Immigration Minister Jason Kenney aims to unveil a package of reforms before Christmas to fix the refugee system.
Each claimant going through the system costs Canadian taxpayers an estimated $29,000.
Mr. Kenney, who only last week said the reforms were on “indefinite hold” because of the constant election threats, told a parliamentary committee yesterday the reform package is on track for the fall.
Although he declined to provide specifics, he said the reforms are designed to speed up a refugee claims process that now can take five or more years and also crack down on phoney immigration consultants charging large amounts of money to help bogus refugees get into Canada.
The current backlog is 60,000 claims; slightly less than half the refugee claims made in Canada are accepted.
Talk of an election has almost evaporated on Parliament Hill since the New Democratic Party said it would support the Harper government until employment insurance reforms are enacted.
This means the government has a period of relative stability to roll out some policy initiatives.
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Canada acknowledges that we approve around 50% of the refugee applications. The remainder of the western world reportedly approves about 14%. Those kind of figures should make the average Canadian sit back and go huh? If other countries determine that 86% of their refugee applicants are fraudulent verus our 50%, then it is highly probable that Canada’s vetting process is incredibly and dangerously lax. The Immigration Minister makes no mention of the 40,000+ refugee applicants who were granted immediate entry into our country turned right around and disappeared never to be seen again. The need to reducing waiting periods should be superceded by an urgent need to reduce or eliminate such a serious threat to our national security. A threat posed by the fact that after a cursory interview 40,000+ plus foreigners were turned loose in this country to go whereever they want and to do whatever they want to do. Most reasonable people would surmise that in these days of international terror with Canada being on the Al Qaeda target list that that many missing foreigners on the loose inside our borders, people whose true identify we really have no clue, would be a red flag for the people charged with keeping Canadians safe. In other words, the Government of Canada.
PMSH has the opportunity to govern as if he has a majority until at least after the Winter Olympics. That gives him the opportunity to pick a couple of major legislative changes and push them through ASAP. It looks like he’s picking immigration reform as one, and I couldn’t be happier! I just hopes he doesn’t settle for half measures.
Canada wouldnt have this problem if they made it financially viable for Canadians to have children. This kind of investment will pay big dividends down the road.
A ‘National Day Care program’ like Quebec has and paid for by Canadians from the very generous federal transfer payment system, would go a long way to help young families.
“A ‘National Day Care program’ like Quebec has and paid for by Canadians from the very generous federal transfer payment system, would go a long way to help young families.”
Just to clarify, that is sarcasm, right?
Or
Do you really want to just hand the keys to the country over to CUPE?
The ROC can prop up Quebec’s excessive socialism, but who is going to prop up the ROC?
So Norm, I guess we’ll just have to rely on immigration to keep the status quo?
More evidence that some Tories are anti union?
No UV, what you have shown us is more evidence of the gap in thinking between Conservatives and Liberals.
Don’t make things up, we are not private sector anti-union (because they compete). We are indeed anti government monopoly union; there’s a big difference.
Also we are pro helping young families. PMSH already has accomplishments in that regard and more are needed. But creating national socialist programs run by government monopoly unions is like something Nehru did, which held back India for decades.
Now India sees the light of competitive capitalism as does China. Canadians had better understand that the under-developed world is competing with us now. We will get clobbered if we keep setting up national entitlements and government programs on how to manage your life. George Jonas will crisply explain it to you in today’s NP.
Re “keep the status quo” .. impossible in a free market world with explosive growth in population. That’s fantasy island delusion. All we can do is keep adapting to change.
No Norm – your true colours are showing and its what help keeps the Tories from getting a majority government in Ottawa, if thats the thinking of many Tories. The only thing saving the federal Tories is that the federal lieberals are self-destructing.
Comments like yours alienates labour and young families alike.
And a total free market isnt always the answer as some of them will always ask for a public hand out when they get in trouble as we have seen with banks, auto sector, pulp & paper companies here and in the U.S.
Plus, given the opportunity, large corporations will eliminate the competition and then start acting like big governments, dictating their prices, cutting their services, quality slips etc.
“Comments like yours alienates labour and young families alike.”
Not the young families I talk to, they are fed up with greedy government unions that strike on the TTC and make their commute more difficult. That their garbage doesn’t get picked up for a month. That CUPE TAs at York U left 50,000 students dangling for months.
“Plus, given the opportunity, large corporations will eliminate the competition and then start acting like big governments, dictating their prices, cutting their services, quality slips”
That’s what Marx said would happen. But competition kept multiplying.
UV name a industry sector where large corporations have eliminated the competition.
Price fixing only happens with government monopolies, not in the private sector.
