Friday, December 9, 2016

Family reunification wait times for immigrants to be cut by half, John McCallum says

'You won't need a PhD in English to understand the forms,' Immigration minister promises

By Kathleen Harris, CBC News Posted: Dec 07, 2016 11:18 AM ET Last Updated: Dec 07, 2016 12:07 PM ET
Immigration Minister John McCallum makes an announcement on family reunification during an event in Brampton, Ont. on Wednesday.
Immigration Minister John McCallum makes an announcement on family reunification during an event in Brampton, Ont. on Wednesday. (CBC)

Newcomers to Canada will soon have a much shorter wait to reunite with their spouses, partners and children.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister John McCallum announced today in Brampton, Ont., that the current average two-year processing period will be reduced to 12 months. The new one-year guarantee will apply to applications already in the queue and new applicants.
"This will be of direct benefit to the 64,000 spouses we will admit to Canada in the coming year," he said.
"But it will be of benefit to all Canadians, because I think people are more productive citizens, they do better overall, when they are with their families than when they are isolated from their families. This measure will be positive for the whole country."
McCallum stressed the accelerated processing time will not mean cutting corners on security or medical screening, and said the same mandatory checks will be place.
"Those will remain intact, and our immigration officers will remain vigilant to detect and impede fraudulent marriages," he said.
Fraudulent marriages can result in the loss of permanent resident status for the sponsored individual or the sponsor.
The expedited processing will be achieved by increasing the number of people processing claims and improving efficiencies in the system. 
John McCallum
Immigration Minister John McCallum announced the government is cutting the wait time for processing family reunification applications by half, from an average of two years to 12 months. (CBC )
The family reunification guide has been revamped from a cumbersome 180 pages to a streamlined 75-page document. The application process will also be "simplified" with plain language.
"You won't need a PhD in English to understand the forms,"  McCallum said.
The new application kits will be in place as of Dec. 15, 2016.
McCallum said he hopes to cut wait times even more in the future, but conceded the Immigration department is a "big ship" that can't be turned "on a dime."
The source:http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/immigration-family-reunification-1.3885129
Comment:
Some families are more respected than others

Today Immigration Minister John McCallum is at Brampton’s Indian Cultural Centre explaining why more families can be united more quickly with their parents, dependant children and grandparents.   

I never understood why the state pretends that it knows best when it comes to selecting which families in Canada should, or shouldn’t be united through immigration.

Of course there have to be rules assuring that Canada’s social safety net is not bankrupted through family class immigration.

But why do we see family reunification in tight little, non-economically viable compartments? We see older people beyond their prime. At best, they can baby sit or drive a cab. At worse, they visit the hospital for a few years. In any event, there is always OAS.   

Why does government not recognize that family reunification based on younger trades workers is a winner for Canada?

We used to have a great “family business” immigration class that sowed the seeds for many of today’s economic giants. The program died because the bureaucracy couldn’t figure out how to eliminate exploitation of the program.

Unfortunately, all overseas selection immigration programs eventually wither away because officials can’t deal with the bad apples that pollute the barrel. It’s too bad that programs are set up to work in a perfect world where unproven overseas applicants are assumed to be dealing in good faith. .

Rather than admit that the 40 year old family and economic immigration “overseas selection” models have failed, the state keeps inventing new programs and new announcements, including today’s in Brampton. Minister McCallum knows that 40 years of bureaucratic determined overseas section has yet to come up with a program that was not doomed to collapse through corruption, frustration, cost and backlogs.  

Ontario’s undocumented trades workers stand as testament to government’s inability to see family immigration as a positive. Most of the Portuguese, Italian and Polish undocumented workers were pulled to Canada by the presence of established Canadian family. Many are employed in a family businesses, usually a trade.

The geniuses in Ottawa are genetically unable to do the simple and productive thing …go back to the future and simply build a project to grow family business with established workers.

So as John McCallum visits some families in Brampton that want to bring over the elderly, he may wish to consider the tens of thousands of other Brampton families that are being criminalized because officials still haven’t figured out how to document tax paying members of their families.   

