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2009 Fall Report of the Auditor General of Canada
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Be More Flexible - Ottawa Urged, Immigrant Reps Offer Plan
The Gazette, January 20, 2010, JAN RAVENSBERGEN THE GAZETTE
Chaos and carnage now holding sway in the Port-au-Prince region requires a much more flexible and humanitarian approach to encourage as many Haitian-family reunifications in Canada as possible, Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said yesterday.
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Immigrant Kids May Need Some Help To Do Their Best At School
The Vancouver Sun, January 19, 2010
Education is about more than money, of course, but its contribution to national economic well-being is hard to overstate. We need all students to realize their academic potential in order to ensure prosperity — theirs and ours.
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Health-care Concerns Draw Crowd
Calgary Herald, January 18, 2010
Health-care advocacy group Friends of Medicare reached out to Calgary’s South Asian immigrant community Sunday, giving them a forum to talk about the system.
Jagtar Shergill said about 120 people turned up at a forum at the Whitehorn Community Centre in the city’s northeast, with many expressing the same concerns as other Calgarians about access to doctors and long waiting lists to see specialists or get tests like an MRI.
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Ottawa To Fast-Track Immigration Claims
Edmonton Journal, January 17, 2010,
OTTAWA / The government is fast-tracking an estimated 5,000 immigration applications to reunite families in Canada with relatives “directly and significantly affected by the earthquake in Haiti."
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New Caregiver Residency Rules Panned - Filipino community advocates say changes don’t go far enough to stop abuse
The Vancouver Sun, December 14, 2009, Graeme Wood
The federal government announced Saturday proposed regulations it says will better protect the rights of live-in caregivers and make it easier for them and their families to obtain permanent residency in Canada. But some members of the Filipino community — who make up the majority of live-in caregivers — say the changes won’t go far enough to fix the discrimination and abuse caregivers face at work. Full Story...

Governments To Fast-Track Assessment Process
Calgary Hearld, December 12, 2009, Derek Sankey
Iranian immigrant Fariborz Birjandian, executive director of the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, welcomes the announcement of quicker assessments for foreign credentials, but has some reservations.
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Federal, Provincial and Territorial Governments Speed Up Foreign Credential Recognition for Newcomers to Canada
TORONTO, Ontario, November 30, 2009
Under the new Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications, foreign-trained workers who submit an application to be licensed or registered to work in certain fields will be advised within one year whether their qualifications will be recognized. The Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and Co-Chair of the Forum of Labour Market Ministers, and the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, today endorsed a new framework to enhance foreign qualification recognition for internationally trained workers.
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Statistics Canada Releases Study - Quality Of Employment In The Canadian Immigrant Labour Market, 2008
Statistics Canada, November 23, 2009
In 2008, there were key differences in many indicators of quality of employment between immigrants and non-immigrants. On average, immigrant wages were lower, while rates of involuntary part-time work, temporary employment and over-qualification were higher. For immigrants who landed in Canada more than 10 years ago, however, the indicators of quality of employment more closely resembled those of the Canadian born.
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Scotiabank Inks China Partnership
The Windsor Star, November 7, 2009
TORONTO Bank of Nova Scotia said on Friday it reached a partnership deal with China Everbright Bank that will allow people moving to Canada to open a Scotiabank account while still in China.
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‘Affordability Gap’ Can Be Conquered
The Vancouver Sun, November 6, 2009, Norma Greenaway, CANWEST News Service
OTTAWA — An estimated 1.5 million needy households in Canada could have access to suitable, affordable housing for the cost of slightly more than $1 a day for every household in the country, a new report says. The price tag to eliminate Canada’s “housing affordability gap” was a key finding in the report, which said single-parent families, the unemployed, the elderly, immigrants and aboriginals were being hardest hit by the lack of suitable housing.
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Refugees Wait In Squalor
Calgary Herald, November 5, 2009, Eva Ferguson, Calgary Herald
Calgarian sat in Kenyan camp for three years - Zelalem Meshesha spent more than three years waiting in the squalor of the Kakuma refugee cap in Kenya, hiding from the dust storms and the sweltering 42 C heat. By day, he would line up for hours for water and raw corn. By night, he slept in dirt, under trees, dodging snake bites, beatings, and theft from locals equally desperate to eat.
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Changes To Immigration Policies Having Little Impact
Calgary Herald, November 4, 2009, David Akin, CANWEST News Service Ottawa
There is no evidence that changes the Conservative government made to Canada’s immigration system in 2008 have reduced the backlog of applications or addressed the needs of Canada’s labour market, the auditor general said Tuesday. Moreover, investigators with auditor general Sheila Fraser’s office said an unknown number of foreign workers received work permits to enter the country when there was neither a guaranteed job nor even a guaranteed employer.
