If Ottawa lets the deadline lapse and the two-generation cut-off is thus voided, affected lost Canadians could just come reclaim their citizenship. If the court cuts the government some slack and grants another extension in light of the circumstances, the uncertainty will continue.
“During that extension period, we could very well be in an election, in which case, no bills could be passed,” said MP Jenny Kwan, immigration critic of the opposition NDP, and a staunch supporter of the bill.
I call on the Canadian government to take urgent and decisive action to:
1. Strongly condemn the Hong Kong government’s NSL and the targeting of overseas activists, including Canadian citizens and residents, and call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners in Hong Kong.
2. Impose targeted sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials responsible for human rights violations and the erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms.
3. Stop according any special rights or diplomatic status to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade offices in Canada.
4. Expedite the processing of PR application for Hong Kongers fleeing political persecution and to automatically renew their work and study permit in the meantime.
“UBC, of course, can rent their space to anybody. However, from my perspective, I think that you should be looking at some ethical standards that should apply,” she said.
“In the very minimum, one would think that any organization, any institution that’s going to rent out a space to a government that is a regular, persistent, violent human rights violators, that they would apply some standards to it.”
Kwan suggested the university should have warned those taking the exam about the concerns regarding the NSL.
Kwan called UBC’s response “completely inadequate.”
“It’s just basically saying, well, it doesn’t matter. We’re blind to all of these issues,” she said.
“As a global institution, which is what UBC is, you would think that they would have a little bit more thought than to say, ‘We will just follow the regulations of basic rental requirements.’ That’s not good enough.”
When reached for comment, NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said the new measures are an abrupt shift from past policy.
“This about face from Prime Minister Trudeau is a shameless and insidious attempt to use newcomers such as migrants, international students, and asylum seekers as political cover,” Kwan said in a statement emailed to the Star.
It’s a dangerous game on Trudeau’s part, said Kwan, in trying to “shift the blame for his failures” to asylum seekers — one she called “a recipe to further hype-up hate, resentment and discrimination toward racialized people.
“Instead of wasting $250,000 on advertising, they should be investing those resources in processing applications,” said Kwan.
Political opposition has also been vocal. NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan accused the government of scapegoating migrants for systemic issues, such as the housing crisis. Kwan called for a reversal of recent immigration changes, questioning their fairness to temporary residents and international students.
In response, Miller maintained that becoming a Canadian citizen is not a right.
In a statement, Kwan’s lawyer, Sujit Choudhry, said Woo’s allegation that the MP’s testimony was “flimsy” is “false and misleading.”
“It was CSIS who informed MP Kwan in a classified briefing that she was a long-time target of (Chinese Communist Party) interference and will remain an ‘evergreen target.’ MP Kwan testified and brought to the commissioner’s attention that she believed she had been de-platformed by Chinese community organizations,” Choudhry wrote in a statement to Global News.
Choudhry noted that CSIS officials testified that Beijing works through proxy agents in Canada’s Chinese diaspora and that Kwan is concerned the Chinese government used those proxies to target her for her advocacy on human rights issues in China.
“Senator Woo has every right to turn a blind eye to foreign interference actors and activities. MP Kwan chooses to use her voice to speak up and speak out to protect and defend Canada’s democratic institutions and processes.”
NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C), her party’s immigration critic, told The Hill Times the Liberals’ change in tone is a “flimsy attempt to cover their political behinds” after making “a complete mess of Canada’s immigration system.”
“The reality is that successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to deliver the housing that Canadians need for over 30 years,” Kwan said. “Instead of owning that problem that they have created, they’ve decided to point their fingers at migrants and international students and to blame them for the housing crisis.”
Kwan said that reducing Canada’s immigration targets will have “dire” unintended consequences, but ones that the Liberals should be able to foresee nonetheless.
“Canada’s economy will struggle as a result of this, and the ripple effect will be significant,” Kwan said, adding that she believes the Liberals are more focused on ways to “shirk responsibility for their failures” than the economic impacts of the solution.
“Our economy relies on these workers and international students, and we will be faced with a dire situation of not having the workers to fill those positions,” Kwan said, adding that some post-secondary institutions will need to begin downsizing faculty to account for the loss in revenue.
“Instead of dealing with the real problems, they’ve turned to blame someone else,” Kwan said.
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said the temporary immigration measure was “woefully inadequate” and “continues to neglect Lebanese Canadian family members who are still in grave danger and desperate to get to safety.”
“Canadian citizens and their spouses and children in Lebanon are desperate to get to safety and it’s unconscionable that Canadian family members must consider leaving their spouse or children behind,” she said in an e-mailed statement.
One of the protesters from the group Migrant Workers Alliance for Change told the minister "we are the people you're trying to kick out of this country," as the minister exited the committee room.
The group of around 20 people was escorted from the building by officers of the Parliamentary Protective Service.
In her line of questioning, NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan brought up calls to reverse the recent immigration changes.