Pierre Trudeau was right when he said that the police have no place in the nations’ bedrooms.Justin Trudeau should seize the opportunity and get the immigration bureaucracy out of the nation’s family businesses.
Richard Boraks, December 7 2016

Friday, December 2, 2016

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at a fundraiser held on Nov. 7 at the West Vancouver mansion of B.C. developer Miaofei Pan. (Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the Wenzhou People’s Government)

Influential Chinese-Canadians paying to attend private fundraisers with Trudeau


The Liberal Party is employing an under-the-radar strategy that taps into the power of Justin Trudeau to generate tens of thousands of dollars from cash-for-access events at the homes of wealthy Chinese-Canadians that provide intimate face-time with the Prime Minister that can be used as business currency at home and in China.
Attendance figures suggest the party collects a minimum of $50,000 per event from donors – and up to $120,000 – in a system that revolves around rich entrepreneurs in Vancouver and Toronto, home to large Chinese-Canadian business communities with people willing to shell out $1,500 per ticket to meet Mr. Trudeau in a private setting.
Some of the guests and hosts at the intimate fundraisers are well-connected to China’s ruling Communist Party.
Former Liberal cabinet minister Raymond Chan, who was Mr. Trudeau’s British Columbia fundraiser in the 2015 election campaign, helps with fundraising activities on the West Coast, while Toronto business consultant Richard Zhou is a key organizer of these events in Ontario.
Mr. Chan was at the most recent Trudeau fundraiser, which was held on Nov. 7 at the West Vancouver mansion of B.C. developer Miaofei Pan, a multimillionaire from Wenzhou province who immigrated to Canada a decade ago. More than 80 guests got their pictures taken with Mr. Trudeau at the $1,500 per ticket event, including Mr. Chan.
Mr. Pan told The Globe and Mail he lobbied the Prime Minister to make it easier for well-heeled investors from China to come to Canada. He said he told Mr. Trudeau the program put in place by the former Conservative government was “too harsh.”
In exchange for permanent residency, rich immigrants must invest $2-million and are subject to strict audits.
“If they don’t do business over two years here, they cannot stay or they have to leave the country. So I wanted the Prime Minister to know that is not a very merciful policy towards these people because they want to invest or stay,” Mr. Pan said. “It’s all about investment that Canada needs. I have friends, and [they are] wealthy people, who want to stay and invest.”
A Chinese government agency in Mr. Pan’s hometown that builds ties with and keeps tabs on expatriate Chinese, supplied photos of the Trudeau-Pan event to media in China. The Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the Wenzhou People’s Government promotes China’s interests abroad, according to former Canadian diplomat and China expert Charles Burton.
“That is an agency of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Burton told The Globe and Mail. “The fact that the photos appeared in the [Wenzhou Metropolis Daily] in China suggests that the people who participated in that activity must have been tasked by the Chinese state to try and promote the Chinese position with influential people in Canada. In this case, our Prime Minister.”
Mr. Pan is honorary chair of a Chinese-Canadian organization that is an unabashed backer of Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea.
In 2012, he was part of a campaign by overseas Chinese groups to rally public support for the Chinese government’s position in a dispute with Japan over islands in the East China Sea that are close to key shipping lanes, bountiful fishing grounds and possible petroleum reserves.
That year, Mr. Pan was quoted in the Macau Daily newspaper saying his organization, the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations, had “declared its stand in newspapers” and that “overseas Chinese were responsible for defending China’s territorial integrity.”
In 2015, the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations held a symposium at which speakers backed Beijing’s assertion of title to islands, reefs and banks in the South China Sea, and issued a statement saying it “strongly supports the Chinese government’s defence of sovereignty over the South China Sea.”
The Prime Minister’s Office and the Liberal Party kept the Nov. 7 fundraiser confidential. Neither the PMO nor the party website noted the event. At the time, Mr. Trudeau was in Vancouver to announce a new marine strategy.
“The party has … been clear that not every event is on the party’s national website, while it’s important to note that the Liberal Party of Canada is still the only major federal political party that maintains an active online events listing in any form at all,” party spokesman Braeden Caley said in an e-mail. “All fundraising by the Liberal Party of Canada fully complies with all Elections Canada rules and regulations for political fundraising.”
The Liberal Party would not provide The Globe and Mail with a list of attendees. Mr. Pan said all the guests were his friends, and all are Canadian citizens.
In Toronto, Mr. Zhou is the chief Liberal ambassador to deep-pocketed Chinese-Canadian business executives. His web biography says he is also a consultant to the state-supervised Beijing International Chamber of Commerce. He did not respond to phone calls or e-mails, but Mr. Caley confirmed that Mr. Zhou is a “volunteer fundraising co-chair in Ontario.”
Mr. Zhou helped arrange a May 19 fundraiser at the home of Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce chair Benson Wong at which Mr. Trudeau was the star attraction, an event attended by Chinese billionaire and Communist Party official Zhang Bin. A few weeks later, Mr. Zhang and his business partner donated $200,000 to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and $50,000 to erect a statue of Mr. Trudeau’s father.
Insurance mogul Hong Wei Winnie Liao has hosted several Trudeau fundraisers in Toronto. The most recent was on April 14, but no details are available from either the Liberal Party or Ms. Liao.
Reached by telephone, Ms. Liao said: “I will not accept any interview.”
“It may not be convenient for me to comment,” she added before hanging up. She did not respond to text messages asking about the fundraisers at her home.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly told the House of Commons the Liberal Party respects the “values that Canadians expect in terms of openness, accountability and transparency.”
New rules Mr. Trudeau set out when he won political power last year appeared intended to end cash-for-cash fundraisers. Those rules state “there should be no preferential access to government, appearance of preferential access” in exchange for political donations.
With reports from Xiao Xu, Kathy Tomlinson and Nathan VanderKlippe
rfife@globeandmail.com
schase@globeandmail.com
The source:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/influential-chinese-canadians-paying-to-attend-private-fundraisers-with-trudeau/article33131597/
Comment:
What happens when failed immigration policies
      meet insane political financing rules?

