* Canadian council of refugees 10 reasons to oppose bill c 50: http://www.ccrweb.ca/documents/c50faq.htm

EXCERPTS FROM ARTICLES BELOW

* “The government says that it is not their intention to use the instructions to slow down or thwart family reunification. However, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has confirmed if the bill is passed, the Minister could issue instructions affecting the processing priority of Family Class immigrants”

* Conservatives are launching a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign only in ethnic media to put a positive spin on its proposed changes.

* The bill is now before the finance committee, and will likely return to the Commons for a third and final vote in the first or second week of May. The NDP and the Bloc Quebecois oppose the bill. The Liberals have trashed it as anti-immigrant, but have stopped short of voting it down in the House of Commons.

* Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is being warned by one of his own organizers that he risks losing the support of ethnic communities if he supports the Conservatives’ proposed changes.

* “This vicious trench warfare will play itself out at the doorstep and in the ethnic media,” said a senior Conservative source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

CIC has just confirmed that Bill C-50 is worse than I thought. The power to issue instructions applies not only to Economic Class applicants outside Canada, but pretty much all applicants for permanent residence, whether
in Canada or outside Canada, except refugees and H&C applicants in Canada.

This means that, if the bill is passed, the Minister could issue instructions affecting the processing priority of Family Class
immigrants and setting the limits on numbers of Family Class immigrants to be processed, and directing that certain Family Class applications not processed be returned (or discarded). The government says that it is not their intention to use the instructions to slow down or thwart family reunification. However, as we know, governments are not prevented from doing things just because they or their predecessor said it was not their intention to do it. CIC explains that the bill gives such wide powers to issue instructions in order to have “flexibility”.

The confusion in the bill is because it says “instructions apply to A, but not B, C, D…”. In fact, what this means is “instructions apply to A (but not B), to C, to D….” Apparently the civil servants thought the bill could be made clearer with some different punctuation, but the lawyers said, no, that is how legislative drafting is done (i.e. ambiguous and incomprehensible).

So, according to what I now understand, instructions apply to:
– applications for permanent residence made outside Canada, except refugees.
– Family Class sponsorship applications.
– applications for permanent residence made inside Canada, except refugees
– applications for temporary residence status made inside Canada
– applications for H&C made outside Canada (but not made inside Canada).

For any of the categories subject to instructions, the Minister would be able to:

– establish categories of applications to be processed
– determine the order in which the applications should be processed
– fix a limit on the number to be processed
– provide rules for repeat applications
– retain, return or otherwise dispose of applications that, following the instructions, are not processed.

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Toronto Star EDITORIAL: Immigration spin wars
Apr 23, 2008 04:30 AM

The Conservative government is adding insult to injury with its taxpayer-funded advertising campaign to put a positive spin on its proposed changes to the Immigration Act.

Billed as a “public notice,” the ads claim the changes are needed to deal with a backlog of 925,000 applications. They direct readers to a hotline where they can get more information about the new rules, even though they are still awaiting passage by Parliament.

What the ads don’t mention is that the changes would give the immigration minister unprecedented power to cap the number of applicants each year and to direct immigration officers around the world which applicants to process and which to turn away.

The government had tried to bury these measures in a budget implementation bill, thereby short-circuiting parliamentary debate on the issue. But as the list of protests against the measures by ethnic groups has mounted, the Tories have gone into damage control mode. Twice a senior bureaucrat has briefed media on the changes. Immigration Minister Diane Finley has conducted her own media blitz. And last Friday Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered a vigorous counterattack in a speech to the Canada-India Foundation.

At the same time, the government has launched its advertising campaign (at an undisclosed cost) in 12 languages on radio and in print, but only in the ethnic media. But this has only further infuriated ethnic groups, who see it as an attempt to woo their votes.

The government should withdraw these ads and present the immigration amendments in a separate bill so that Parliament and the public have a real chance to debate them.

