THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Today’s press release says that in 2010, Canada welcomed the highest number of legal immigrants in the past 50 years, at 280,636 new permanent residents. Good luck Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

“While other Western countries cut back on immigration during the recession, our government kept legal immigration levels high. Canada’s post-recession economy demands a high level of economic immigration to keep our economy strong,” said Minister Kenney. “In 2010, we welcomed the highest number of permanent residents in the past 50 years to support Canada’s economic recovery while taking action to maintain the integrity of Canada’s immigration system with the introduction of the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act.”

They didn’t just keep immigration levels high. They set new records for it. The number is 60,000 higher than the average annual intake of the 1990s. You have to admit, the Conservatives don’t do anything halfway. When they expand something, whether it be spending, deficits, expanding government programs, the bureaucracy, or operating costs, they go the whole hog.

According to their numbers, they also welcomed 182,322 temporary foreign workers and 96,147 foreign students, a 29 per cent increase from the final Liberal year in office. Added to that number was 7,265 refugees and 4,833 sponsored refugees, also a 63 per cent increase from 2005. That’s a total of 571,203 temporary or permanent new residents every year, or 1.6 per cent of our existing population. I can only guess this is some kind of attempt to out-Liberal the Liberal party.

Which is surprising, since Canada has long held the record for the largest per capita increase to immigration in the world. Yet the current Conservative government is made up of elements of the Reform Party, who once said 250,000 new Canadians a year was too much, and should be reduced to 150,000.

There is one rather shameful little boast, however, that can’t go unanswered:

“These refugees played by the rules and came to Canada through legal streams,” noted Minister Kenney. “It is important to note that while Canada is maintaining its humanitarian tradition of providing a safe haven for legitimate refugees, we will not stand by while our immigration system is being abused by queue jumpers and human smugglers. Bill C-49, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act, sends a clear message that the abuse of our immigration system will not be tolerated.”

First of all, there’s no such clear message. It’s widely known Canada is an “easy mark”, and not at all difficult to smuggle people into. Nor are the penalties for such crimes very severe. Nor would the current bill being presented as a tough on-smuggling legislation do anything to stop another boat of Tamils.

Bill C-49 provides very limited powers for the government, and doesn’t mitigate any of the costs Canadians are bothered with in the first place. The recent MV Sun Sea incident has been revealed to have cost us $25 million, and the new bill would only serve to increase such costs if a new boat arrived.

The bill would authorize Jason Kenney to designate a boat as an “irregular arrival”, the result being that some refugees would eventually be deemed ineligible to stay in Canada. It wouldn’t prevent their landing, which is what Canadians wanted with the previous boat. It would still require the Immigration and Refugee Board to ascertain the legitimacy of their claims as refugees at the same exorbitant costs, except that the detention would cost us that much more.

h/t Mark Collins

Meanwhile the CBC misses the point. Painfully.

New figures indicate the federal government hopes to reduce overall immigration next year by five per cent, mainly by cutting back on family reunification visas.
[...]The figures indicate the government will issue about 11,000 family reunification visas for parents and grandparents overseas, down from more than 16,000 last year.

Aside from burying the lead, which is that Canada has increased the number of immigrants and refugees as a total, the CBC descends upon the single reduction. If we want to cherry-pick reductions from year to year all we have to do is look at the history books. From 1997 to 1998 the Liberal government cut overall immigration levels nearly 25 per cent.

…all things considered, compare with the US below; most of us are clearly proud of how the forces have fought in Afstan (so much for the torture fracas, always mainly an inside the Queensway thing, not a Timmies’ one–see the third para here):

Canadians trust military more than government: Poll

Canadians have more trust and confidence in Canada’s armed forces than they do in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, according to a new study.

The study, based on polling conducted by Leger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) and released exclusively to iPolitics, found that 75.7 per cent of respondents had trust and confidence in the Canadian Forces to do a good job compared to only 54.1 per cent who trusted the federal government.

While faith in both the Armed Forces and the federal government tended to rise with age, one of the sharpest divides was among English-speaking respondents — 80.3 per cent of whom trusted the military and 52.7 per cent of whom trusted the federal government.

The military also outranked the federal government among francophones. The poll found 71.7 per cent of French-speaking respondents had confidence in the military while only 49.2 per cent had confidence in the federal government.

The gap was much smaller among allophones, those whose first language is neither English or French. The poll found 67.3 per cent of allophones [hurl! that's PC-speak for most immigrants, esp. more recent] trusted the Armed Forces while 57.5 per cent trusted Harper’s government [really good news for the government and for Jason Kenney].

