High risk that new navy supply ships won't get built: documents

CTV News: Can Canada afford coast guard vessels?

.

CTVNews.ca Staff
Published Tuesday, June 23, 2015 1:41PM EDT 
Last Updated Tuesday, June 23, 2015 10:02PM EDT

Federal documents obtained by CTV News show a high risk that two permanent Navy supply vessels will never get built in Vancouver, as Defence Minister Jason Kenney gave an update Tuesday on a stop-gap measure.

Jason Kenney said the government is moving ahead with talks to retrofit a commercial ship at Davie Shipyard near Quebec City, until two permanent supply vessels are brought into service.

"This is good news for (Davie workers) because it's an indication of the intention of the government to sign a potential contract with the Davie Shipyard," Kenney said.

He said the government is only looking at a contract with the Davie Shipyard for now, skipping an open call for tenders, but warned that it’s still in discussion.

NDP defence critic Jack Harris blasted the decision to bypass the usual bidding process, calling it a “blatant political activities with the public dollars.” The Quebec City region is one of the few places where the Conservatives have any seats in Quebec.

Kenney, however, defended the choice to “accelerate this process” by saying that, although a number of companies had expressed interest, “it was the view of the cabinet that this is a gap in our navy’s capabilities right now and we have to move quickly.”

The stop-gap ships have been on the radar ever since both of the Royal Canadian Navy’s supply ships, HMCS Preserver and HMCS Protecteur, were retired in November.

Federal documents note, however, highlight problems with plans to build two permanent supply ships in Vancouver – although Kenney said they should be in service by 2021.

The documents describe “a risk that appropriate facilities, expertise and qualified labour force may not be available,” and “a risk the JSS design and its two ship production work in Vancouver could prove unaffordable.”

“This would necessitate significant redesign … or necessitate requesting additional project funding,” according to the documents.

David Perry, a senior analyst with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, said the $2-billion earmarked for the project “has been tight at best and could potentially be insufficient.”

Liberal MP Joyce Murray, meanwhile, called it “pure bungling on the part of the Conservative government of yet another military procurement.”

With a report from CTV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife and files from The Canadian Press

The Source:http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/high-risk-that-new-navy-supply-ships-won-t-get-built-documents-1.2436428

Comment:

"Jason Kenney is the boss of the government’s Cabinet  Management Committee. 

This Committee oversees every aspect of the government's operations.

This means that Kenney:

1. Knew that Canada did not have the skilled workers to build the desperately required  military supply  ship
2. Knew that he gave the military supply ship construction contact to a company that did not have the required skilled workers
3. Knew that the company could not bring in the required foreign skilled workers

Jason Kenney has knowingly put military lives and the nation’s security at risk.

Given his track record, we have reached the point when a full enquiry is needed to determine whether Kenney has crossed the line between gross negligence and treason."

Richard Boraks, June 24 2015

Why is a Richmond B.C. neighbourhood with many expensive mansions also one of the city’s ‘poorest’?

Why does a Richmond neighbourhood with many expensive mansions also appear to be one of the city’s poorest?

The upscale neighbourhood of Thompson, where properties typically sell in the $1-million to $3-million range, ranks high for poverty, according to Statistics Canada figures.

But former Richmond Mayor Greg Halsey-Brandt said the predominantly single-family Thompson neighbourhood has “the most expensive homes and the second highest level of household poverty” in Richmond because many residents under-report their global incomes to Canadian tax officials.

Vancouver SunClick or tap to get a more in depth dive into the numbers

More than six out of 10 Richmond residents were born outside the country, the highest rate of any city in the country. If many people who live in luxury Richmond houses are reporting low incomes to Revenue Canada, Halsey-Brandt is among those worried it means many are not paying their fair share of taxes for social services.

The former mayor said it’s revealing that the roughly 16,000 residents of Thompson, most of whom live in single-family homes, are second only to those who live in the downtown core of Richmond for reporting poverty-level incomes. Richmond’s downtown consists mostly of small condos and rental units.

“Those of us who live here know that this is nonsense. Since many of the families live in over $1-million homes. It is simply under-reporting of income that causes the problem.”