I feel sorry for legitimate politicians having to waste time and reputation dealing with our crazy political financing rules.

Can anyone justify a process which forces a Prime Minister to beg for money at dinners that he would rather avoid?

Can anyone believe that a national political party will change public policy in return for a $50,000 dinner?

On the other hand:

Can anyone deny that consultants serving the Asian market are the tail wagging the immigration dog as they lurk in the political financing shadows?

Can anyone deny that less legitimate politicians are sharing the cash with the consultants as they game, and drive, the immigration process?
   
Our legitimate desire for financing “transparency” has backfired. Instead of controlling corruption, the rules have tied the hands of legitimate lobbying of honest politicians while unleashing the slime balls, both consultants and politicians, who play the immigration angles.

The cost of this dysfunction is high. It is on track to fundamentally change the country without Parliamentary or Constitutional approval."
Richard Boraks, December 2 2016

Canada’s Global Skills Strategy

Canadian workers are among the most highly educated and highly skilled workers in the world. The goods they produce and the services they provide are respected the world over. That said, Canada needs to be able to access the skills and expertise of talented workers from around the world to enable Canadian firms to succeed in the global marketplace.
To grow Canadian businesses, create more Canadian jobs and compete among the best in the world, we must also attract the best minds in the world. Perhaps more than any other country, Canada has drawn strengths from its diversity and openness to change.

Faster Processing for Global Talent

Canada’s Global Skills Strategy will make it easier for Canadian businesses to attract the talent they need to succeed. 
Whether they need to bring in professionals to train Canadian workers, or to hire global talent with highly specialized, in-demand skills, the proposed new Global Skills Strategy will set an ambitious two-week standard for processing visas and work permits for low-risk, high-skill talent for companies doing business in Canada. This initiative will target:
  • High-growth Canadian companies that need to access global talent in order to facilitate and accelerate investments that create jobs and growth. This will include companies that can demonstrate labour market benefits, such as increasing investments, knowledge transfer and Canadian job creation; and
  • Global companies that are making large investments, relocating to Canada, establishing new production or expanding production, and creating new Canadian jobs.