I do agree that the Auto sector should have been allowed to fail and only the workers directly helped. We should not have bailed out the failed companies and the cabal of union leaders. But we know why the bailout happened, liberal governments are beholding to the unions that support their re-election.
Re: #8 — “But we know why the bailout happened, liberal governments are beholding to the unions that support their re-election.”
Not certain where you are going here. Are you referring to Harper or Obama?
Please expand.
#9. Let’s go back to the beginning… UV suggesting we have yet another National government run entitlement program…Day Care. That thinking is at the core of what separates a Conservative from a Liberal.
Two areas where government and unions are working hand in glove are
1. Government unions
2. Large private sectors where some should have failed, but didn’t disappear like Enron or get sold like Nortel because the government bailed them out. Why? Because the government and unions and the crony capitalists all get in bed together in certain industries. For example, here in Canada at Queens Park where the McGuinty govt owns shares of GM and thus aims subsidies of $12,000 ( I think) at certain GM models. Thus impairing the non-govt and non-union companies.
With respect to item 1.
As I mentioned, Garbage strikes, TTC strikes, York U TA strikes … these are problems that should have disappeared with either more competition or essential service back to work legeslation.. at both the Province and the Municipal level.
Item 2 is mostly provincial in Canada although Ottawa got involved in the Auto sector too, but they didn’t get sucked into owning it like Queens Park and Obama did.
What has helped Canadian democracy enormously are the Feds restrictions on election funding.. unions can no longer fund Federal elections nor can Corporations. Those tighter restrictions need to be set up for Provincial and Municipal elections.
The problems in the US and unions are even worse because there are no restrictions at any level , especially not at the Federal level.
Therefore we must not go down the slippery slope of allowing more money to flow to Ottawa to fund a government monopoly like a National Day Care Program. We are turning into India in terms of government jobs used to buy votes. In short, it corrupts democracy.
There are exceptions … we need the police and firefighters and the Army to be paid by Government. But I can’t see what else would have to be a monopoly.
Finally, why is a government union needed to defend workers from its own government? Because there is no competition to compare the pay to? Well then, let there be competition.
Easy enough to solve this one … Nomdeblog, please outline how much tax money will be returned to the average young family as a result of gutting national daycare. Then tell us what kind of private care these winning will be able to get you in, say, Toronto.
Huh? We can’t “gut” what doesn’t exist and hopefully won’t.
Tell me where you’ll take your kids if we do get it and CUPE holds the whole country to ransom like they did with garbage and the TTC and York U.
Although I believe the problems with our refugee system are more law enforcement than immigration in nature, Canadians have now had several opportunities to vote for the Liberals knowing they intend to bring in a ‘National Day Care vote buying program’, and the electorate continue to reject the Liberals in record numbers, so any need for such entitlements cannot be a pressing problem requiring an adjustment in our national priorities.
High immigration levels do not exactly help young people starting out in the first place. For at least the first generation or so immigrants are an expense that ensure ever more additional tax dollars are needed for infrastructure, health care, and social services. High immigration levels increase the competition for jobs, keeping wages low, and for housing, keeping expenses high. For example, even if Ruby Dhalla’s private member’s bill is not passed, our immigration policies are eventually going to break the back of young Canadian taxpayers just in health care costs and nursing home spaces. For $38.77 per month, or $465.24 annually, to be expected to cost taxpayers anywhere from $300 million to $600 million annually, there must be between 650 thousand to 1.3 million such immigrant seniors already here who have contributed little or nothing to Canada. Not only are we short up to 3000 doctors, as well as several thousands of hospital and nursing home beds, required to meet the needs of these unproductive immigrant seniors, we have to train up to 350 extra doctors a year just to keep up with our immigration levels. To maintain our current ratio of doctors per capita, Canada would need to attract 550 immigrant doctors annually just to meet the needs of the other quarter million immigrants who also settle here every year, but only about one third as many qualified doctors, usually less than 200 per year, actually do arrive here from abroad, and many of those require further training to become certified to practice medicine here.
The vast majority of immigrants who have arrived here in the last 30 years are the same age as baby boomers, and will be competing with boomers for expensive health care and nursing home spots in the very near future. When our governments fail, as they invariably do, to live up to their promises, and so we are all spending the last of our life savings on our own nursing home spots, who do you think is going to have to pay for all of this largess if not young Canadians starting out? Just as Ruby Dhalla’s proposal is nothing more than an exercise in Liberal style vote buying, so would be a ‘National Day Care program’, because such proposals go against even the basic primary Trudeau era standard for such national entitlements, which was the concept of universal benefit.
@Nom – Yep that was a mess-up. Replace “national” with “government” because some does exist on the provincial level. Can we get a better deal with the pittance in tax savings or not?