Overall across Richmond, 22.4 per cent of the population is listed as low income.

But the proportion of near-poverty-level households rises to 26.2 per cent in Thompson, which is in the northwest corner of Richmond, across the Fraser River’s Middle Arm from Vancouver International Airport.

Halsey-Brandt points out households in the less-luxurious neighbourhood of Steveston, which has the fewest immigrants in Richmond, report the smallest portion of low-income households, at 11.4 per cent.

Albert Lo, head of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, is concerned residents with expensive assets in Canada, particularly houses, are earning most of their money outside the country and not reporting it to the B.C. and Canadian governments.

The Canadian Race Relations Foundation, which operates on a $24-million endowment from the federal government and ethnic groups, is urging the Canada Revenue Agency to more closely examine the earnings of immigrants who “park large amounts of money” in Canadian real estate and then “go back to work in China” or elsewhere, said Lo, a longtime Richmond resident and Realtor.

Jiun-Hsien Henry Yao, who ran for Richmond city council in 2014, is also troubled by the income-reporting problem. Normally, he said, “you would need a family income of $150,000 to $200,000 just to feel you can afford any home in Richmond.” But in high-end Thompson, most households report income well under $100,000.

Both Halsey-Brandt and Lo said even though the problem of low reported incomes seems most exaggerated in Thompson, it is also occurring in other parts of Richmond.

“Statistics Canada continues to show (the entire city of) Richmond as one of the poorest cities in British Columbia, with a very high child poverty rate,” says Halsey-Brandt, who also represented Richmond as a B.C. Liberal cabinet minister.

This is a “serious financial issue,” Halsey-Brandt said, “because of the demands placed on our health care and education systems by newcomers.”

Although people who live in expensive houses pay property taxes, Halsey-Brandt said, many appear to not be paying an appropriate share of provincial and federal income taxes, which fund highways, transit, universities, hospitals and much more.

The Metro Vancouver Housing Data Book says Richmond, on average, has the third highest prices for single-family dwellings of any municipality, behind only Vancouver and West Vancouver.

But that appears to contradict the reported poverty levels in Richmond, particularly among immigrant households.

The Housing Data Book says that, statistically, Richmond has the highest proportion of households maintained by immigrants who are, based on their reported incomes, judged to be in “extremely dire housing” situations.

Across Metro Vancouver, the Housing Data Book reports 51 per cent of the households that report spending at least half of their incomes on shelter, which is the definition of “extremely dire,” are maintained by immigrants. In Richmond, that figure jumps to 71 per cent.

Lo said the issue of low reported incomes relates in part to Richmond’s large number of so-called astronaut parents.

“If a family moves here, but the head of the family goes back to China or East Asia to make money, that means Richmond often ends up with the spouse and children. That family is not going to declare earning much money in Canada,” said Lo.

A federal government analysis recently showed that immigrants to Canada from China, as well as Taiwan and Korea, are most likely to declare the lowest incomes in Canada.

If a family moves here, but the head of the family goes back to China or East Asia to make money, that means Richmond often ends up with the spouse and children. That family is not going to declare earning much money in Canada

The 2014 analysis found recent immigrants from these countries are also more likely to be business-class investors who own significant unreported assets and might be “strategic” in telling government about their incomes.

University of B.C. geography professor David Ley, author of Millionaire Migrants, said the problem of under-reporting of incomes is one of the key reasons the federal government drastically cut back the immigrant-investor program in 2014.

Richmond’s Thompson neighbourhood is bordered by Granville Street, No. 2 Road, the Fraser River and Georgia Strait. Significant parts were developed by Milan Ilich on the site of Terra Nova farmland, which was controversially removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve in the late 1980s. More than six out of 10 residents of Thompson have an immigrant language, most commonly Chinese, as their mother tongue, according to the 2011 Statistics Canada General Household Survey.

Based on ethnicity maps created by The Vancouver Sun’s Chad Skelton, the portion of Thompson’s population that is ethnic Chinese has roughly doubled, to 70 per cent of all residents, since 1996.