The Short-Duration Work Permit Exemption

The government will introduce a new work permit exemption for short-duration work terms. The exemption will apply to work terms of fewer than 30 days in a year, or brief academic stays
Date modified: 
Is the trades sector included?

Our Immigration Minister did the right thing by coming up with his `Global Skills Strategy`. The idea of this strategy to help Canadian business grow by making work permit issuance faster for skilled workers.

Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling that Ottawa will help high tech companies but continue to screw the skilled trades employers.

Hopefully, I`m wrong.

But if I`m right, which I probably am, then three things will happen:

1. More illegal workers from Europe

2. More legal immigrants from Asia

3. It`s game over for Trudeau

Richard Boraks, December 1 2016

John Ivison: Liberal cash-for-access events aren’t just ugly, they may be illegal

 |  | Last Updated: Nov 29 10:41 AM ET
More from John Ivison
Finance Minister Bill Morneau
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred ChartrandFinance Minister Bill Morneau

The government’s cash-for-access scandals are multiplying like zebra mussels, as more ministers are revealed to have rented out their public office to anyone prepared to stuff hundreds of dollars into the Liberal Party’s coffers.
The case for the defence is that the government does not offer preferential access to donors and there is no conflict of interest, either real or perceived. All Canadians have equal access to ministers, said Marco Mendicino, the Liberal MP who drew the short straw and had to defend the scheme on CTV’s Question Period.
The Conservatives heard clunking sounds in the Trudeau electoral juggernaut even before the prime minister lauded one of the world’s great dictators and found himself being booed at Sunday’s Grey Cup.
“They are breaking their own code of ethics and are close to breaking the law,” said Candice Bergen, again on Question Period.
Bergen had it half right. Five-hundred-dollar-a-ticket fundraisers in private homes, such as the one attended by finance minister Bill Morneau and the chief executives of companies that lobby Finance Canada, clearly breaches the Liberals’ open and accountable government guideline on preferential access for donors.
Fred Chartrand / The Canadian Press
Fred Chartrand / The Canadian PressEthics Commissioner Mary Dawson prepares to appear at Commons committee, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday June 10, 2014.
But the fundraisers go beyond that. There is a strong case to make that they violate the federal Conflict of Interest Act.
The problem here is not lack of legislation — it’s want of enforcement.
Section 7 of the federal act says: “No public office holder shall, in the exercise of an official power, duty or function, give preferential treatment based on the identity of the person or organization that represents the first mentioned person or organization.”
It’s clumsily worded but it effectively says the same thing as Trudeau’s “preferential treatment” guideline.
The Liberals might argue that no preferential treatment has been proffered, even if it was the expectation of being treated preferentially that motivated most donors.
But if section 7 is deemed not to have been contravened, other portions of the Act are clearly being violated — such as section 16, which says, “No public office holder shall personally solicit funds from any persons or organizations if it would place the public office holder in a conflict of interest.”
Is this rule null and void just because it is party bagmen who are passing the hat at private gatherings, not the minister?
Canada has a conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, though you may not have heard of her, since her modus operandi is to create as few waves as possible.
Mary Dawson has released only 34 public reports on the 219 cases she has investigated since 2007, finding just 10 people guilty in all that time.
Dawson’s term is up in January but she won’t say whether she hopes to be reappointed and she didn’t return calls for comment for this article.
The ethics commissioner has called the pay to play fundraising activities of the Liberals “unsavoury” but has said she cannot pass judgment on whether they breach Trudeau’s own rules because the prime minister gave that mandate to the Privy Council Office.
Yet it is not Trudeau’s guidelines she should be enforcing, it’s the Conflict of Interest Act — her raison d’etre, a function so central to her office it makes up part of its name.
She might argue that Morneau and the others were not exercising “official power, duty or function” at the fundraisers.
But ministers did not attend these events as private individuals — they were there in their official capacity and in Morneau’s case, it was said to be part of his budget consultation outreach.
In fact, Dawson hasn’t said much, beyond pointing out that political activity is beyond her remit. But rich donors are not shelling out $1500 as a show of democratic philanthropy — the expectation is that they will enjoy future favours. As such, the suspicion must be that political activity is indivisible from public policy.
As far as we know, Dawson hasn’t even investigated to see whether preferential treatment was extended to top-level Liberal Party donors precisely because they were donors
As far as we know, Dawson hasn’t even investigated to see whether preferential treatment was extended to top-level Liberal Party donors precisely because they were donors.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said there are plenty of reasons found in the Conflict of Interest Act for Dawson to say to ministers that they are in violation. “If she was actually a watchdog who was fulfilling the main purpose of the Conflict of Interest Act, she would rule that ministers can’t participate in these events,” he said.
It constitutes rank hypocrisy by the Liberals. They came in claiming to wash whiter than other brands. Now their defence is built on the fact that the other guys did it too.
I have chatted over cocktails with a number of members of this government. They are, for the most part, witty and interesting people.
But it’s not as if it’s an evening with Louis C.K. — and you can get decent seats to see him at Madison Square Garden next month for a hundred bucks.
People seeking favours from Liberal ministers will continue to pay for access until we have a government that appoints a watchdog that barks. My advice — don’t hold your breath.