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Ottawa Cuts Immigrant, Refugee Targets for 2010
Calgary Herald, November 3, 2009, Norma Greenway, CANWEST Service Ottawa
Canada expects to accept fewer refugees and family class immigrants in the coming year than this year, new government figures show. The 2010 numbers, outlined in Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s annual report to Parliament, show the government’s target for accepting people who apply for asylum after they land in Canada is more than 3,000 less this year.
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Lankan asylum seekers placed under detention in Canada
Daily Mirror, October 21, 2009
Canada's Immigration Review Board member Leeann King has ordered the continued detention of 76 Sri Lankan men found on a boat off the coast of Vancouver Island.
The order followed a report by a representative for Canada's immigration minister who said they haven't had time to complete their examination of the migrants and details around their arrival here are sketchy.
"I'm satisfied if they were released at this current time with no alternatives to detention they would have no motivation to appear for further examination in the minister's timeframe," King said Tuesday.
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Ottawa Plans $250,000 Push to Help Newcomers Improve Their Language Skills
Calgary Herald, October 18, 2009,
With only a quarter of new immigrants accessing free language lessons after arriving in this country, Ottawa is launching a pilot program to encourage more new Canadians to brush up on their English or French.
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Foreign Worker Blacklist Praised
Calgary Herald, October 16, 2009
Proposal meant to prevent abuse of employees - Under the proposed regulation, the government would forbid employers from hiring people under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program for two years if they renege on promises regarding wages and working conditions. Their names would be posted on the Citizen and Immigration website.
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Excellent Calgarians to be Honoured Tonight
Calgary Herald, October 15, 2009
Eight of Alberta’s top community leaders — half of them Calgarians — will join a very exclusive club when they are made members of the Alberta Order of Excellence tonight. Shirzad Ahmed is an immigration and human rights lawyer who knows only too well the plight of the refugee.
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Ethnic Sensitivity Crucial in Medical Treatment
Calgary Herald, October 14, 2009
A patient’s ethnic background can have a profound effect on how they want to be treated by doctors, University of Alberta researchers have found. The findings of a recent study highlight the need for countrywide training to make health-care professionals more culturally sensitive, said Earle Waugh, director of the team that conducted the research.
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Ottawa Targets Employer Abuse of Foreign Temps
Calgary Herald, October 14, 2009
Under the proposed regulation, the government would bar employers from hiring workers under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program for two years if they fail to keep their promises regarding wages, working conditions or occupations. It says their names also would be posted on the Citizenship and Immigration website.
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Program Recognizes Foreign Skills
The StarPhoenix, October 6, 2009
The Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology (SIAST) will play a new role in accrediting immigrants in a first-of-its –kind program to recognize technical language skills.
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Kenney Eyes Fix For ‘Broken’ Refugee System
Calgary Herald, October 7, 2009
Reform package on track for fall, says minister - although he declined to provide specifics, Kenney said the reforms are designed to speed a refugee claims process that now can take five or more years and also crack down on phoney immigration consultants charging large amounts of money to help bogus refugees get into Canada.
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Immigrant Iilliteracy Costs Canada Billions
National Post, September 28, 2009
TD ECONOMICS STUDY - Immigrants are not being utilized to their full potential, costing Canada’s economy billions of dollars every year, says a new report from TD Economics — and poor language and literacy skills are at the heart of the problem.
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Skilled Immigrants Are The Key To Business Success
Globe and Mail, September, 2009
With the end of the recession in sight, all of Canada's employers need to be thinking about their long-term talent strategies. A global, competitive marketplace means tapping into and investing in the strengths of all of the country's work force, including skilled immigrants, so that local economies can grow, compete and prosper.
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Immigrants Take Brunt Of Recession, Recover Less Quickly
Globe and Mail, September, 2009
While tens of thousands have joined the ranks of the unemployed during a nerve-wracking recession, newcomers to Canada are losing their jobs at more than three times the rate of workers who were born here – and may suffer much longer-lasting repercussions, even after the economy starts to recover.
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Findings Come As Tories Move To Reduce Numbers Coming To Canada
Ottawa Citizen, July 28, 2009
Incidents of members of the Roma minority in the Czech Republic being firebombed, turned away from restaurants and refused housing by landlords are contained in a fact finding report released in Ottawa on Monday.
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$9.5M In Language Training Announced
Calgary Herald - July 11, 2009
Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Friday he wants more immigrants in Canada to
learn one of the country's official languages and expects them to better integrate into Canadian society.
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Czech Republic Recalls Ambassador
Beaumont- Hamel, France, July 1, 2009
Canada's decision to impose visa requirements on Mexican and Czech citizens as a way of curbing dubious refugee claimants was roundly criticized Monday by their governments and business and civil rights groups as unnecessary, shameful and an unwelcome irritant.
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