Author Archives: CICS Immigration Team

Canada and EU Working Toward Free Trade Agreement

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Canada could see more energy exports to the EU if it finalizes a free trade agreement with the economic block this week

Canada and the EU are close to finalizing a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that would be the EU’s first with a G7 country. Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast is meeting his EU counterpart in Brussels in talks this week to negotiate an agreement on the remaining issues.

Among the areas where differences still exist between the parties are agriculture market access, intellectual property standards relating to the pharmaceutical industry, procurement at the provincial and municipal-government level, and investor protection through arbitration rules.

Canada-EU trade amounts to $67 billion a year, with Canada chiefly exporting natural-resource intensive industrial goods like steel, manufactured goods like machinery and transport equipment, chemical products, and energy products to the EU, and the EU exporting a similar mix, with less energy and more machinery and transport equipment, to Canada.

Both economic blocks stand to gain from an increase in bilateral trade due to returns to scale. A joint-study in 2008 projects a $14.9 billion gain in annual income for the EU and a $10.5 billion annual gain for Canada from a FTA.

Canada currently has FTAs with fourteen countries and has an economy that is heavily reliant on external trade.

Court Forces Canadian Province to Reveal Names of Companies Involved in Immigrant Investor Program

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Immigrants invested an estimated $120 million into PEI-based businesses through the PEI PNP Investor Program in 2007 and 2008 before it was shut down in 2009

A Provincial Crown Corporation responsible for managing Prince Edward Island’s (PEI) Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) was ordered by a court this month to release a list of 1,423 businesses that were approved to receive funding from immigrant investors.

The Crown Corporation, Island Investment Development Inc (IIDI), was initially successful in blocking requests under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA), by applicants that included the CBC, Canada’s largest news broadcaster, for it to release the names of the businesses that it approved to receive investments through a now defunct “Immigrant partner” stream of the PEI PNP.

Under the Immigrant partner component of the PNP, the government of PEI would grant nominations for Canadian permanent residence to immigrants who made a $200,000 investment into a qualified PEI business and who had a net worth of at least $400,000.

PEI’s privacy commissioner ruled that disclosure of the names of the businesses and the number of PNP investment units that each received through the program would violate the FOIPPA by revealing financial information about the companies that they had a reasonable expectation of remaining confidential when they applied for the program.

The CBC subsequently appealed to the PEI Supreme Court to over-turn the privacy commissioner’s decision, and on November 2nd, the court did just that for one portion of the CBC’s request: the release of the names of the businesses.

The privacy commission’s decision to uphold IIDI’s refusal to release the number of investment units it approved for each company was upheld by the presiding judge, Justice Wayne Cheverie, as he argued that the minimum net worth of the concerned companies could be deduced from this information, given it was a criteria for eligibility under the program.

The list of companies was posted online by the CBC, and can be found here.

PEI currently has an active immigrant investor program, but unlike the Immigrant partner program which allowed for an unlimited number of nominations, the current program is capped at 400 applications per year.

Federal, Provincial Governments Reach Agreement on Future Canadian Immigration System

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Provincial immigration ministers met over two days in Toronto last week to discuss details of the new Expression of Interest (EOI) immigration system (Citizenship and Immigration Canada)

Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial (FPT) governments concluded two days of meetings on Friday with an agreement on the future of Canada’s immigration system which will give the provinces a central role in immigrant selection.

On the agenda for the FPT immigration ministers were the details of the upcoming Expression of Interest (EOI) model for the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program, which Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) is planning to implement by the end of 2014.

The EOI model is an immigrant selection process which requires those seeking to immigrate to first file a simplified application, or “Expression of Interest”, with immigration authorities.

From that pool of applicants, the most promising candidates, based on the immigration department’s selection criteria, are then selected, and invited to submit a full application with includes documentation to prove their claimed qualifications.

The EOI model was first adopted by New Zealand and then more recently by Australia. CIC believes it holds the promise of eliminating the application back-logs that have plagued Canada’s immigration department over the last decade while admitting immigrants with the language, education, age and skill profiles needed to be successful in the Canadian labour market.

The FPT meeting, which was attended by all provincial and territorial immigration minister with the exception of the immigration minister of Quebec, gave unanimous approval for an EOI model for Canada in which provinces and employers select the most promising candidates from the list of EOI applicants, who are then selected to be among the limited number of applicants to be invited to submit a full application.

Co-Chairing the FPT Meeting was Alberta Minister of Enterprise and Advanced Education, Stephen Khan, who voiced the provincial ministers’ support for the plan:

“On behalf of the provinces and territories, we look forward to continuing our work with the Government of Canada to transform the immigration system, making it faster and more responsive to provincial/territorial needs.”

Fast Track Option of Popular BC Immigrant Investor Program Suspended For Review

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The BC provincial government announced on Thursday that the Fast Track option in the business component of the BC PNP would be suspended, pending review of its economic contribution to the province's economy

The BC government announced on Thursday that it is suspending the Fast Track nomination option in the business stream of the BC Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP).

