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Asian Pacific Post NEWS: CANADA OFFERS PR ON ARRIVAL STATUS FOR FOREIGN CAREGIVERS

Jenny Kwan, the NDP immigration critic, said she is thrilled that the government is finally honouring caregivers and treating them with the respect and dignity they deserve by granting them permanent residence status on arrival.

“This is a significant victory for the caregiver community. It means that they will no longer be subject to exploitation and abuse. It means they can have their rights protected as they contribute to Canada's economic, social and cultural fabric,” Kwan posted on Facebook.

The Vancouver East MP said there are 9,000 caregiver PR applications in the backlog. The average processing time is 3 years.

“The government must ensure adequate resources and immigration levels numbers are allocated to process these applications expeditiously so that they do not further languish in the backlog,” she said.

According to Statistics Canada in 2022, 13.4 million Canadians aged 15 years and older (42%)—over  two in five people in this age group—provided unpaid care in the previous 12 months to children younger than 15 years old or to youth aged 15 years and older and adults with a long-term condition or disability.

Of these unpaid caregivers, 13% provided care to both of these care-dependent groups, meaning that 1.8 million Canadians older than 15 years were "sandwiched" between multiple care responsibilities, said a report from McGill University.

 

 

Globe NEWS: Caregivers from abroad to be given permanent residence on arrival under new pilot programs

To qualify for the new enhanced pilot programs, foreign caregivers will need to have an offer for a full-time home-care job, meet the language requirements, hold the equivalent of a Canadian high-school diploma, and have recent and relevant work experience.

“This new pathway means that caregivers can more easily find proper work with reliable employers and have a clear, straightforward access to permanent-resident status as soon as they arrive in Canada,” IRCC said in a statement.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said there is a shortage of caregivers in Canada while those who come here from abroad to fill jobs are too often exploited and abused. She said their precarious immigration status makes them more vulnerable to poor treatment by employers.

She said Canada should stop classifying caregivers, who help many Canadians, as “low-skill” workers.

In an interview, Ms. Kwan said current language and education standards that caregivers must meet to gain permanent residence – brought in by the Conservatives before Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister – are unnecessarily stringent and have until now acted as a “roadblock” to caregivers settling in Canada.

 

 

iPolitics NEWS: House approves motion to fast track government’s foreign agent registry bill

MPs have reached a deal to fast track the Trudeau government’s foreign agent registry bill through the House of Commons.

NDP MP Jenny Kwan won unanimous support on Thursday for her motion setting up accelerated timelines for the bill’s progression through the national security committee, with the legislation now set to return to the House on June 12.

It comes only a day after the NDP voted down a Conservative motion that would have set up a final House vote on the bill next week.

The NDP said the Conservative motion didn’t provide enough time to scrutinize the bill, hear from witnesses and potentially offer changes.

Kwan’s motion requires the national security committee to prioritize the study of the bill and extends its sitting hours to hear from witnesses. It also requires the committee to invite Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc and officials from the RCMP, CSIS and the Department of Public Safety as well as the prime minister’s national security advisor to testify.

Prospective amendments must be submitted to the committee clerk by end of day June 7 and one meeting on June 10 will be devoted to clause-by-clause consideration, under the terms of the motion.

The bill will then return to the House and must be debated at the report stage on June 12.

 

OPEN LETTER to the Prime Minister on regularization of undocumented workers

New Democrats strongly urge you to adopt a broad, comprehensive, and uncapped regularization initiative without delay, so that undocumented workers in Canada have a clear and accessible pathway to permanent residency.

National Post: Government bill will allow Canadians to pass citizenship rights to kids born abroad

NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who is supporting the Liberal bill, said it was past time the issue is addressed. She said Canadians travel the world to work and study, and should be able to hold onto their citizenship rights.

“Canada is a global community of Canadians: people travel, people study abroad, people work abroad, people fall in love abroad, people have families abroad.”

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled last year that the previous version of the law was unconstitutional, and gave Ottawa until June 19 to fix the problem.

“This is an example of Conservatives having taken away Canadians’ rights and something they hold most dear to them, in their citizenship,” Miller said Thursday.

Kwan accused the Conservatives of filibustering a previous attempt to address the “lost Canadians” issue through a private member’s bill last year, even though they have said they are committed to addressing the issue.

“People will remember 15 years ago, it was the Conservatives that brought in this law. It was the Conservatives that stripped children of Canadian parents the right to pass on the citizenship automatically to the children,” she said. “As a result of that, the Conservatives have created a second-class citizen in Canada.”

 

Toronto Star: ‘Monumental’: Canada to extend citizenship to children born abroad, restoring rights of ‘lost Canadians’

“People travel. People study abroad. People work abroad. People fall in love abroad. People have families abroad,” said NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan, who joined Miller at the media scrum.

“But guess what? As a result of this law, it meant that for some of those families, they have had to be separated from their children. Some children have been rendered stateless.”

Kwan also sniped at the opposition Conservatives for filibustering a recent bill by the Senate that called on similar changes to extend citizenship by descent to children born abroad to Canadians.

“We have to fix this once and for all,” she said. ”I’m standing here not for partisan reasons. I’m standing here because this is the right thing to do, not only a moral imperative to do this, but also a legal imperative.”

CPAC: Canada Introduces citizenship bill with NDP amendments to fix Lost Canadians injustice

Today is a historic day for Lost Canadians and their families and I am happy to stand with them and the Minister of Immigration at the press conference.  

Legislation has been introduced to rectify the Conservative's punitive and unconstitutional law that stripped children of Canadian parents the right to Canadian citizenship creating two classes of Canadians.  Today is a historic day for Lost Canadians and their families and I am happy to stand with them and the Minister of Immigration at the press conference.  
 
For 15 years, this unjust law caused significant hardship and suffering to many Canadian families.  It has separated families and rendered children stateless.   If failed to recognize that Canadians are global citizens who travel aboard, study aboard and work aboard.  They fall in love aboard and they have families aboard.  

Last year, parliamentarians across party lines had a chance to fix the Lost Canadians issue by passing Bill S-245 as amended by the NDP.  Instead, the Conservatives filibustered debate on the bill for 30 hours to delay its passage and refuse to allow it to advance to third reading.

When it became obvious that the Conservatives will continue playing games with the lives of Lost Canadians and their families by doing everything they can to block passage of the legislative fixes, I approached successive immigration ministers to call on them to bring in a government bill with the NDP amendments.  
 
The government has a moral imperative and  a legal one to act after the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that the creation of two classes of Canadian citizenship is unconstitutional.  

Let's pass the bill expeditiously and end the legacy of the Conservatives' unconstitutional treatment of second generation born abroad Canadians. 

Canadian News: NDP slam Liberals for slow reunification programs for relatives stuck in Gaza, Sudan

NDP Media Release: Red Dress Day 2024

"On Red Dress Day, New Democrats would like to honour all those who continue to work tirelessly to end the ongoing genocide of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and gender diverse people (MMIWG2S+), including families, survivors, advocates and Indigenous women. For far too long this crisis has been neglected, and it is inspiring to see the work of Indigenous community members in ending the violence.

In 2023, an NDP motion to recognize the crisis of MMIWG2S+ as a Canada-wide emergency received support from all parties in the House of Commons. Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ peoples are roughly six times more likely to be murdered than their non-Indigenous counterparts throughout Canada, and 19 times more likely in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. These numbers are extremely disturbing, and leaders at all levels of government must do everything in their power to stop this ongoing genocide.

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.