Quick thought before I disappear for the night and it occurred to me as I was watching Fox News this evening. The west is in a “bubble” right now as baby boomers retire but this problem will not be with us forever. It will last at most about 10 years and then suddenly baby boomers will be gone — “dust to dust” and all that.
So this situation we are now confronted with is temporary and we should deal with it as such. There is no need to saddle our kids with “panic dollars” in the here and now. Let’s slow down and deal with a short term problem properly.
Cynapse , tax support for parents is a separate topic from Government staffed programs .. .used for patronage vote buying. I favour a lot of tax support to young parents. And you know what I think of the latter.
This post is about having kids and immigration. We need both. For reasons Brian S outlines encouraging more young families to have kids should be a priority for the nation. That would involve as many tax breaks etc that we can squeeze out of Ottawa, which should be shrunk anyway … not grown by some Canadien hockey goalie who thinks he can run a
National ‘one size fits all” Day Care Program
from Toronto to Cross Canoe.
Child care in the City of Toronto is available in over 900 licensed child care centres and through 21 licensed home child care agencies working with over 2,000 approved home care providers.
How on earth could anyone in Ottawa add value to those challenges? Why would we take a service addressing local needs and put it under remote government control all the way up in Ottawa?
Your question needs to be on the table and fought out in the next Mayor of Toronto campaign and between Hudak and McGuinty. It’s a local issue, as most issues are.
How many people “can’t afford” to raise a family, versus how many people would like the government to subsidize parts of that choice and responsibility, so they can still enjoy dinners out, movie nights and annual vacations?
My thought is that its a matter of choices and responsibilities. The old saying goes that if you wait for the perfect time to have kids you never will. There will be sacrafices, and those are the burden of the individuals who made the choices they made.
Much of the national day care arguement, in my opinion is directed toward the goal of the enablement of single motherhood, theough that is not explicitly said.
Two parent families with both parents working will be able to afford child care if they make sacrifices in other areas.
If one parent decides to stay home, it eliminates the need for the expense of childcare (while also eliminating one – likely lower – income), but provides a better environment for the kid(s) to be raised in.
The free market will always be able to provide better, cheaper solutions with more choice to the “problem” of child care than the government will. Let the market work.
This is just another area that Liberals have selected that they can identify a “problem” that only they have the solution for and the solution is more and bigger government that the individual will be beholden to.
I’d be far more supportive of ongoing measures to reduce the size of government and the various special interest groups and corporations that it subsidizes, that would enable a reduction in taxes, leaving more money in the hands of the citizens who wish to have kids.
How many people “can’t afford” to raise a family, versus how many people would like the government to subsidize parts of that choice and responsibility, so they can still enjoy dinners out, movie nights and annual vacations?
30 years ago, this was not a mutually exclusive choice. It was possible to have and raise children in a healthy environment and still afford to have some level of enjoyment in life. It would be fair to say that very few people are content being 24-hour babysitters. Even the money can’t seem to hold people to such a demanding lifestyle, if Jon & Kate are anything to go by.
The free market will always be able to provide better, cheaper solutions with more choice to the “problem” of child care than the government will. Let the market work.
Child-care can cost over $1000/month. Quebeckers are paying considerably less than that for their child care.
If one parent decides to stay home, it eliminates the need for the expense of childcare (while also eliminating one – likely lower – income), but provides a better environment for the kid(s) to be raised in.
Again, maybe 30 years ago. Today, unless the one income is upper management, the family will also be forgoing a house. Raising children in a dingy basement apartment isn’t healthy, even with one stir-crazy parent at home all the time. I hear a lot of complaints about our low birth-rate, where many of the births are to irresponsible women who simply aren’t cut out for parenting (a scenario that has left me in the “big brother / pseudo-male influence role more than once). It’s the economy. Having kids if not a good idea if you don’t have a lot of money and aren’t willing to ill-equip them.
1) EVERY child needs some kind of post-secondary education, which costs tens of thousands. It’s not a nice-to-have like it was 30 years ago
2) Children DO need to be relatively fashionable and well-equipped. Yes, they need the occasional ipod etc. And if they go without? Be ready to see some real psych problems caused by the social exclusion
3) Yes, you need to be around, whether or not the bills need to be paid. If you won’t be around, then the streets will raise that child.
Having a child you’re not equipped to take care of is the ultimate selfish act (and it’s done often). Yet those of our generation willing to wait to give a child a good life are called selfish.
What I’d like to see is ANY part of the political spectrum come up with a solution. Forcing us all to procreate and pack into tiny dwellings like industrial-era paupers is not a solution – no one’s interested in folk tales of the olden day sacrifice (especially if we grew up in much more plush surroundings). Beaver Cleaver is dead – make it feasible to have a family.