Through the business immigration stream of the BC PNP, foreign nationals who invest at least $200,000 to $400,000 to start or purchase and expand a qualifying BC-based business, are nominated for permanent residency by the BC provincial government after two years.

Under the regular BC PNP business program, candidates receive a two year work permit, during which time they are required to meet the business requirements detailed in the PNP performance agreement.

At the conclusion of the two year period, the BC government reviews their business, and if it fulfills the conditions of the program, nominates them for immigration.

The Fast Track option of the BC PNP business program is a special stream that allows candidates who make a $125,000 deposit to the BC government to receive a nomination for permanent residency immediately upon arriving in Canada, instead of being required to wait two years and fulfil their PNP performance agreement first.

Applicants who do not meet the obligations set out in BC PNP performance agreement forfeit their $125,000 deposit but can still keep their permanent residency status.

The BC government said that it would review this Fast Track option to see if it contributes to the province’s economy and that the suspension will not affect the regular business immigration stream of the BC PNP.

Federal Gov of Canada Increases Nova Scotia’s Immigration Nominee Quota

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Nova Scotia will be able to nominate 700 applicants and their families for immigration to Canada in 2012 after the cap for its Provincial Nominee Program was increased by 200

Nova Scotia’s provincial government announced yesterday that the federal government has increased the province’s immigrant nominee cap by 200, to 700 nominations in 2012.

“It will help us address existing and expected labour shortages,” said Marilyn More, the provincial minister responsible for Nova Scotia’s Office of Immigration. She said that the province would push for further increases of its Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) quota.

PNPs allow Canadian provinces and territories to nominate individuals who they deem as likely to contribute to their economy for immigration to Canada. The first PNP was created for Manitoba in 1998, and quickly expanded to all other provinces.

The federal government, which has jurisdiction over immigration in Canada, caps the number of individuals each province can nominate for Canadian permanent residence each year, but that number has steadily increased, amid repeated appeals by provincial premiers for expansions of their PNPs, which they say allow them to select the immigrants that best meet their provinces’ unique economic needs.

While the federal government has indicated it would continue to expand the PNPs, it has also expressed concern about the standards some provincial government use when nominating individuals. In July, it instituted minimum language requirements for PNP applicants in low/semi-skilled occupations.

Under the new language rules, applicants in occupations that are classified as NOC Skill Level C or D must prove English or French proficiency of at least Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB)/Niveaux de compétence linguistique canadiens (NCLC) 4, in all categories: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

The required International English Language Test System (IELTS) test scores to meet CLB 4 are 4.0, 4.5, 3.5, and 4.0 for listening, speaking, reading and writing, respectively.

Canada Not Viewed As Top Destination for Foreign Students: Foreign Affairs Dept

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'Old Vic' at the University of Toronto (U of T). The U of T was one of the few Canadian educational institutions perceived as a world class post-secondary institution by survey participants in China, India and Brazil

A Foreign Affairs department commissioned study completed in March finds that Canada is not seen as a top destination for prospective international students in Brazil, China, and India.

The sobering Ipsos-Reid report says that “Canada is a not top-of-mind destination for foreign study for participants in any of the three countries except with Brazilian participants interested in language studies” and that “there is no awareness that Canada has world-class educational establishments”.

Despite the poor survey results, Canada attracts nearly 100,000 international students every year, who contribute an estimated $6.5 billion annually to the Canadian economy.

There have been several high-profile calls on Canadian post-secondary institutions and governments this year to build on this success and increase Canada’s share of the international education market.

The federal government has heeded the calls and made efforts to promote the Canadian education brand, as reported by a Globe and Mail article on Tuesday:

Initiatives designed to forge educational links have been a feature of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s strategy to deepen economic ties with Asia during his trips to China and India this year.

Meanwhile, Governor-General David Johnston travelled to Brazil in the spring with 30 university presidents in tow, one of the biggest delegations abroad to push the benefits of Canadian education.

The Ipsos-Reid study recommends that the federal government improve the “Imagine Education in Canada” campaign, which it promotes internationally.

Specifically, it says the campaign should provide more information on the advantages of Canadian education to foreign students, like the global school ranking of Canadian post-secondary institutions, the top majors offered, and famous/successful people who have attended Canadian universities.

It also recommends advertising the practical advantages of living in Canada, like the high standard of living, good value for money, and the natural beauty of the country.

Canadian Prime Minister Lays Out His Vision For Immigration To Canada

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the Globe and Mail that Canada will need to compete for high value immigrants as other country look to immigration to solve their fiscal problems

In an interview on Saturday with the Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest national newspaper, Prime Minister Stephen Harper expounded in length on his vision for Canada’s immigration programs.

He told the Globe that competition for skilled international workers would heat up over the coming years, as “the demographic changes .. the aging population, start to bite, in many developed countries”.

He trumpeted his government’s achievements in reforming what he called the old “passive pro-immigration policy” which “operated on receiving applications and processing them in order” and had left his government with “backlogs of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of applications”.

