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What we are doing:
Moving away from an occupation-based model to one focused on flexible
and transferable skills.
Assigning more weight to education.
Increasing the relative weight of having knowledge of an official language but
ensuring that language is not a bar to admission.
Creating an "in-Canada landing class" for temporary workers (including
recent graduates from Canadian schools) who have a permanent job offer
and who have been working in Canada.
Why we are doing it:
To attract and keep the highly skilled, adaptable immigrants that Canada
needs to succeed and prosper in the future.
Expanding the Temporary Worker Program
What we are doing:
Facilitating the entry of temporary workers through a more serviceoriented
approach.
Pursuing agreements with individual sectors or firms to identify and meet
short-term labour market needs, while respecting the terms of applicable
federal-provincial agreements.
Why we are doing it:
To allow the immediate needs of employers to be met faster.
To expand our access to the global labour market.
To attract people who are skilled and on the move and to encourage them to
make Canada their destination of choice.
Strengthening Sponsorship Obligations
What we are doing:
People in default of court-ordered spousal or child support payments will not
be allowed to sponsor.
People convicted of a crime related to domestic abuse will not be able to
sponsor unless a pardon has been granted or rehabilitation has been
demonstrated.
New legislative provisions will improve the ability of the federal government to
recover the costs of social assistance in cases of sponsorship default.
People receiving social assistance, except for reasons of disability, will not
be able to sponsor.
Why we are doing it:
To strengthen the integrity of the sponsorship program.
Streamlining Appeals
What we are doing:
Introducing a new leave requirement for people appealing visa officer
decisions from overseas.
Developing an alternative dispute resolution mechanism for overseas
decisions.
Limiting inland humanitarian and compassionate applications to one per
year.
Why we are doing it:
To provide a screening mechanism for applications to the Federal Court for
review of overseas decisions. The leave provision currently exists for inland
applications only.
To provide an effective, alternative means of reviewing and solving disputes
regarding overseas decisions.
To ensure a fast and fair inland system for considering applications on
humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
Business Immigration
What we are doing:
Establishing objective criteria to assess business experience for both the
investor and entrepreneur programs.
Creating a new net worth requirement for entrepreneurs.
Why we are doing it:
To strengthen the integrity of the business immigration program.
Objective Criteria for Permanent Residence
What we are doing:
Introducing a clear physical residency requirement. To retain permanent
residence status, a person must be physically present in Canada for a
cumulative period of 2 years for every 5 working years. People who spend
time overseas for specific reasons (to accompany a Canadian citizen, to
work for a Canadian company, or for humanitarian reasons) will retain their
status.
Developing a fraud-resistant permanent resident card.
Ensuring an oral appeal to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) for all
loss of status cases.
Ensuring that permanent residents without a valid card have the right to
enter if they have been outside Canada for less than one year.
Why we are doing it:
To implement a clear objective standard that is easier to administer.
To replace a document that is easy to forge with one that has
state-of-the-art security features.
And Refugees
Strengthening Refugee Protection: Overseas Resettlement
What we are doing:
Amending the criteria for "ability to establish in Canada" to include social as
well as economic factors.
Pursuing agreements with NGOs to locate, identify, refer and pre-screen
refugee applications in areas where refugees are most in need of protection.
Ensuring that people in urgent need of protection are brought to Canada
within days.
Why we are doing it:
To ensure that the need for protection is the overriding objective in
resettlement from abroad.
To focus existing resources on areas where refugees are most in need of
protection.
Facilitating Family Reunification of Refugees
What we are doing:
Processing overseas families as a unit, including extended family members
of refugees whenever possible.
Allowing dependants of refugees, selected inland or abroad, to be
processed as part of the same application for a period of one year after a
refugee has acquired permanent resident status.
Exempting refugees, their spouses, partners and dependants from the
admission bar with regard to excessive demand on health or social services.
Why we are doing it:
To facilitate the reunification of refugees with their family members as soon
as reasonably practicable.
Faster and Fair Refugee Processing Inland
What we are doing:
Referral to the IRB to be made within three working days.
Consolidating protection decisions at the IRB to examine all risk grounds at
a single hearing. Grounds will include the Geneva Convention, the
Convention against Torture, and the risk of cruel or unusual treatment or
punishment.
The use of single-member panels as the norm, supported by the
establishment of a paper appeal on merit.
Reducing the waiting period from 5 to 3 years for the landing in Canada of
undocumented refugees who are unable to obtain documents from their
listed country of origin because there is no central authority in that country
to issue documents.
Why we are doing it:
To allow genuine refugees to be processed faster so that their lives are not
put in limbo while they wait for decisions crucial to their future.
To provide a fair opportunity to correct errors in law or fact in the first
instance, and to increase the integrity of the decision-making process.
Front-end Security Screening
What it is:
A security check initiated when a person makes a refugee claim.
Why we are doing it:
To catch criminals and people who present security risks at the start of the
process and speed genuine refugees through the system. Currently, a
security screening is carried out only once a person is granted refugee
status by the IRB.
Admissibility Hearing
What it is:
A hearing before an independent adjudicator to decide whether a person is
admissible to Canada.
Why we are doing it:
To make fair but fast decisions on security cases.
Pre-removal Risk Assessment
What we are doing:
Legislating a procedure to fairly assess the risk of return prior to removal.
There will be flexibility for an oral hearing should the complexity of the case
require it.
Repeat claimants, failed refugee claimants, and refugees who have
withdrawn or abandoned their claims will be assessed on the grounds of the
Geneva Convention, the United Nations Convention against Torture, and the
risk of cruel or unusual treatment or punishment.