David Yau, 69, interviewed in a mini-mall in the Thompson neighbourhood, said he believes many ethnic Chinese who have addresses in the neighbourhood have “big houses in Canada, but they make their money in the U.S.A. or Asia.”

Richmond Councillor Alexa Loo, an accountant, said the phenomenon of residents reporting surprisingly low incomes to tax officials reflects the “weird economy” developing in Richmond.

Many wealthy trans-national Chinese and other migrants maintain expensive, near-empty homes in Richmond, as well as elsewhere around the world, Loo said. “There’s a lot of $2 million homes,” she said, “and it doesn’t seem the people who might own them have jobs” in Metro Vancouver.

The Source :http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-is-richmond-neighbourhood-with-many-expensive-mansions-also-one-of-the-citys-poorest?utm_source=feedbur--FULL

Comment:

"Getting Down to Reality

The attached article about millionaires and immigration goes to the core of Canada’s immigration policy which keeps out European trades workers … it’s all about rich people and real estate.

Developers, contractors and the unions have big power in Canada. They use that power to make sure that as many rich foreign families as possible get immigrant visas. More visas means more sold houses, more sold condos and more financed real estate.

A few years ago, Ottawa realized that it had lost control of its investor and business immigrant programs. Over 50 % of Asian immigrants walked away from Canada after they had obtained Canadian status for the simple convenience of their children.

Jason Kenney etc talked tough against these rich “immigrants of convenience“ who rarely showed up in Canada .They never paid taxes . They never started business. Ottawa killed the investor program. Ottawa killed the business immigration program.

But developers, contactors and unions did not become rich by being concerned with good public policy .   

The real estate boys, together with powerful education lobby, convinced Harper and Kenney to put the immigration focus on the new real estate customers… student’s with rich fathers.

I have nothing against the construction sector or the children of rich people. God bless them. May they live long and prosper. 

The problem is that Canada plays an absurd zero sum immigration game. Every visa for a rich student is one visa less for a European trades worker. The classic example of this “I win –you lose” lunacy is the Ottawa –Queen’s Park shell game over PNP quotas. 

A couple of years ago Ottawa gave Ontario a quota of 1,300. Believe it or not, this quota fairly efficiently serviced both the trades and the rich student’s.

Last year Ottawa shafted both European trades workers and rich Asian students who wanted to stay in Canada as workers or immigrants. The outcome was that both groups flooded to the PNP program.

Reacting to the flood, the PNP quota was increased to 2,500.

Ottawa turned up the screws on workers and students. More flooded to the PNP program. The quota was raised to 5,000.

Ottawa, knowing full well what was about to happen, allowed Kathleen Wynne to decide who would get Ontario’s landed immigrant visa quota. 

Young Kathleen asked Michael Chan to achieve the balance between Euro workers and Asian students.

Imagine Minister Chan’s pleasant surprise when Steve Del Duca agreed that students with rich, real estate buying fathers absolutely trump Euro trades workers.

So here we have it:

• The Immigration Minister / Beijing’s PLA Agent, gets all the visas

• The Transport Minister / Developer-Union shill, gets :

1.    A lot of sold real estate

2.    20,000 illegal union members who don’t complain when they get ripped off for about $3 billion /year on unpaid overtime and a shit load of unpaid pension benefits

Personally, I have nothing against economic interests, including foreign police agencies, unions and assorted money launderers, lobbying for their betterment.

What pisses me off is the blatant breach of trust by those Canadians entrusted with the reins of good public policy.

We cannot stop all corruption. We cannot stop all influence peddling.

But Holy Mary, Mother of God, why have we been saddled with third world political leadership at all levels. Their collective behavior has crossed the line from sleaze to treason.  "

Richard Boraks, June 18 2015

Pagliacci

Jason Kenney, Canio, and Chris Alexander, Tonio, have found their calling…opera.

What other art form could accept the story line of a bunch of clowns going to Rome in a desperate pre-election search for more Italian immigrants concurrent with Canada ignoring the thousands of young illegal Italians in the GTA.

Whether Canio and Tonio are scamming money in Calabria or  Calabrese support in the GTHA, the result is the same… the scam goes off the rails and produces nothing but pain… and then …

La commedia è finita! – "The comedy is finished!"

