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Requiring people to scramble to update outdated documents during a pandemic may buy Ottawa time, she noted, but it won’t solve the crisis and is going to further agonize immigration applicants.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.”
Canadian activists detained by Israel last month while taking part in an aid flotilla trying to reach Gaza say Canada isn’t doing enough to call out treatment by Israeli officials that Ottawa has called appalling.
While Israel has rejected claims of abuse, flotilla participant Ehab Lotayef said Wednesday Israeli officials beat him on the chest and ribs, put him in uncomfortable positions for long periods and slashed his hand when he tried to help a fellow detainee.
“We felt that we were let down by Canada before anybody else, to be honest, because the Canadian government knew all that was happening,” Lotayef told a news conference on Parliament Hill.
“When we needed them was when we were being tortured — and the whole world knew that that was happening.”
Activist flotillas have tried repeatedly to reach the Gaza Strip to draw attention to tight restrictions on humanitarian supplies for Palestinians. Israel has intercepted these boats, often in international waters.
Lotayef was one of 12 Canadians among 420 flotilla activists detained by Israeli authorities last month. Their detention gained international notoriety when Israel’s Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a video of himself taunting the detained activists.