He said his government is trying to shift to an “activist policy” where Canada goes out and recruits the immigrants it needs, and when it receives applications, “prioritize them to the country’s objectives.”

The Prime Minister said that as the rest of the developed world increases its immigration intake, Canada would need the activist immigration policy to “compete, and make sure we get the immigrants both in terms of volumes and particular attributes: skills, expertise and investment capacity.”

Under the Conservative government, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has legislatively wiped out the 280,000 application Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program backlog, and frozen acceptance of new applications under both the FSW program and the Federal Immigrant Investor program as it re-designs the programs and reduces the backlogs.

CIC has also suspended the parent and grandparent sponsorship programs and replaced them with a ‘Super Visa’ that allows foreign parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens and landed immigrants to visit Canada for up to ten years.

Immigration Department: 1 Year Canadian Experience Class Launching Jan 2013

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Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney tweeted more details in recent days about coming changes to the Canadian Experience Class and Federal Skilled Worker programs

The length of time that a temporary foreign worker needs to have worked full-time in the Canada to qualify for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) immigration program will be reduced from 24 months to 12 months in January 2013, according to a tweet by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

The long expected change in the CEC program’s work experience requirement is intended to increase the share of immigrants that come through the program, as Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) considers immigrants with Canadian work experience as more likely to be successful in integrating into Canada’s labour market than those who are admitted under more traditional routes like the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program.

The announcement on the date of the CEC program rule change was made in a response to a tweet directed to Kenney, who is quite active on the micro-blogging site, on November 5th:

@KaushikJay The new 1 year threshold for high-skilled temporary foreign workers to qualify for CDN Experience Class will start January, 2013

In a series of tweets on November 4th, Kenney also described when and in what form the revamped FSW program will be launched.

He posted that the final details for the relaunched program would be released in the “1st half of 2013” and that there would only be “a very limited number of new applications” accepted in 2013, to help CIC “asses [sic] the new grid & educational evaluation”.

He also posted that CIC’s goal was to launch the new Expression of Interest model for the FSW program “around late 2014 / early 2015”.

CIC placed a moratorium on accepting new applications through the FSW program in July 2012, to give it time to deal with the program’s pending application backlog and to design new selection rules and assessment procedures that it says will make the program more economically beneficial for Canada and its application review process faster.

Immigration Minister Calls on Regulators to Reduce Barriers for Canada’s Immigrants

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Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is seeking the cooperation of Canada's self-regulatory organizations in making it easier for new Canadians to get licensed to work in their field in Canada

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney attended the annual conference for Canada’s self-regulatory organizations (SROs) today and asked for their cooperation in helping recent immigrants to Canada become licensed in their field.

The Canadian Regulators Conference, held in Ottawa on November 8th and 9th, is organized by the Canadian Network of National Associations of Regulators (CNNAR), an association made up of some of Canada’s largest SROs, including the Canadian Nurses Association, the Ontario College of Teachers, and the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada.

CNNAR’s annual conferences are intended to foster information sharing on strategies and best practices among regulatory organizations, and are likely seen by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) as an ideal platform to promote its message of the need to increase regulatory recognition of foreign credentials and licensing of foreign-trained professionals.

Canada’s SROs have been under some criticism recently for occupational regulations that have hampered the labour market integration of Canada’s immigrants.

A report from the Canadian Labour Market and Skills Researcher Network (CLSRN) this month estimates that licensure barriers that prevent immigrants from working in their field of study cost the Canadian economy $2-5.9 billion a year in lost productivity and tax revenue.

Canadian Government Developing a Digital Dollar

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The Winnipeg Royal Canadian Mint, where the circulation coins of Canada and other countries are produced. The Mint hopes to develop a digital replacement for physical coins in the MintChip

The Royal Canadian Mint, a Crown Corporation responsible for minting Canada’s coins, is developing a digital version of the Canadian dollar that it hopes will make digital transactions as easy as cash-based ones.

The technology being developed is called MintChip, and the Mint is describing it as the ‘evolution of currency’. It relies on public-key cryptography and tamper-proof hardware to create non-reversible digital payments that do not require a connection to a third party payment processor like a bank or credit card network to complete.

The technology is not expected to be unhackable, but to keep risks for small-value digital transactions at manageable levels. The Mint says that due to the absence of transaction fees, the chips would also allow micro-transactions as low as 1 cent ($0.01).

The chip is still in the R&D phase, and it’s not known when, if ever, it will be released for public use.

To push the technology along, the Mint held a MintChip Challenge this year that invited software developers to create prototypes of applications of the technology. The competition ended in September with the winning teams being awarded a total of $52,700 worth of .9999 purity gold at a ceremony on October 25th.

While ambitious and seemingly far-fetched, it appears the Mint is quite far along in developing a replacement for physical banknotes and coins. If successful, the MintChip project would make Canada the first country in the world to have digital government-issued cash, giving its economy a leg up in the race to be a globally competitive centre of innovation.