Canada targets Italian immigrants through new Express Entry immigration system 

June 12, 2015 — Rome, Italy— The Honourable Julian Fantino, Associate Minister of National Defence, on behalf of the Honourable Chris Alexander, Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration Minister, announced a targeted initiative to attract more skilled Italian immigrants to Canada.

The recently-launched webpage in Italian promotes the new Express Entry system among Italians, and makes it easier to find information on Express Entry for Italians who are looking to emigrate to Canada.

The Government of Canada will also launch outreach activities in Italy to promote Express Entry and attract more Italian immigrants, starting with an Express Entry information session hosted by the Canadian Embassy in Rome on June 18.

Express Entry is designed to attract the skilled workers that Canada’s economy needs in order to grow, while ensuring that immigrants – from Italy and around the world – arrive here faster than ever before.

Under Express Entry, skilled workers who want to apply to Canada’s key economic immigration programs are able to create an online profile and express their interest in coming to Canada permanently. Those who meet the minimum criteria are accepted into the pool and ranked according to various factors, including language proficiency, education and work experience. The top candidates in the pool are then invited to apply and complete applications are processed in six months or less.

Quick facts

·         Canada is a big country with big opportunities. Jobbank.gc.ca can help new immigrants find a job and has useful information on the job market across Canada.

·         Learning more about living in Canada and its great cities and towns is easy by visiting Keepexploring.ca.

·         Canada is one of the most multicultural countries in the world (including a large Italian-Canadian community), with clean and friendly cities, world-class universities, a strong economy, and many business and job opportunities. The Canadian economy has experienced one of the best performances among G-7 countries in recent years and has one of the highest standards of living among G-20 countries.

Quote

“Canada has welcomed immigrants from Italy with open arms throughout the decades. Proud and hard-working, Italian-Canadians have helped to build our great country and this tradition continues today. With our new Express Entry immigration system, we plan on accepting more Italian immigrants to Canada as permanent residents faster than ever before.”

Chris Alexander, Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration Minister

“As a proud Canadian of Italian heritage, I am very pleased Express Entry is helping to make immigration to Canada easier for Italians.  Canada.ca/AmmissioneRapida will give greater access to those in Italy who wish to come to Canada, bringing both of our great nations closer. I also encourage Italian-Canadians to reach out to friends and family in Italy interested in coming to Canada and share this exciting news.”

Julian Fantino, Associate Minister of National Defence

Related product

Backgrounder – Express Entry

Associated link

Canada.ca/AmmissioneRapida

Another Chris Alexander Heritage Minute

The Immigration Minister makes up some random fake history. Paul Wells corrects the record.

Paul Wells

June 11, 2015

 335

  19 Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander responds to a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2014. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander fields a question during question period on Nov. 5, 2014. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Chris Alexander is Canada’s Immigration minister, and during the longish period when he was an MP but not yet a minister, people used to say a smart fellow like him should totally be in the cabinet. Now fewer people say that. Let’s see why.

I’ll spare you a lot of background on an interview Alexander gave to Vice, in which he responded to a question about head coverings at citizenship oaths by saying, “We’ve done a lot in the past year to strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship. People take pride in that. They don’t want their co-citizens to be terrorists.” It was Justin Ling who did that interview and he covers its context and aftermath here.

Anyway, Liberal MP John McCallum got up in question period and asked Alexander about his remarks, while larding on the typical Liberal what-a-bunch-of-baboons snark that has made that party what it is today. Here’s a good summary of those events. Alexander wrapped up, in the Commons, with: “It is that party that has been the racist party in this Parliament over decades … I would invite that member to apologize for decades of racism by his party under Mackenzie King blocking South Asians from coming to this country, blocking East Asians from coming to this country, blocking Caribbeans from coming to this country, the injustice of backlogs under the Trudeau regime and the Chrétien era.”

That’s actually a fairly accurate list of policies under King’s government, and of the administrative mess of later Liberal governments on the immigration file. And if Alexander was answering a question about this week with an answer about the world between 70 and 13 years ago, well, it is churlish to demand too much.

