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Woman’s Canadian citizenship revoked after 32 years amid ‘error’

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The federal government has cancelled an Ajax, Ont., woman’s Canadian citizenship over an error it said it made more than 30 years ago — forcing her to pay hundreds of dollars in a bid to get it back.

In September, Arielle Townsend received a letter from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), saying her Canadian citizenship was at risk of being revoked, as previously reported by CBC Toronto. The ordeal began when the department said Townsend’s mother may not have been a Canadian citizen when Townsend was born in Jamaica.

In a letter sent to Townsend this week and viewed by CBC Toronto, the department said Townsend’s citizenship has been rescinded.

“Your citizenship certificate is no longer valid,” it said.

“Townsend’s status in Canada is now a foreign national,” the department said in a further letter to her lawyers.

The news came as a shock to Townsend, who’s held citizenship in Canada since she was a baby.

“Applying for citizenship when you’ve been a citizen, or you thought you were a citizen your entire life is really jarring,” said Townsend. “This is putting me in a very difficult position.”

Townsend and her lawyers say they provided the government with all the facts, arguing Townsend’s mother was a citizen when Townsend was born as she was issued a citizenship card in July 1991, months before Townsend’s birth, which her mother has sworn to in a signed affidavit.

In its response this week, the IRCC said while a citizenship card was created for her mother in 1991, she did not take her citizenship oath until a few months after Townsend was born.

‘A clear error’: IRCC

Townsend’s mother has said in her affidavit that she asked a citizenship officer what she needed to do to get her infant status in Canada — and was assured her daughter was already a citizen. A citizenship card was issued to Townsend in August 1992.

“IRCC acknowledges there was a clear error in the issuance of Arielle Townsend’s Canadian citizenship certificate,” the department said in an email to Townsend’s lawyer. “However, the legislative provision pertaining to recall of Canadian citizenship certificate does not allow for any discretion.”

Arielle Townsend, right, pictured with her husband Amani. (Submitted by Arielle Townsend)

“Despite what is printed on her citizenship certificate, a person is only considered a Canadian citizen once they have taken the oath of citizenship,” it said, in reference to Townsend’s mother.

To get her citizenship back, Townsend must now make an application under “special discretionary grounds” in order for it to be processed “urgently,” said IRCC. It will cost more than $600 to apply, said Townsend.

IRCC says decision based on oath

According to the statement of facts that Townsend’s lawyers have submitted to the government, Townsend’s mother had been living in Canada for several years by 1991. She became pregnant that year and travelled to Jamaica, where she could benefit from more family support in the lead-up to Townsend’s birth.

Townsend’s mother’s family in Canada took their citizenship oath that July, around which time a citizenship card was issued to Townsend’s mother.

Townsend was born in Jamaica in October 1991.

Arielle Townsend, centre, at her graduation from the University of Toronto with her grandmother Susan, right, and mother Nichola, left. (Submitted by Arielle Townsend)

When she was only a few months old, in January 1992, Townsend’s mother returned to Canada briefly, without her, to sort out her citizenship papers.

According the statement of facts, she went to the citizenship office in Mississauga, reported Townsend’s birth and asked how she could get status for her daughter, so she could fly her to Canada.

According to Townsend’s mother, the citizenship officer told her a citizenship application wasn’t needed because she was already a citizen.

Despite that, the department said in its letter that it has decided to cancel her citizenship because Townsend’s mother didn’t take her oath before Townsend was born.

“After reviewing all of the information in my possession, I have determined that you never acquired citizenship,” said IRCC official, Corrina Clement, in the letter to Townsend.

‘It’s not fair to her’: lawyer

Townsend’s lawyer, Daniel Kingwell, says she should have never been put in a position by the government where she has no status. Townsend does still hold Jamaican citizenship.

“You go from being firmly entrenched in Canada and being a Canadian citizen to being at the opposite extreme of having even less status than someone who just entered Pearson yesterday as a visitor,” he said.

He said the government should have a better method to handle clerical errors.

“Granting her citizenship should be an immediate priority,” he said. “We are hopeful that it will be resolved, but it’s not fair to her to make her wait even a day long.”

CBC Toronto reached out to the IRCC on Townsend’s case. It said it can’t comment on individual cases due to privacy legislation, which is the same response it gave when CBC Toronto first reported on Townsend’s case. 