The lowest support for the military was among 18-24 year olds — only 51.2 per cent trusted the Armed Forces to do a good job. That age group was also the least likely to trust the federal government with only 47.8 per cent confident it would do a good job…

The U.S. military, which has been embroiled in Iraq, had the confidence of 80.7 per cent of respondents. President Barack Obama’s administration, which has struggled to restore the U.S. economy, had the confidence of 41.5 per cent…

Via Spotlight on Military and Other News (changed title). I was surprised the Anglo-Franco (more PC-speak, really RoC/Québec) split is so small. And quite depressed about the young people. Just shows what progressive education and a likely reliance on television (if any) news can do.

Mark
Ottawa

Many in Canada howl that we should not be militarily involved in Afstan because the government is too corrupt:

…Afghanistan is now the second most corrupt nation on earth, just after Somalia, according to Transparency International, a Berlin-based advocacy group. That represents a level of corruption difficult to imagine and this is why allies now see the Karzai government as a bigger threat to the stability of Afghanistan right now than even the Taliban insurgency.”

This is what the money of Canadians and the lives of our soldiers are supporting and it is a battle that we cannot win. We should leave now…

Yet our government is working very hard, with general approval, to strengthen links with another country in the area (which the Liberals are also mad keen on courting) that has very serious corruption problems of its own:

Canada-India trade talks overshadowed by corruption scandals

The difference? India is a country that lights up dollar signs in Canadian eyes. While corruption in Afstan is really just a convenient justification for those flatly opposed to our military presence there.

There are also major human rights problems in both countries but we only obsess about them in one. There’s a hell of a lot of willfully blinkered hypocrisy in Canada:

Kashmir and the Great Game–and double standards

In fact we are so desperate to gain Indian favour–and business–that we even abandon our supposed principles on human rights:

Tories apologize to India over visa feud

The Harper government has issued a groveling apology to India in a spat that began when Canadian visa officers barred several members of the country’s security agencies from coming here.

New Delhi had summoned Canada’s high commissioner to lodge a protest over the rejection of Indians who had worked for its army or intelligence services in the contested Kashmir region – which the Canadian visa officers termed notoriously violent.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney issued a statement Friday saying Canada works closely on security matters with India.

“The Government of Canada therefore deeply regrets the recent incident in which letters drafted by public service officials during routine visa refusals to Indian nationals cast false aspersions on the legitimacy of work carried out by Indian defence and security institutions, which operate under the framework of democratic processes and the rule of law,” Mr. Kenney said in the statement…

See the post above about Kashmir for more about that “rule of law”.  Mr Kenney might also do well to read this:

In India, Torture by Police Is Frequent and Often Deadly

Canadians are no pure boy scouts.  Like everyone else we see what we want to see to suit our purposes; and then we also have our own supremely smug self-satisfied regard.  Nonetheless we essentially follow our self-interest.

I would also point out that by staying seriously engaged in Afstan we have at least some chance of affecting its government’s behaviour on these matters.

Update: The post is also at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute’s 3Ds Blog.

Mark
Ottawa

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney speak with former victims of fraudulent immigration consultants. Photo: Matthew Little/The Epoch Times

The idea that Canada is only now acting on the regulation of immigration consultants, is rather frightening. To think of the decades of abuse that went unchecked by previous governments simply boggles the mind.

The Conservative government has announced plans to choose a new regulator for immigration consultants, including stiff penalties for those who break the new laws. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who has previously implemented visa restrictions for countries with fraudulent refugee claims, issued a bi-partisan refugee reform plan, and introduced a new citizenship guide containing information and expectations for new Canadians, has stepped up again in leading on this very important issue.

Previously, the immigration consulting industry was entirely self-regulated. The Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants is a professional body of roughly 1,600 members, and has been independent of government since its creation by the Liberal Party in 2004. That organization may be disbanded by the Conservative government if it is ruled illegitimate.

The “Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act”, would make it a crime for a person who is not a lawyer, notary or member of a recognized immigration consultants body to accept a fee for providing immigration advice. The move is an attempt to weed out the people who exploit immigrants by charging them exorbitant consulting fees for invalid applications. Of note, the NDP is already on board with all of this:

“The bill would make it a crime for unauthorized individuals to provide immigration advice for a fee and this criminal offence has teeth. It will impose serious penalties: up to two years in jail or a $50,000 fine or both,” Mr. Kenney told reporters in Ottawa. He added that he also intends to pressure foreign governments to pursue unscrupulous consultants working within their borders who counsel prospective immigrants to Canada to submit fraudulent applications. His moves were well-received by NDP MP Olivia Chow, a long-time campaigner on this issue. Ms. Chow told the Canadian Press she wants to ensure the proposed reforms will give police and border agencies a mandate to enforce the new laws.