Skip outside the House of Commons to the scrums, where reporters asked Alexander whether one can fairly boil Canadian history down to racist Liberals and noble Conservatives. “There were no laws that limited immigration to certain groups on an ethnic basis,” he said, “before Laurier and Mackenzie King. You’re partisans, you journalists?”

So. The Liberals were racists, and before Laurier and King, there were “no laws” that “limited immigration” on an “ethnic basis.” So says Canada’s minister of Immigration, an Oxonian who speaks good Russian and whose major at McGill was history.

People

Macdonald

Off I go to my copy of The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy by Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock (U of T Press, 2000).  Ahem:

Although the government had [before 1884] refused to limit Chinese immigration, in the face of growing public opposition, Macdonald agreed to appoint a royal commission to examine the issue. The commission began its deliberations in the summer of 1884…

Subsequently, the federal government passed the Chinese Immigration Act in the summer of 1885, at the time that the CPR was reaching completion. The act imposed a $50 head tax on all Chinese immigrants, except for diplomats, students, tourists, and merchants, and it limited the number of Chinese persons a ship could carry to one for every 50 tons of cargo, as compared with one European for every two tons of cargo as prescribed under the Immigration Act ….

In 1885, the federal government passed the Electoral Franchise Act, which excluded all Chinese persons, whether naturalized or not, from the federal franchise. … Macdonald justified the denial of the franchise on the basis that the Chinese worker in Canada was merely a sojourner, and while ‘valuable, the same as a threshing machine or any other agricultural implement,’ the Chinese immigrant to Canada ‘has no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations, and therefore ought not to have a vote.’

So yup, those were definitely laws, plural, that limited immigration to certain groups on an ethnic basis, passed before Laurier and King. It is certainly impossible for Chris Alexander to know about their policies without knowing about Macdonald’s. So he’s a liar. Here’s Stephen Harper apologizing in 2006 for the head tax Macdonald implemented and his successors maintained for six decades. “Malicious measures, aimed solely at the Chinese, [and] implemented with deliberation by the Canadian state,” the PM called them. He was right.

Who was PM between Laurier and King? Robert Borden, that’s who. Back to Kelley and Trebilcock:

A new Naturalization Act was passed in 1914. Among other things, the new act tightened the requirements for naturalization. … the court was required to send its decision to the secretary of state, who with ‘absolute discretion,’ was authorized to grant or withhold the certificate without ‘assigning any reason,’ and whose decision was not subject to appeal. …

As illustrated in the hundreds of cases of Asian immigrants who were regularly denied naturalization certificates, and political and labour activists who were stripped of their naturalized status, naturalization law was, from then on, an important tool for ensuring that undesirable immigrants were not accorded membership in the Canadian polity.

The authors go on to say the Borden government made few other changes to the immigration laws they’d inherited from Laurier and, having complained about the high rate of immigration in opposition, maintained and even accelerated that rate in power. (I could write a book about the flimsiness of most partisan distinctions in Canadian political history, and I intend it to be a theme of the books I am working on.) To be sure, there was the matter of the Borden government’s 1913 “closure of Western sea ports to immigrant labourers in an effort to prohibit the entry of East Indians.”

Here, having been flat and culpably wrong in his statements as they regarded Macdonald, one senses that Alexander is trying to be clever, to limited effect. Here there were no laws that provided expressly for the restriction of immigration on an ethnic basis; there were only laws that facilitated the administrative application of immigration policy on an ethnic basis. So this time the government didn’t say in legal text that Asians should be kept out, it simply made the keeping-out easier.

This walk down memory lane is not particularly useful. There was much in King’s record, especially, of which no Canadian can be proud. John Diefenbaker did a lot to set things right when he came to power. Joe Clark welcomed the Vietnamese boat people, and on and on. I’ve never been a fan of political discourse of the “we believe in light, and you are agents of darkness” variety. John McCallum tried that today and it was tiresome. But Chris Alexander, speaking with the authority of his ministerial office, delivered a delusional and culpably misleading capsule history of Canadian immigration policy. As if he takes Canadians for fools. He’s one of the least impressive ministers in an increasingly weak government bench.

