The pandemic has exposed many shortcomings of the immigration process, said MP Jenny Kwan, the NDP’s immigration critic, and officials must cut unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy in these unprecedented times.
One of the things they could do, she said, is to automatically renew immigration applicants’ expired documents.
Requiring people to scramble to update outdated documents during a pandemic may buy Ottawa time, she noted, but it won’t solve the crisis and is going to further agonize immigration applicants.
“To this day, it is a mystery to me why the government has insisted on contacting each individual with an expired or expiring permanent resident visa to see if they still wanted to come to Canada, instead of just automatically renewing it,” Kwan said.
“Why did they do that? Why did they spend all those resources doing that instead of putting it into processing applications? They need to adopt an approach that’s not so rigid.”
How your data determines what you pay!
What if the price you pay at the store is different than the person standing next to you?
Corporations can use personal data such as location, device type, browsing history, purchase behavior, login status, and loyalty cards/programs to profile consumers and determine what different people are charged for the same goods and services.
How can we stop this from happening in Canada?
Join MP Jenny Kwan, Patrick Johnson - President of UFCW 1518, Jim Stanford - Economist and Director of Centre for Future Work, and other experts, for a public forum and community conversation about what surveillance pricing means for consumers and workers, how technology and personal data are changing the way prices are set, and what everyday people can do to fight back.