I don’t usually favour extraneous government intervention, but in this case it can’t simply be a matter of caveat emptor. Much like doctors, accountants, or lawyers, an immigration consultant should be a certified professional adhering to recognized standards of ethics and conduct. Such a body can’t be accountable only to itself. Hence, government certification is a logical and important step here.

What a moment of brief parliamentary harmony. Michael Ignatieff had signaled tacit approval for the proposed reform to Canada’s woebegone refugee system that is so backlogged that by the time they deport some people, they’ve already got Canadian kids. But that may certainly have been premature, as behind closed doors the Liberal Party has angrily rejected the idea of the Conservative reforms.

Now Michael Ignatieff has had to step back from his earlier position, admitting that there is genuine dissent within the party. Apparently a number of MPs, including the entire Quebec caucus, said they wouldn’t support the reform even though the Conservatives agreed to changes requested by the Liberal immigration critic, Maurizio Bevilacqua.

In fact the knives appear to have come out for Mr.Bevilacqua, with media citing unnamed “Liberal colleagues” who privately suggested that the Liberal immigration critic is cozying up to the Conservatives to garner support for a run at the mayoralty of Vaughn.

Ouch. Being rebuked by your own party is bad enough, but anonymously in the media? He must really have made some enemies.

Personally, I think the legislation is a great idea. The system badly needs some reform — any reform — and the idea of creating a safe list of countries is eminently logical. For instance, it would make sense to outright deny any claimants from the European Union, who have 26 other nations they can freely live and work in, if they don’t like their current country.

There’s no need to waste thousands of taxpayer dollars and salaries assessing a refugee claim for somebody from, for instance, the Czech Republic, since they could just as easily go to nearby Slovakia, Hungary, or Austria. But, apparently, that just doesn’t fly with the Liberal Party.

“As a Liberal for the last 25 years, I cannot support any list of designated countries,” said former Liberal immigration minister, Denis Coderre, without providing a reason.

There doesn’t seem to be a good answer. Even the Globe and Mail editorial endorsed the adoption of the new legislation to hasten the removal of applicants who will be inevitably rejected anyway. The Globe lauded the Conservatives for accepting the amendments proposed by Mr.Bevilacqua, and welcomed it as a sign that a “flexible and consensual approach can allow a minority government to accomplish its goals.”

Or not. Is this just another case of opposing for the sake of being in opposition?

Canada has a backlog of 60,000 claims, and delaying reform is really more cruel to the refugees who wind up getting deported long after setting up a new and stable life for themselves and their family. And as though the Liberals needed another good reason, the “United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees” has said that a “safe list” of countries is an acceptable concept. The UN, for crying out loud.

It would be nice if Michael Ignatieff would, at this juncture, join the rest of vertebrates in this arrangement, and stand by a bi-partisan political decision that makes sense.

Demonstrators at the Ann Coulter speaking event at the University of Ottawa on March 23. Ellen Ocran in the foreground.

Canada Border Services Agency officials today declined admission to notorious Hamas sympathizer and British MP, George Galloway, spawning immediate conspiracy theories of political interference. “There was little doubt that’s what Immigration Minister Jason Kenney wanted,” wrote Cambell Clark in the Globe.

“Little doubt”? What do the wants of Jason Kenney have to do with anything?

George Galloway is an admitted material supporter to Hamas, a recognized network of terror by the nation of Canada. Indeed, Canada classifies the military wing of Hamas as a “radical Sunni Muslim terrorist organization.”

George Galloway insists he has never been a member of Hamas, and that he’s being barred for his political and “pro-Palestinian” views. But the fact is that Canada isn’t the only country to have refused admission to the activist who is so leftwing that the Labour Party had him expelled.

Egypt, a country that can’t exactly be described as being pro-Israeli, deported George Galloway and his colleague Ron McKay on January 8 of this year, after the two had attempted to take 200 trucks of aid into the Gaza Strip through the blockade. The Foreign Ministry of Egypt released a statement reading: “George Galloway is considered persona non grata and will not be allowed to enter into Egypt again”.

A year earlier, on March 10, Mr.Galloway attended a press conference in Gaza City attended by representatives from the Hamas government, to announce the donation of 100 aid vehicles. He personally donated three cars and 25,000 British pounds to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. It was this act that earned Mr.Galloway the designation of providing material support to a terrorist organization.

It isn’t just that Mr.Galloway has extreme views on Palestine, but that his views on Israel could properly be described as antisemitic and “hate speech”. At a pro-Palestinian demonstration in London in 2006, Mr.Galloway said that Hezbollah “has never been a terrorist organization” In fact, Australia, Canada, Israel, the United States, and Great Britain all formally recognize Hezbollah as a militant, terrorist organization. Although Great Britain only recognizes the military wing as terrorist, Canada designates the entire organization as such.

