FEDERAL NDP Critic for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Jenny Kwan, reacting to changes to the International Student Program announced by Marc Miller, federal Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, on Friday, said: “At long last, the government is finally doing what they should have been doing all along – work collaboratively with Designated Learning Institutions to verify the authenticity of acceptance letters for international students. If the Liberals acted sooner, it would have prevented the fraud scam by bad actors impacting hundreds of students from India earlier this year.”
She noted: “Through the work of the task force, officials confirmed 285 students were impacted by scammers. To date, less than half of the cases have been reviewed leaving many students in limbo. This is unacceptable and the Liberals must act to fix this.”
Globe & Mail: Foreign interference a 'stain' on Canada's electoral process, Hogue inquiry concludes
NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who CSIS said has been targeted by Beijing, said Ottawa must do more to protect Chinese-Canadians from intimidation and disinformation practices during election campaigns.
Ms. Kwan said she hopes Justice Hogue will recommend that election monitoring be removed from the hands of senior civil servants who answer to the prime minister.
“The report noted there is an systemic failure of communications by the government to those who are targeted or impacted by foreign-interference actors,” she said. “I strongly believe what we need is one independent agency to be mandated as the lead to take on this work.”
She also said Justice Hogue needs to hold Mr. Trudeau and his top aides to account in the final report on how his government handled CSIS intelligence that warned about China state interference and disinformation efforts.
