable bag programs, including ones placed in stores.
She also said she’s confident Canada’s food banks will make good use of the bags.
“There’s definitely a need for sturdy items to distribute materials to the food bank clients.”
The paper problem
Among Canada’s major grocers, only Walmart offers a reusable bag program for all customers.
Loblaw recently switched from reusable to recyclable paper bags for grocery delivery. Sobeys did not respond to requests for comment, but according to its website, the grocer also uses paper bags and “reusable options” for home delivery.
Several environmental experts say paper bags aren’t a good solution, because their production leaves a sizable carbon footprint.
“Paper bags are a problem,” Alfred said. “It takes a lot of energy to recycle paper, takes a lot of trees and energy to make new paper.”
Loblaw said it continues to explore a variety of more sustainable solutions. “It’s a challenge we’re committed to addressing,” spokesperson Dave Bauer said in an email.
Both Walker and Alfred applaud Metro for its grocery delivery program, because the grocer, which operates in Ontario and Quebec, reuses delivery materials.
Metro said customers can get their goods delivered in a cardboard box or reusable bags, which can be returned and used for another delivery. Or customers can opt for a plastic bin and remove their groceries from it upon arrival.
Metro does not offer similar programs for in-store shoppers.
Alfred said the federal government should introduce regulations that mandate retailers adopt effective reusable bag programs for all customers.
“It’s up to our governments and people to demand that these companies do better,” she said.
But Walker suggested that the regulations would be hard to enforce and that incentives could be a better tactic.
For example, if retailers increased the price of reusable bags, shoppers might be less likely to forget them when they head to the store, he said.
“When the cost is a disincentive to do an activity, people change their behaviour.”
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CTV National News: Honda’s big move in Canada CTV News
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Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says she thinks unhappy premiers will come around on measures in the federal budget that touch on provincial legislation, even as they push back.
At an event in Toronto on Sunday, Freeland — who presented the federal budget on Tuesday — said the national government needs to push ahead on such issues as housing and she was “extremely optimistic” premiers would choose to co-operate.
“Housing is a national challenge, and the federal government needs to be leading the charge,” she said.
“My own experience has been when there are big issues that really matter to Canadians, after all the sound and the fury, people are prepared to roll up their sleeves and find a win-win outcome for Canadians.”
Several premiers have pushed back against the federal government in recent months and again after the budget was released on the grounds that some measures touch on provincial jurisdiction.
This week’s federal budget has premiers lashing out at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over a planned increase to capital gains taxes as well as what they say is overstepping on infrastructure and pharmacare.
In a letter released Friday by the Council of the Federation, which represents the leaders of all 13 provinces and territories, the premiers said Ottawa should have consulted them more ahead of the budget.
Individual premiers have shared more pointed critiques.
“It’s a never-ending spending platform that we’ve seen now for the last 10 years,” New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs said on CBC’s Power & Politics on Friday.
“My initial thoughts about the federal budget are that they are overtaxing, overspending, overborrowing and over interfering in provincial affairs,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said earlier this week.
Alberta has clashed with the government repeatedly over housing. Smith introduced legislation earlier this month that would require provincial oversight of deals made between municipalities and the federal government, including for future agreements around federal housing funds.
At Issue this week: The Liberals work to sell their multibillion-dollar spending plan and capital gains tax hike. Pierre Poilievre tells Radio-Canada what he thinks of the federal budget. And another province pushes back on the carbon tax.
Freeland said on Sunday that, as an example, the federal child-care program negotiated through a series of deals with provinces and territories showed that co-operation was possible.
Capital gains tax changes criticized
The federal government has also faced some opposition on what was perhaps the most prominent measure revealed on budget day: changes to Canada’s capital gains tax rules. The government has proposed raising the inclusion rate to 67 per cent on capital gains above $250,000 for individuals.
“The 21st-century winner-takes-all-economy is making those at the very top richer, while too many middle-class Canadians are struggling,” Freeland said Sunday, adding the government was asking wealthy Canadians to pay their “fair share.”
“We do need to ensure that we have some revenue coming in. This is a very limited way of ensuring that that occurs,” Treasury Board President Anita Anand said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday.
Treasury Board President Anita Anand joins CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton to talk about the federal budget and its focus on young Canadians — as well as the criticism it’s receiving.
Critics have raised concerns that the changes could result in reduced investment or capital flight.
“The big concern right now … is this going to have a detrimental impact to the progress we’re trying to make in making Canada a hub for innovation,” said Kirk Simpson, CEO of the tech company goConfirm, in a separate interview on Rosemary Barton Live.
“With productivity the way that it is, we want more capital, not less, flowing into business innovation,” Simpson told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
Freeland said Sunday that the changes will affect very few Canadian individuals — the government estimates 0.13 per cent — and the revenue will go to pay for investments in areas like housing.
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