OTTAWA - The federal government will begin intensive consultations next week to determine which skilled immigrants should be fast-tracked into Canada to relieve labour shortages.

The consultations will start Monday, only a few weeks after Parliament approved controversial legislation giving the minister of immigration discretion to decide which immigration applications should be speeded up and which should be rejected.

The legislation is supposed to prevent the the backlog of some 800,000 immigration applications from ballooning any further and allow quick entry for those whose skills are most in demand. Currently, it can take up to six years to process an application but the government hopes to whittle that down to no more than a year.

"The changes to Canada's immigration law allow us to bring to Canada more quickly those immigrants with the skills that match Canada's labour market needs," Immigration Minister Diane Finley said in a written statement Thursday.

"We are now consulting to make sure we accurately define those needs. This will help our economy and help newcomers better support their families."

Finley's department will hold meetings and video conferences with provinces, territories, business, labour, academics and non-governmental organizations. Finley herself will consult with national stakeholders at a roundtable in August.

The consultations are meant to identify the categories of skilled workers who should get priority entry into Canada. Based on the advice it receives, the government will prepare "instructions" for immigration officials to follow in determining which applications to process in future.

But Winnipeg immigration lawyer David Matas said the government is going about reform of the system backwards; it should have held consultations before changing the law.

"There was a problem with the system but they haven't figured out a way to fix it and so now they're holding consultations (saying), 'We've painted ourselves into a corner, help us get out of it,' which is kind of an awkward situation obviously."

To gut the law first and give the minister "the power to do anything and have no idea what we're going to do is arbitrary . . . and it's just not a proper way to run the system," Matas added.

Matas said he'd recommend that the government draft regulations that would set out the criteria or rules for fast-tracking certain applications, rather than just leaving it to ministerial whim.

In the short term, the consultations may slow down the system.

Finley's department anticipates that 2008 will be "a transition year" and that few applications received after the legislation - retroactive to Feb. 27 - will be processed until instructions to immigration officials have been issued sometime this fall.

In the meantime, backlogged applications filed before Feb. 27 will continue to be processed slowly under the old rules.

Applications from federal skilled workers who already have a job waiting for them will also be processed.

LIKE IT?  LET OTHERS KNOW

Thanks for participating!

Be the first to recommend - Sign in now


See what other people are recommending - Popular Stories