Immigration
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March 22, 2024
Ottawa looks to reduce percentage of temporary residents to five per cent of population
Citing the need to “ramp things down,” in part to address Canada’s “affordability challenge” in such areas as housing, Immigration Minister Marc Miller says the federal government wants to stem the rapid growth in temporary residents by reducing their number over the next three years from 6.2 per cent of Canada’s population (2.5 million people in 2023) to five per cent.
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March 22, 2024
Canada to set temporary immigration levels starting in September | Colin Singer
Canada will start limiting temporary immigration and gradually work on reducing it over the coming three years, says Immigration Minister Marc Miller. Starting this fall, the federal government plans to reduce the number of temporary residents in Canada to 5 per cent of its population over the next three years. It is currently 6.2 per cent.
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March 21, 2024
Ottawa cuts back on temporary foreign workers; reduces permitted percentage of ‘low wage’ workers
The federal government has announced it is “adjusting” its temporary foreign worker program which has experienced “a surge in demand” due to the post-pandemic economy, low unemployment rates, and record-high job vacancy rates in 2022.
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March 21, 2024
Electoral reform bill targets dark money, foreign interference, deep fakes, other AI misinformation
Ottawa’s proposed overhaul of the Canada Elections Act includes new false and misleading speech offences and administrative monetary penalties (AMPs); new and expanded prohibitions targeting foreign interference and the misuse of AI and deep fakes to fuel disinformation and voter suppression; and new third-party contribution rules the federal government says will “increase transparency and mitigate dark or foreign funds in Canada’s election system.”
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March 21, 2024
Politicization of tribunal appointments worse than that of judicial appointments | Brian Cook
Recent moves by the current government to politicize the process of appointing judges have caused significant concern. The process for appointing adjudicators who sit on Ontario’s adjudicative tribunals is much worse. The government has been criticized for making political appointments to the committee responsible for making judicial appointment recommendations. There is no such committee, and virtually no other form of oversight for appointments to adjudicative tribunals.
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March 19, 2024
Ottawa appeals declaration of constitutional requirement for timely federal judicial appointments
“Stay in your lane” — those words might encapsulate the thrust of the federal government’s message to the Federal Court in Ottawa's appeal of a recent groundbreaking judgment, which declared that the prime minister and federal justice minister are constitutionally obliged to fix the lengthy federal judicial appointment delays that have for years bedeviled litigants, lawyers and judges.
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March 18, 2024
Appeal and judicial review of a tribunal decision | Sara Blake
The Supreme Court of Canada has breathed life into an Ontario statutory provision that has been mostly ignored since it came into effect in 1972. Section 2(1) of the Judicial Review Procedure Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. J.1 (JRPA), authorizes the Divisional Court to grant relief on judicial review “despite any right of appeal.” For 40 years, Ontario courts consistently overlooked this provision, instead preferring to exercise their discretion to deny a remedy on judicial review because it regards a right of appeal to the court as an adequate alternative remedy.
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March 15, 2024
Supreme Court rules limited statutory rights of appeal do not preclude access to judicial review
In a 9-0 judgment supportive of litigants’ access to judicial review, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a limited statutory right of appeal in a case does not preclude judicial review for matters not the subject of appeal, i.e. where there is an appeal right limited to questions of law, judicial review is available for questions of fact or mixed fact and law.
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March 14, 2024
FCA upholds refusal to certify class action against Ottawa alleging discriminatory immigration fees
The Federal Court of Appeal has upheld the non-certification and striking out of claims of a proposed class action which contends that certain application fees for Canadian citizenship and permanent residence are analogous to a discriminatory “head tax” on those not born in Canada, in violation of the Charter’s s. 15(1) equality rights guarantee.
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March 13, 2024
Wellness: A night at the theater | Darryl Singer
On a recent trip to Florida, I had the opportunity to see (for the fourth time) the excellent, award-winning musical Come From Away. For those who don’t know, the play takes place from Sept. 11, 2001 and the following five days in Gander, NL. It follows the townspeople and a number of the “plane people” whose flights were forced to land in Gander when U.S. airspace was closed. There were 38 commercial flights carrying 7,000 people from all over the world that landed. Gander had never been so diverse — thousands of people of all races, nationalities, religions, languages, and political stripes.