The Source:http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/another-chris-alexander-heritage-minute/

Comment:

Chris Alexander knew better.

He comes from a respected Toronto family. Decent friends opened important doors which led to his fast tracked career.

He chose to accept his obligation to serve.

He understood his responsibilities. 

He understood the consequences of taking money from the wrong people at the wrong time under the wrong circumstances.

He understood the consequences of seeking the protection of the House of Commons in libelling Rocco Galati as “disgraced”.

He understands the consequences of regularly insulting peoples’ intelligence by misrepresenting the truth.

He understands the consequences of the Federal Court considering that he deals “in bad faith” when reviewing the files of my trades worker clients.

  

It is sad that a privileged young man from Toronto with so much promise could not deal with the terrible pressures of this evil world.  

In Jason Kenney’s power game, Chris Alexander has been left out to dry.

His career as a public servant is finished. 

Hopefully, he will reflect and come back a better man"

Richard Boraks, 15 June 2015

Turn out the lights in Ontario

http://www.ontarioimmigration.ca/en/pnp/OI_PNP_EE_CAPITAL.html

When the history of Ontario is written, June 2, 2015 will stand out as a day of infamy.

June 2, 2015 is the day that Kathleen Wynne trumped Stephen Harper as a  destroyer of the economy.

On June 2, 2015 Ontario closed the door to tradespersons.

Our own schools do not educate trades workers. Our employers do not train trades workers.

And now, on June 2, 2015, our provincial immigration office closed the door to foreign trades workers.  

How did they do it?

Below are Kathleen Wynne’s , Charles Sousa’s  and Cristina  Martins’ official guidelines for all applicants who want to come to Ontario:

Ontario Human Capital Priorities Stream Criteria

A. Education

Have a Canadian Bachelor’s, Master's or PhD degree or an Educational Credential Assessment report produced by adesignated organization indicating the foreign education is equivalent.

B. Language

Demonstrate a Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) level 7 or above in all language competencies (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) in either English or French with a test result from a recognized assessment institution. Acceptable tests are: IELTS (General Training Test only), CELPIP (General Test only) or TEF.

In summary:  

1.   Every worker MUST pass the language exam at the high academic level

2.   Every worker MUST have a university degree

In addition to the above lunacy, Ontario  had the chutzpah to openly deny the application of the Federal Skilled Trades program in Ontario…

We’ll see what the Federal Court has to say about all this ….   

Richard Boraks, June 3, 2015

Comment:

"Business Immigration

I am a fan of business immigration. Back in the 1980’s I was one of the pioneers of business immigration.

So let’s look at how Chris Alexander respects business immigration.

Chris is proud that after 9 years of working on his business immigration program that he now has 6, count them, 6, businesses benefiting from immigration.

Meanwhile, on April 13, 2015 Chris was eviscerated by small business people in Brampton. These are the tax paying, successful Canadians who are forced to break the law in order to keep their businesses running with illegal workers.

Chris expressed surprise that business was suffering because of his failed immigration policies.

So while young Chris does the pre-election PR thing with 6, count them, 6, winners, he presides over thousands of local business at risk with hundreds of thousand losers.

Chris told the April 13 business audience that he would come back in 2-3 weeks with a solution.

He never came back.

He doesn’t have time for his day job.  

I guess that Chris realises that he will be unemployed in October. He has bills to pay. He must be busy taking care of his own business associates and future clients.

He doesn’t have time for any business but his own.

It’s back to Red Mountain."

Richard Boraks, June 1 2015 

Has Canada’s immigration system lost its heart?

Families divided by nationality are waiting years to be reunited — in a system some say is uncaring, inflexible and lacks humanity. Second in a two-part series.

NICHOLAS KEUNG / TORONTO STAR Order this photo

Djordje Momcilovic sponsored his widowed mother, Nevenka, to become a Canadian permanent resident in 2008. The application has yet to be processed. In December, she was told she would have to leave Canada because her family had unwittingly paid the old $75 visa renewal fee, which had been raised to $200 a year ago. Appeals to correct what they say was an honest mistake have been unsuccessful.