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National Post: Immigration bill could be tough to sell
Andrew Mayeda, Canwest News Service Published: Monday, April 21, 2008

OTTAWA — When Diane Finley took over as federal immigration minister in January 2007, she and her aides quickly identified the massive backlog of permanent-residence applications clogging up Canada’s immigration system as the “elephant in the room.”

How could Canada get the immigrants it needs, they reasoned, with hundreds of thousands of files sitting on the desks of the country’s visa officers? Now, as the political fallout spreads from the government’s controversial immigration bill, Conservative strategists are hoping the backlog doesn’t turn into an albatross around their necks in the next election.

Last week, the government launched an advertising campaign that promises the proposed changes will create an immigration system that is “flexible, fast and fair for everyone.” The print and radio ads, which are being funded by public coffers, will run for the next few weeks in ethnic-media outlets. The ads have cost about $60,000 so far, but the immigration department could not say what the final tab will be.

Government officials say the campaign is designed to clear up misunderstandings about the bill, which gives the immigration minister more power to fast track the applications of certain types of immigrants. The government says that will help reduce the backlog, which has reached 925,000 applications, while making the immigration system more responsive to labour-market needs.

But opposition critics say the ads are an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.

“She knows she’s in trouble,” New Democrat MP Olivia Chow said of Ms. Finley. Ms. Chow rejects the ad’s central premise that the changes will reduce the backlog, because under the proposed law, applications received before Feb. 27, 2008, will not be affected. “It’s using taxpayers’ money to sell a Conservative line,” she said.

Senior Conservatives say they never expected immigration to be an election trigger when the party took power more than two years ago. But that could very well happen. The Conservatives have rolled the immigration bill into the broader budget-implementation bill, which is automatically considered a matter of confidence in the government.

The bill is now before the finance committee, and will likely return to the Commons for a third and final vote in the first or second week of May.

The NDP and the Bloc Quebecois oppose the bill. The Liberals have trashed it as anti-immigrant, but have stopped short of voting it down in the House of Commons.

But Liberal MPs are coming under increasing pressure from some ethnic groups to oppose the bill. Last week, a coalition that includes the Chinese Canadian National Council and the Canadian Arab Federation staged a demonstration at the Toronto constituency office of Liberal MP Bob Rae. The coalition is threatening not to vote Liberal if the party
doesn’t oppose the bill.

“The challenge for the Conservatives is that this is not traditionally part of their brand equity,” said pollster Nik Nanos, president of Nanos Research.

In the past two years, the Conservatives have made a concerted effort to break the Liberals’ stranglehold on the ethnic vote. The push has been led by Secretary of State for Multiculturalism Jason Kenney, who spends endless hours attending dinners and social events organized by ethnic groups.

Government officials concede the immigration bill has slowed the momentum of those outreach efforts. And Conservative strategists now expect the immigration bill to remain a key issue in ethnic newspapers and multicultural networks such as OMNI Television throughout the campaign, even if it doesn’t gain traction as a national issue.

“We believe that it’s going to be vicious trench warfare, and the vast majority of the native-born Canadian population will be completely oblivious to it, because this vicious trench warfare will play itself out at the doorstep and in the ethnic media,” said a senior Conservative source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

It is a good bet the Liberals will try to rekindle suspicions of an anti-immigration agenda within the Conservative caucus if the issue plays prominently in the next election. But Mr. Nanos said an overly aggressive strategy could backfire if the Conservatives can prove they are taking concrete steps to cut the backlog, which ballooned under the previous Liberal government.

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Globe and Mail: Tories to sell immigration changes with ad blitz
JANE TABER April 15, 2008

The Harper government is poised to launch an aggressive advertising campaign aimed at countering attacks on its proposed changes to Canada’s immigration system.

A senior government source, who has seen the script of the ads, predicted that the campaign, which is to begin in the next two weeks, will “provoke some media howls about government advertising being used for partisan purposes.”

The campaign will start as the all-party Commons immigration committee’s hearings on the controversial changes get under way. And another government source said that the ads “will inform the public about the proposed amendments to the act.