George Galloway consistently disguises antisemitic language by using the euphemistic “Zionist” in its place. And while many people are hesitant to outright designate him as being antisemitic, the fact that remains that he has expressed broad support for individuals and organizations that are antisemitic, terrorist, and deny the existence of the holocaust.

He has in the past blamed the country of Israel for the tension in the Middle East, referring to Israel as a “settler state” who used the holocaust to further their own expansionist interests in the Arab world. Going further, he once said on al-Jazeera television “I was re-elected despite all the efforts made by the British government, the Zionist movement and the newspapers and news media which are controlled by Zionism.”

That newspapers are all controlled by the Jews is a very old complaint of the conspiracy theorists who believe in a global Jewish agenda.

Despite all of this, Galloway’s supporters in Canada have jumped on this most recent denial of admission as a politically motivated move by the government of Canada, specifically the Conservative Party and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, whom the NDP have dubbed the “Minister of Censorship”.

It’s interesting, because NDP followers weren’t very keen on free speech when Ann Coulter visited the University of Ottawa last month. And the last time I checked, Ann Coulter hasn’t been seen donating to any terrorist organizations.

Ellen Ocran, one of the individuals who can be seen stridently screaming her opposition to the University’s guest speaker, was later revealed by a blogger to be an assistant to Pat Martin, the NDP member of Parliament for Winnipeg Centre.

The free speech vanguard for the left were awfully quiet about the Ann Coulter fiasco, or else wound up making blatantly digressive arguments about how it was Coulter’s security detail which actually made the final decision to cancel the event. Not that the Ellen Ocrans waiting for Ms.Coulter’s car had anything to do with that decision, mind you, screaming and chanting in an aggressive and hostile manner.

But while no single political party was blamed for that event, the Conservatives are being dragged out before the court of media opinion, and asserted as a fact that they barred George Galloway from Canada because of Jason Kenney’s personal political prerogative. And that, friends, is what we call the selectivity of objectivity.

OMG! Another instance of plagiarism! Photo: Jeff Knapp, 2004

I find myself shaking my head more often than not these days, not just because of the many senseless things the Conservatives manage to do [like deciding to change the wording of the national anthem in an apparent display of political correctness on steroids], but because of the things the opposition actually decide to complain about.

If they’re not calling for a public investigation into whether Helena Guergis made airport workers cry by turning into she-hulk and threatening to squeeze the goo from their puny human heads, it’ll be some other completely ridiculous and irrelevant story that may as well have been pulled from the pages of Ibn Fadlan’s diary.

Take, for instance, the recent controversy over whether or not Immigration and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney removed sections from the Canadian Citizenship Guide that pertains to “gay rights” and “same-sex marriage”. Please give me a moment to state the obvious: So what?

Does it matter if he did or if he didn’t? And what does it accomplish, finding out the editorial preferences of the Minister? Will it prove to anyone who doesn’t already have a partisan bias, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Jason Kenney is a homophobe?

It doesn’t change the laws protecting homosexuals in Canada under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, nor does it deny homosexuals complete equality under the law, and blindness in adjudicating matters unrelated to their sexuality. It doesn’t change the fact that homosexual marriage is completely and wholly a legitimately recognized union between two people of the same sex, equal in both law and recognized by the same government that employs Mr.Kenney. And it doesn’t, as the outrage would seem to imply, have any affect, whatsoever, on whether immigrants who are homosexual should choose to come here or not.

Then there’s today’s latest Brouhaha about the title of the Throne Speech, called “A Stronger Canada; A Stronger Economy; Now and for the Future.” The Liberals say that this was lifted from former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s 2004 election platform: “A Stronger Economy. A Stronger Australia.”

A “stronger economy” is the contentious plagiarism? Isn’t that like accusing someone of plagiarizing a cliché? Do we really expect our politicians to deal with titles more original than “stronger”, “better”, and “brighter”? I mean, these are the basic adjectives for politics and political writing. It isn’t as though John Howard ran an election platform called “A Supercalifragilistic Economy. An Expialidocious Australia”, and then Stephen Harper came along and used the same obscure words today.

No, he used the word stronger. If you could think of a more generic, basic, common motto for a post-recession government, you’d be hard pressed to find it. And here’s a news flash: Barack Obama’s “hope” and “change” wasn’t very original either. Being hopeful, wanting change, and being stronger are all extremely banal descriptions of human ambition.

The continued profligate spending, out-of-control programs, bloated bureaucracy, soaring debt, are all concerns that the Liberals could raise, and I wouldn’t bat an eyelid in defence for the Conservatives. But the above manufactured controversies really belong in some low-ratings reality TV show. On CBS. At 2:30 in the morning. Sponsored by Ashley Madison.