Cynapse, you’re clearly stating the stark realities of the case re the impossible circumstances (financial restrictions in this severe downturn) under which it’s hardly feasible to start families. The economic forecasts are presently not very good, with the threat of inflation and hikes in interest rates on the way.
With too many people chasing too few barely living wage jobs, I see only one solution. Interested mothers might want to forego their careers and stay home, BUT that would mean the father’s salaries would have to double, wouldn’t it? The corporate world thinking outside the box, have it in their range of options to make this happen if and when they figure salaries once again into their bottom line.
Advances in technology with goto meeting.com accessible from the home means job sharing is another real alternative to promote, for those women who can’t function without their careers, but could work them from home, while being a hundred percent available to their children. The benefits would be numerous with latch key kids finding new securities within a functioning family.
Again, it involves companies investing in their main resource –their employees and by extension, their families.
Actual Living wages created and sustained toward real family-oriented enterprises, would automatically spike demand for goods and services Many smart companies have figured this out, providing daycare, exercise facilities for employees, but again they are too few in number to make a difference right now.
Adapting to change, is the new constant as nomdeblog, mentioned earlier. But the bottom line has to do with realized profits at the end of the restructuring projects with raised salaries being the key.
Tougher economic conditions, even rivalling those of the Great Depression, are the unfortunate result of the economic contractions, with the cycles occuring now every few years as opposed to occuring every decade. Then, the so-called recoveries are not robust, but overall weak, especially given many sectors end up obsolete, job sectors being fully eliminated, while retraining isn’t taken seriously, because new sectors aren’t defined with any certainties.tx schemes/plans are on the horizon, estimated to take effect within months. And further job losses/sector losses are predicted well into 2010.
Thinking outside the box and risking it all toward a real solution with the proposal of the flat tax is where this should be headed. With zero corporate tax as policy on the table for consideration.
One question is at the top of the list and that is, the corporate world haven’t planned long range for decades, but have only planned short-term calculations.
The only real economies of note adopting workable plans seems to be Japan and some northern European models.
The twenty/thirty somethings are justified in their deep-seat ed angers and frustrations where their living circumstances are hardly viable, but impossible and our generation is largely responsible. Incompetent management is the problem and has been the problem for decades. Notice the economic contractions are occuring in shorter time frames. At base, the private sector, bloated gov’t, are the problems for amendment if anyone intends to get serious. But efficiencies in technology should allow for some serious thinking and implementing outside the box solutions. That’s if the focus rightly shifts to the rising workforces in all career fields.
It never ceases to amaze me that so many on the left are always so willing to elect politicians who promise to enslave their offspring with ever more debt and then complain about it when it happens. Unfortunately for young Canadians, the time to pay the bill is arriving for those who elected Trudeau more than a generation ago but are themselves too near retirement to contribute much. 30 years ago young taxpayers starting out didn’t have Trudeau’s legacy to deal with, including the extra problems due our more permissive society, such as the demographic shift that 100,000 or so children aborted annually will continue to bring, even in Quebec, unionized daycare or not, as well as the massive lefty debts of several federal and provincial governments since. The $30 billion or so that we pay annually to service our public debts, even when interest rates are low, is money wasted that could have made a difference but instead has already cost more than double any benefit such over-spending originally brought to our “Just Society”, and having our governments monetize the massive debts they continue to build at the expense of the value our currencies will not have a desirable effect on the standard of living of young Canadians either. Do not expect dependence on governments to ever get any more rewarding, so learn from your lefty parent’s mistakes, pay down the public debts, don’t bring in any new entitlements that cannot be paid for without incurring ever more debt, and maybe the next generation won’t have it so bad.
Cynapse: 30 years ago, 1979 mortgage interest rates were 12% and didn’t lower to 6% until 1997. CPI was 9.3% above 1978, the dollar was worth 0.83 US, I know what I earned then – $1200 a month as a professional. A total of $14,400 a year. I had a$50,000 mortgage on a $73,000 house in Saskatoon. I had to commute to work in Alberta then as the socialists were running Saskatchewan and there were no jobs to be had. There wasn’t any “affordable housing” in Calgary or Toronto for that matter, then. Gasoline was $0.57 a Liter. Runaway inflation (mostly government spending and debt creation to provide all those “social programs” you have today) fueled by high priced oil, destroyed the ability of parents to afford children, ever since. GameBoy/XBox did the rest.
Having your next door neighbor pay more now in taxes to fund your desire to procreate,while downloading the costs of raising your kids to your neighbors is downright irresponsible. You want kids, you pay for them. We managed to do so under tougher economic conditions 30 years ago, then exist today. Suck it up!