By: Nicholas Keung Immigration reporter, Published on Sun May 31 2015

When Djordje Momcilovic’s father died in Croatia in 2007, the Mississauga man invited his widowed mother to visit and applied to sponsor her to live with him here.

Seven years later, Nevenka Momcilovic, now 76, is still waiting for a decision on her permanent residency application. Meanwhile, she must renew her visitor visa every year to stay in Canada.

In December, the elderly woman received a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) telling her she would have to leave Canada by Jan. 15 because her family had unknowingly paid only the old $75 visa renewal fee, which had been raised to $200 a year ago.

“I thought that this was an honest mistake and oversight and that reasonable people would review Nevenka’s case and at the very least extend her stay for a few months,” said Edwin Frank, a neighbour who is helping the family sort out the immigration problem.

Instead, Frank, whose own family came from Lithuania, was lectured by immigration officials that Momcilovic should have read the fine print and was told that the decision denying the woman’s visitor visa was final.

“I was ashamed, as a first-generation Canadian, that a federal government department can have such an insensitive and incompetent attitude and process that apparently can’t easily be appealed,” said Frank, an IT consultant.

“I wonder how many other families have experienced the insensitive and seemingly inhuman approach of CIC. These are families that are being torn apart. I feel that Canadians deserve to know what is occurring at CIC.”

While the Conservative government has invested resources in expediting the processing of skilled immigrants, investors, refugees and people slated for deportation, wait times keep growing for family reunification programs.

Currently, it takes nearly four years (47 months) simply to assess a sponsor’s eligibility to bring in parents and grandparents. The aging would-be immigrants then have to wait years for their own assessment at visa posts abroad.

To sponsor a husband or wife already living in Canada takes 27 months. To renew a permanent resident card, it’s a minimum of 67 days; for citizenship, at least two and up to three years; and for eligible live-in caregivers to receive permanent status (so their spouses and kids can finally join them here), 44 months.

“I’m a proud Canadian and grateful for the opportunities this country has given me,” said Djordje Momcilovic, 48, an occupational health and safety consultant. “But I’m not proud that the Canadian government is promoting family values and reunion but in fact it is keeping and tearing families apart.” Momcilovic sought help from his local MP to temporarily delay his mother’s removal.

Immigration Minister Chris Alexander’s office said Canada will admit about 70,000 people as permanent residents under the family class in 2015.

“Anecdotal accounts are not necessarily more broadly representative or, unfortunately, even factual in some cases,” said Alexander’s spokesperson, Kevin Menard. “Certainly, each case is unique, and each is assessed on its merits based on the information applicants provide to officials.

“We are working to eliminate backlogs and reduce processing times of all kinds … Our government is committed to reuniting as many spouses and partners as possible, as quickly as possible, while ensuring permanent resident targets are met for all immigration streams.”

Kerstin Mulfinger applied last July to renew her permanent resident card, which she needs in order to travel for work. Despite a stated wait time of 90 days, it took six months — and appeals to media and the immigration minister — for the new card to be issued. Meanwhile, Mulfinger's citizenship application has been in the system for two-and-a-half years.

After learning how long she’d have to wait (then 90 days) to get her permanent resident card renewed, Toronto resident Kerstin Mulfinger submitted her application last July. She figured that was enough time to provide a cushion before her ID card expired at the end of the year.

The 44-year-old German immigrant wants to become a citizen, but she’s been waiting for that application to make its way through the system for two-and-a-half years. She had to renew the permanent resident card so she could travel for work as a trade-fair project manager.

“It’s extremely frustrating, dealing with immigration,” said Mulfinger, who first came here in 2003 through a young worker exchange program and got her permanent resident status in 2009, under the Canadian Experience Class. “You try to talk to someone, but no one can give you proper information.

“They just have this sense of indifference and arrogance. I just feel criminalized, as if I’d done something wrong.”

As her next travel assignment in early February drew closer and the new card still hadn’t arrived, Mulfinger contacted the Star, MP Peggy Nash and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander out of desperation. Finally, in late January, she received an email from Alexander’s office that her new permanent resident card had been approved and issued.