Now that she’s lost status, Townsend is concerned she could lose her job as she technically can’t work in Canada until her citizenship is reinstated. She also has an elderly father-in-law in the U.S. that she can now not visit.

“It’s frustrating to think that I have to apply for citizenship that I thought I had all this time,” she said.

“The humanity is really removed from this whole process.”

 

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Australia plans a social media ban for children under 16

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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The Australian government announced on Thursday what it described as world-leading legislation that would institute an age limit of 16 years for children to start using social media, and hold platforms responsible for ensuring compliance.

“Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

The legislation will be introduced in Parliament during its final two weeks in session this year, which begin on Nov. 18. The age limit would take effect 12 months after the law is passed, Albanese told reporters.

The platforms including X, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook would need to use that year to work out how to exclude Australian children younger than 16.

“I’ve spoken to thousands of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles. They, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online,” Albanese said.

The proposal comes as governments around the world are wrestling with how to supervise young people’s use of technologies like smartphones and social media.

Social media platforms would be penalized for breaching the age limit, but under-age children and their parents would not.

“The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access. The onus won’t be on parents or young people,” Albanese said.

Antigone Davis, head of safety at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said the company would respect any age limitations the government wants to introduce.

“However, what’s missing is a deeper discussion on how we implement protections, otherwise we risk making ourselves feel better, like we have taken action, but teens and parents will not find themselves in a better place,” Davis said in a statement.

She added that stronger tools in app stores and operating systems for parents to control what apps their children can use would be a “simple and effective solution.”

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. TikTok declined to comment.

The Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for the digital industry in Australia, described the age limit as a “20th Century response to 21st Century challenges.”

“Rather than blocking access through bans, we need to take a balanced approach to create age-appropriate spaces, build digital literacy and protect young people from online harm,” DIGI managing director Sunita Bose said in a statement.

More than 140 Australian and international academics with expertise in fields related to technology and child welfare signed an open letter to Albanese last month opposing a social media age limit as “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.”

Jackie Hallan, a director at the youth mental health service ReachOut, opposed the ban. She said 73% of young people across Australia accessing mental health support did so through social media.

“We’re uncomfortable with the ban. We think young people are likely to circumvent a ban and our concern is that it really drives the behavior underground and then if things go wrong, young people are less likely to get support from parents and carers because they’re worried about getting in trouble,” Hallan said.

Child psychologist Philip Tam said a minimum age of 12 or 13 would have been more enforceable.

“My real fear honestly is that the problem of social media will simply be driven underground,” Tam said.

Australian National University lawyer Associate Prof. Faith Gordon feared separating children from there platforms could create pressures within families.

Albanese said there would be exclusions and exemptions in circumstances such as a need to continue access to educational services.

But parental consent would not entitle a child under 16 to access social media.

Earlier this year, the government began a trial of age-restriciton technologies. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the online watchdog that will police compliance, will use the results of that trial to provide platforms with guidance on what reasonable steps they can take.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the year-long lead-in would ensure the age limit could be implemented in a “very practical way.”

“There does need to be enhanced penalties to ensure compliance,” Rowland said.

“Every company that operates in Australia, whether domiciled here or otherwise, is expected and must comply with Australian law or face the consequences,” she added.

The main opposition party has given in-principle support for an age limit at 16.

Opposition lawmaker Paul Fletcher said the platforms already had the technology to enforce such an age ban.

“It’s not really a technical viability question, it’s a question of their readiness to do it and will they incur the cost to do it,” Fletcher told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“The platforms say: ’It’s all too hard, we can’t do it, Australia will become a backwater, it won’t possibly work.’ But if you have well-drafted legislation and you stick to your guns, you can get the outcomes,” Fletcher added.

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A tiny grain of nuclear fuel is pulled from ruined Japanese nuclear plant, in a step toward cleanup

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TOKYO (AP) — A robot that has spent months inside the ruins of a nuclear reactor at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi plant delivered a tiny sample of melted nuclear fuel on Thursday, in what plant officials said was a step toward beginning the cleanup of hundreds of tons of melted fuel debris.

The sample, the size of a grain of rice, was placed into a secure container, marking the end of the mission, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which manages the plant. It is being transported to a glove box for size and weight measurements before being sent to outside laboratories for detailed analyses over the coming months.