“I think it will be beneficial to get more facts out with the public, who have reacted positively when the details have been laid out for them,” the source said.

Changing the immigration system is a touchy issue for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Tories, who have been working to win the support of ethnic groups in an effort to expand their base, with an eye to forming a majority government.

Immigration changes are “very toxic as a political issue,” said Peter Donolo of the national polling firm the Strategic Counsel. Mr. Donolo noted that the Reform Party, the predecessor to the current Conservative Party, was not seen as friendly to immigrants.

“Harper seems to have been quite sensitive to this. He probably finds himself in a bit of a bind in that if he needs to expand, he needs to be seen to be kind of open-minded,” Mr. Donolo said. “On the other hand, for core supporters, immigration is red meat,” he said, in the sense that it is an issue some people fight over.

The opposition has been up in arms about the proposals, which it charges will give the immigration minister broad and arbitrary powers to pick and choose who will come into Canada.

What has particularly enraged the Liberals and the NDP is the fact that the initiatives are buried within an omnibus budget bill. The opposition has accused the Conservatives of trying to change the system by stealth.

Liberal immigration critic Maurizio Bevilacqua said he thinks the Tories are realizing they have a problem as they’ve been “doing some major spinning and damage control.” He said they are trying to “sell a message that is not connecting with Canadians.”

Immigration Minister Diane Finley, however, argues the proposals are necessary to deal with the backlog of about 900,000, which in some cases take six years to process.

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Dion warned on immigration issue: Multicultural group says Liberals risk losing ethnic support if they
back bill containing changes
Toronto Star, Apr 15, 2008 04:30 AM By Susan Delacourt Ottawa Bureau

OTTAWA–Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is being warned by one of his own organizers that he risks losing the support of ethnic communities in Ontario if he supports the Conservatives’ proposed changes to the immigration system.

It’s a warning that is helping fuel speculation that a June election could be on the horizon, provoked perhaps by Liberals on the immigration issue. But Dion was publicly leaving his options open yesterday.

Kris Parthiban of the Canadian Multicultural Alliance, an early Dion supporter in the 2006 party leadership, sent a strongly worded letter to the leader last week.

“Most of us in our organization have supported you because we believe in your leadership, and we … believe in building upon Canada’s global reputation for openness. That is why we believe you have a responsibility to the party, and the country, to preserve and enhance the openness and reputation of the immigration system by opposing this bill and demanding a real debate on the issues,” Parthiban’s letter states.

“Any other position that the Liberal party takes would substantially erode the core, grassroot ethnic support of the party.”

Dion said he’s aware of the letter and plans to reassure Parthiban that Liberals oppose the Conservatives’ plan to put more discretionary power over immigration in the hands of minister Diane Finley.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has said it needs these powers to clear the immigration backlog, but critics charge that it’s a veiled way to limit newcomers to Canada and an opening to rampant politicization of the system.

“If the bill does not change, we’ll vote against,” Dion told reporters yesterday. “The moment when I will trigger an election is something I need to decide, in order to be sure that we’ll replace this bad government by a good government. (If) an election would come today, we have some likelihood to win, I’m optimistic, but maybe waiting is a good strategy.”

There is, however, increasing talk in Liberal circles of bringing down the government before the summer, maybe as soon as a couple of weeks from now, which would lead to an election June 9 or 16.

One consideration in favour of a vote this spring, as opposed to the fall, is the November U.S. presidential election. Should the Liberals wait to bring down the government in September or early October, Canada would plunge into a federal election just as the American campaign is heating up. It is thought low voter turnout would favour the Tories — the Liberals believe they need a motivated electorate to help defeat an incumbent government. So anything that distracts Canadians’ attention would not be seen as useful to their cause.

Liberal MP Maria Minna (Beaches-East York) is not sure that it’s a good idea to provoke an election over the immigration proposal, which is contained in a budget implementation bill.

“What I want to see is a really strong cross-country debate on this issue and on that bill,” she said.