Hazel Penullar came to Canada from the Philippines in 2007 as a live-in caregiver and applied for permanent resident status in July 2010, as soon as she met the employment requirement. Today, the mother is still waiting to get her papers and be joined by her daughter, Denise, 17, and son, Jabez, 9.

“I do call the immigration call centre to follow up on our application, but get the same answer all the time: ‘Wait,’” said Penullar, 40, who now runs a bagel shop in Toronto. “Four-and-a half years are not enough for them to process our papers. How could that be so complicated?

“I don’t know what to do anymore, and I don’t know where to go. This situation of ours and the feeling of waiting are killing me softly.”

Hazel Penullar came here from the Philippines in 2007 as a live-in caregiver. She applied for permanent residency in 2010 so that she could bring her family to Canada. She is still waiting.

Due to the long delays, her husband has had to undergo two medical exams required for the application, at $240 a pop, because the results were considered outdated.

“If only the immigration employees and Minister Alexander (were to) experience the same status that we are experiencing right now, they will for sure also be furious and sad about what has been happening.”

Toronto immigration lawyer Guidy Mamann said the work culture at the department has become more rigid and inflexible since the Conservatives came to power in 2006.

“The government has changed the rules to chip away the discretionary power of the officers for them to do the right thing,” said Mamann, a former immigration officer.

“Immigration officers used to sign their letters, but now they may only put their initials there. Everything is centralized. There is more disconnect and less accountability between our clients and decision-makers these days.”

Andrew Cash, the NDP’s multiculturalism critic, said MPs’ constituency offices are inundated with requests for help in dealing with immigration problems day in, day out.

“We see all manner of stories that really break your heart and are costly for Canada,” said Cash. “This government has failed to deal with the backlogs, and it is wreaking havoc in people’s lives.

“Right now, our bureaucracy is in a very tough time. We are seeing it not just at (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) but in other departments and ministries, where more and more power and control is concentrated at the minister’s office.”

Nadia Bongelli of Toronto and her American husband, Julian Doiron, say the wait time for their spousal sponsorship application has tripled since they applied last February. "We are not numbers," says Doiron. "They need to recognize the humanity behind it all."

Toronto’s Nadia Bongelli, 26, and her American husband, Julian Doiron, 24, know first-hand what it’s like to deal with the seemingly uncaring immigration bureaucracy.

The two met in 2011 and were married in 2013. Doiron moved to Canada last February and applied for permanent residency under the inland spousal sponsorship program. The wait time to assess his wife’s eligibility to sponsor him, originally stated as six to eight months, has grown to 17 months.

Last June, Doiron suffered a collapsed lung and had to undergo emergency surgery to put in a chest tube. The care cost the couple $25,000 because of the delays in their sponsorship application.

“It is so hard to plan your life,” said Doiron, who has an undergraduate degree in art education from the University of Arizona. “It’s like a dead spot. None of us wants to be a burden. My wife is here. Her family is here. This is my new home. I want to make progress here.

“We are not numbers. We are people who come in different shapes and sizes. They need to recognize the humanity behind it all.”

Read part 1 of our series: Immigration Canada snafus causing ‘a lot of misery’

Comment:

"Has Canada Immigration lost its heart?

Have Immigration officers lost their hearts?

No.

Our Immigration administrators have a heart. They want to do a good job.

Our Immigration laws are good.

The problem is that the fish really does stink from the head.

Our political leaders have lost the capacity to consider the consequences of their immigration decisions. They know that they are doing the wrong thing. Nevertheless, they are guided by the sociopathic delusion that they will somehow benefit from everybody else’s economic and social misery.     

Good laws and good administrators cannot survive sociopathic leadership.

This is why we are in Federal Court.

This is why, on April 27, 2015, the Court found grounds for our concern that the political leadership is:

1. Acting in bad faith
2. Ignoring the law
3. Causing economic damages
4. Insulting Her Majesty the Queen

We will succeed because although the lunatics can seize control of the asylum, they can’t hold forever.       

Let’s hope that some patience combined with judicial leadership will put the Immigration ship on a sane course."

Richard Boraks, May 31 2015