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IN THE NEWS: Globe & Mail: CMHC funding model questioned after halt of non-profit Vancouver housing project

In Mr. Pomeroy’s analysis, rents for projects supported by CMHC in the Vancouver area could have gone as high as $2,150, in 2017 dollars, even though average local rents at that time were only $1,650.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who represents the East Vancouver riding in which the Anhart project is located, has been raising concerns about the Rental Construction Financing Initiative for months. This latest development, she said, has confirmed her worst fears.
“This was a non-profit trying to deliver affordable units. But non-profits are not really able to get access to this money for the community,” she said. She added that Anhart is in an unusual position because it received conditional approval for a loan and then had it rescinded. She has heard from other housing groups that simply haven’t applied, or were rejected because they didn’t meet the program requirements.

IN THE NEWS: Globe & Mail - CMHC funding model questioned after half of non-profit Vancouver housing project

NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who represents the East Vancouver riding in which the Anhart project is located, has been raising concerns about the Rental Construction Financing Initiative for months. This latest development, she said, has confirmed her worst fears.

“This was a non-profit trying to deliver affordable units. But non-profits are not really able to get access to this money for the community,” she said. She added that Anhart is in an unusual position because it received conditional approval for a loan and then had it rescinded. She has heard from other housing groups that simply haven’t applied, or were rejected because they didn’t meet the program requirements.

IN THE NEWS: Globe & Mail - First flight of Afghans to Canada a ‘relief’ but advocates say more needs to be done faster

Former Afghan interpreters now living in Canada held a rally on Parliament Hill on Tuesday to demand that the government bring their families to safety.

Jenny Kwan, the NDP Critic for Immigration, and Randall Garrison, the NDP Critic for Defence, said in a statement that Afghan interpreters, other Afghans who worked for Canada and their extended families are in a “highly precarious situation.”

“Although many collaborators are finally being helped to come to Canada, the Liberals’ new process is not good enough,” the statement said. The NDP is asking the government to broaden the program to allow for extended family, and for the application deadline to be extended.

IN THE NEWS: The Record - When COVID goes, so goes our hybrid Parliament

In the hybrid system, a corporal’s guard of MPs from each party, masked and socially distanced, physically attended each day’s sitting while most members tuned in remotely from their homes, offices or wherever they happened to be. They were able to ask questions, to join debates and, once the bugs were out of the technology, to vote.

By the time MPs went home for the summer (and an anticipated election), they had become familiar, if not comfortable, with the changes born of necessity. Most seemed to feel the system had worked as well as could reasonably have been expected in such unprecedented circumstances. But there was no clamour to make the digital experience permanent.
Jenny Kwan, the NDP member for Vancouver East, said the hybrid system was “the best that we could do. There were times you would spend so much time getting everything functioning technically, and by the time you do, you have no time to do the actual work.”

IN THE NEWS: Toronto Star - Canada faces a staggering immigration backlog

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.”

IN THE NEWS: Toronto Star - Advocacy group hints at unexplained immigration policy shift

Activists from the Migrant Rights Network (MRN) say a “secretive policy shift” may be brewing at Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) which may explain the unprecedented rate of rejections of permanent residence applications on Humanitarian and Compassionate grounds.
Richard Goldman, a lawyer at Montreal City Mission, believes that some policy change may have occurred, but whether this involves the personnel assessing the applications, the training of these personnel or an internal directive is unknown.

“The Humanitarian and Compassionate application system is broken,” says Syed Hussan, who works with the Migrant Rights Network (MRN) secretariat, which organized marches in Montreal and Ottawa this past weekend to demand the government extend residency status to all migrants in order to ensure their equal access to rights. “And as the data we released is showing, it can arbitrarily be changed without oversight or accountability.”

IN THE NEWS: Star - Advocacy group hits at unexplained immigration policy shift

Note on source : data from the IRCC provided to the Migrant Justice Network by Jenny Kwan, the immigration affairs critic of the New Democratic Party (NDP), through an access to information request.

In a response to Radio-Canada, the IRCC insists the numbers have not changed. Expecting the refusal rate to eventually stabilize, it blames administrative delays resulting from the pandemic which have slowed down other immigration applications over the past year.

IN THE NEWS: Global News - ‘We’ve really reached a tipping point’: Scarred by COVID, Chinatown leaders want city to remember its commitment

Said Vancouver East MP Jenny Kwan: “Chinatown as we know will disappear if we do not get the support from all levels of government.”

Kwan wrote Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland in July 2020, calling for a lifeline for the National Historic Site in the form of federal emergency funding.
In comparison, federally-owned Granville Island received $17 million in emergency relief in 2020, with another $22 million earmarked in the 2021 budget.
She told Global News she received no response.  “I’d like to ask the government what is the difference between Granville Island and Chinatown. Are we less important?”
Global News put the question to Freeland, but she did not offer a clear answer, and instead used the opportunity to praise the federal wage and rent subsidies.

'We’ve really reached a tipping point’: Scarred by COVID, Chinatown leaders want city to remember its commitment

Said Vancouver East MP Jenny Kwan: “Chinatown as we know will disappear if we do not get the support from all levels of government.” Kwan wrote Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland in July 2020, calling for a lifeline for the National Historic Site in the form of federal emergency funding.

In comparison, federally-owned Granville Island received $17 million in emergency relief in 2020, with another $22 million earmarked in the 2021 budget.

She told Global News she received no response. “I’d like to ask the government what is the difference between Granville Island and Chinatown. Are we less important?”

Global News put the question to Freeland, but she did not offer a clear answer, and instead used the opportunity to praise the federal wage and rent subsidies.

NDP Statement: NDP statement on announcement for special measures for Afghan nationals with significant ties to the Government of Canada

"While the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship said that these measures are “timely,” there is nothing timely about announcing long overdue measures the day after the tragic death of an Afghan interpreter. The eligibility gaps in the previous Conservative program which ended in 2011, that have led to this situation, were criticized at the time as only 1 in 3 applicants were eligible. It’s unconscionable that a decade later we are still here.

"Just weeks ago, the Minister said Afghan interpreters can apply under existing programs while the NDP had been calling for dedicated measures. The Liberal’s scramble to change their tune is demonstrated by the fact that the government is still unsure how many Afghans are eligible to come to Canada, but that they will be consulting the military’s list of interpreters that have worked with Canada’s military. After all this time, why is the government only consulting this list now?