Plant chief Akira Ono has said it will provide key data to plan a decommissioning strategy, develop necessary technology and robots and learn how the accident had developed.

The first sample alone is not enough and additional small-scale sampling missions will be necessary in order to obtain more data, TEPCO spokesperson Kenichi Takahara told reporters Thursday. “It may take time, but we will steadily tackle decommissioning,” Takahara said.

Despite multiple probes in the years since the 2011 disaster that wrecked the. plant and forced thousands of nearby residents to leave their homes, much about the site’s highly radioactive interior remains a mystery.

The sample, the first to be retrieved from inside a reactor, was significantly less radioactive than expected. Officials had been concerned that it might be too radioactive to be safely tested even with heavy protective gear, and set an upper limit for removal out of the reactor. The sample came in well under the limit.

That’s led some to question whether the robot extracted the nuclear fuel it was looking for from an area in which previous probes have detected much higher levels of radioactive contamination, but TEPCO officials insist they believe the sample is melted fuel.

The extendable robot, nicknamed Telesco, first began its mission August with a plan for a two-week round trip, after previous missions had been delayed since 2021. But progress was suspended twice due to mishaps — the first involving an assembly error that took nearly three weeks to fix, and the second a camera failure.

On Oct. 30, it clipped a sample weighting less than 3 grams (.01 ounces) from the surface of a mound of melted fuel debris sitting on the bottom of the primary containment vessel of the Unit 2 reactor, TEPCO said.

Three days later, the robot returned to an enclosed container, as workers in full hazmat gear slowly pulled it out.

On Thursday, the gravel, whose radioactivity earlier this week recorded far below the upper limit set for its environmental and health safety, was placed into a safe container for removal out of the compartment.

The sample return marks the first time the melted fuel is retrieved out of the containment vessel.

Fukushima Daiichi lost its key cooling systems during a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, causing meltdowns in its three reactors. An estimated 880 tons of fatally radioactive melted fuel remains in them.

The government and TEPCO have set a 30-to-40-year target to finish the cleanup by 2051, which experts say is overly optimistic and should be updated. Some say it would take for a century or longer.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said there have been some delays but “there will be no impact on the entire decommissioning process.”

No specific plans for the full removal of the fuel debris or its final disposal have been decided.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Strong typhoon threatens northern Philippine region still recovering from back-to-back storms

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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A strong typhoon was forecast to hit the northern Philippines on Thursday, prompting a new round of evacuations in a region still recovering from back-to-back storms a few weeks ago.

Typhoon Yinxing is the 13th to batter the disaster-prone Southeast Asian nation this season.

“I really pity our people but all of them are tough,” Gov. Marilou Cayco of the province of Batanes said by telephone. Her province was ravaged by recent destructive storms and is expected to be affected by Yinxing’s fierce wind and rain.

Tens of thousands of villagers were returning to emergency shelters and disaster-response teams were again put on alert in Cagayan and other northern provinces near the expected path of Yinxing. The typhoon was located about 175 kilometers (109 miles) east of Aparri town in Cagayan province on Thursday morning.

The slow-moving typhoon, locally named Marce, was packing sustained winds of up to 165 kilometers (102 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 205 kph (127 mph) and was forecast to hit or come very near to the coast of Cagayan and outlying islands later Thursday.

The coast guard, army, air force and police were put on alert. Inter-island ferries and cargo services and domestic flights were suspended in northern provinces.

Tropical Storm Trami and Typhoon Kong-rey hit the northern Philippines in recent weeks, leaving at least 151 people dead and affecting nearly 9 million others. More than 14 billion pesos ($241 million) worth of rice, corn and other crops and infrastructure were damaged.

The deaths and destruction from the storms prompted President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to declare a day of national mourning on Monday when he visited the worst-hit province of Batangas, south of the capital, Manila. At least 61 people perished in the coastal province.

Trami dumped one to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours in some regions, including in Batangas.

“We want to avoid the loss of lives due to calamities,” Marcos said in Talisay town in Batangas, where he brought key Cabinet members to reassure storm victims of rapid government help. “Storms nowadays are more intense, extensive and powerful.”

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages and caused ships to run aground and smash into houses in the central Philippines.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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