The source:http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-ivison-liberal-cash-for-access-events-arent-just-ugly-they-may-be-illegal

Comment:

"The End of Members of Parliament being Paid to Play

Back in the early 1990’s the Speaker of the House of Commons made a terrible mistake by allowing Members of Parliament to take money to cover the cost of their offices processing constituent’s immigration paperwork. This decision opened the door for exploitation by unscrupulous MP’s and their staffs.

Since the 1990’s, consultants with Asian clientele have paid to ensure that paid for Members of Parliament lobby for Canadian immigration quotas being dominated by Asians. Immigration statistics confirm that the consultants get value for their money.

Thankfully, after 20 years of Parliamentary corruption, Canadians are now showing concern that our legislators are being paid for access.    

Canadians want to believe in diversity and fair play, not special status purchased through selective, orchestrated, expensive, very successful, and probably illegal political lobbying. “Paying to play” no longer passes the smell test.

Many Canadians feel that the immigration system is rigged against families and businesses from the large European community. They feel that Italians, Portuguese, Poles etc. become undocumented while the documents go to Asians who systemically finance a political lobbying system. The data backs up these concerns.

Many in our Italian, Portuguese, Polish and other communities feel frustrated with both the perception and reality of a double standard. Our Federal representative’s find  time and money to lobby Minister McCallum to visit the Golden Temple in the Punjab. Our representatives find time and money to lobby Minister McCallum to go to the Chandigarh visa office . There, our Minister  enquires about overseas parents, grandparents and university educated immigration applicants from the Punjab. These are applicants who have not yet proven their commitment to Canada. (The fact is that Canada has a dismal retention rate with Asian immigrants).The data backs up these concerns.

It is difficult for many Canadians to accept that our representatives can send Minister McCullum to commit visas to strangers in India but not to neighbors in Ontario.

Meanwhile, John McCallum wants to deport the tens of thousands of committed, non-Indian residents who are building the homes for the new strangers. Overseas consultants and their MP clients succeed where Canadian employers and families fail.


  
When considering quotas and diversity, we ask that our elected representatives consider the entire community, not justice based on paid access.     

Ignoring these concerns, as with Brexit and Trump, could prove economically, politically and socially problematic. "
Richard Boraks, November 29 2016

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Nationalist movements could smother 

Justin Trudeau: Paul Wells

The Trudeau government is built entirely on the driving assumptions 
of the era. And yet the Trudeau government finds itself operating in a 
world that’s sprinting away from these assumptions.
Justin Trudeau, with Argentine President Mauricio Macri and his wife Juliana Awada in Buenos Aires, now leads a government in crisis.It’s not a crisis Trudeau made, but he’s stuck with it — the crisis of globalization, writes Paul Wells.
Justin Trudeau, with Argentine President Mauricio Macri and his wife Juliana Awada in Buenos Aires, now leads a government in crisis.It’s not a crisis Trudeau made, but he’s stuck with it — the crisis of globalization, writes Paul Wells.  (SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS)