By Catherine Sas Q.C.
Two weeks ago was full of announcements on the Immigration front for the Liberal government. On Monday, October 31, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Minister John McCallum, tabled his annual report to Parliament setting immigration levels for the year ahead.
The next day, Minister of Finance Bill Morneau introduced his Global Skills Strategy to make it easier and faster for companies to bring foreign workers to Canada.
Minister McCallum surprised many by holding fast the number of permanent residents to be welcomed to Canada next year.
Many had expected him to increase immigration levels to 400,000 or more. The Liberals have long held that Canada's immigration levels should be set at 1% of the population – 360,000 immigrants per year.
While 300,000 is about 40,000 more applicants per year than under the former Conservative government, it was widely expected that there would be a further increase from last year's threshold.
The Minister also emphasized economic and family immigration over refugees and humanitarian cases shifting his targets as follows:
2016 2017
Economic 160,000 172,500
Family 80,000 84,000
Refugees 55,800 40,000
Humanitarian 3,600 3,500

While the increases to the economic program are always welcome in Canada's aging population, the increase in the family class category is not significant enough to likely bring any improvement of processing times in reuniting families in Canada. Notwithstanding a slight reduction planned admissions for refugees, 2017's target of 40,000 is double that of 2015 and previous years signalling a continued strong support of Canada's refugee program.
For Minister McCallum's full levels plan see this link:
http://news.gc.ca/web
On Nov. 1, 2016, Finance Minister Bill Morneau showcased his Global Skills strategy to help Canadian businesses attract the talent that they need to succeed. The new strategy is aiming for an ambitious two-week standard for processing visas and work permits for low-risk, high skill talent for Canadian businesses specifically targeting:
• growth Canadian companies that need to access global talent in order to facilitate and accelerate investments that create jobs and growth including companies that can demonstrate labour market benefits such as increasing investments, knowledge, and Canadian job creation; and
• Companies that are making large investments, relocating to Canada, establishing new production or expanding production, and creating new Canadian jobs.
The announcement was short on details of exactly what Canadian businesses will benefit from their new strategy or when the program will be implemented.
(http://www.budget.gc.ca/fes-eea/2016/docs/themes/skills-competences-en.html)
In addition, Minister Morneau indicated that a new short-duration work permit exemption will be introduced to allow for companies to bring in workers or academics for up to 30 days without the need for a work permit. This will relieve companies of the effort, expense and in some cases, lengthy wait times, of making work permit applications on behalf of their personnel who will only be in Canada for a short period. The speedier process of applications (or doing away with the need for them) is always welcome news for Canadian employers. Let's hope these changes come in sooner rather than later!

Toronto – On the eve of potential cuts to city programs and services, a new report has found that Toronto has the highest percentage of children living in low-income families of any large urban area in Canada.
The report also reveals huge disparities in family access to housing, food, transit, childcare and recreation.
“Despite Toronto’s booming housing market and significant wealth, more than one in four children is living in poverty,” said report co-author Michael Polanyi of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto. “Now is definitely not the time to reduce city spending on critical services and programs.”
Toronto City Council is considering cutting up to $600 million in spending on City-funded programs and services such as community housing, transit, libraries and student nutrition, continuing a trend of service cuts over the past six years.
“We hope the report will put the 133,000 Toronto children living in poverty front-of-mind for Mayor Tory and Council as they debate the City budget,” said Sean Meagher, Executive Director of Social Planning Toronto. “All children deserve a fair start in life, not just those whose parents happen to have high incomes.”
Based on newly-released taxfiler data, the report found that 27% of Toronto children were living in low-income families in 2014, topping the list above Montreal (25%), Winnipeg (24%) and all other urban areas with over 500,000 residents.
The report found huge neighbourhood disparities in child poverty levels, which reflect other inequities. For example, racialized families, new immigrant families, lone parent families and families with disabilities are up to three times more at risk of living in poverty.
“When you cross Laird Avenue to go from Leaside to Thorncliffe, the rate of child poverty rate increases from 4% to 52%,” said Jessica Mustachi of Family Services Toronto. “This divide shows how we can and must do more to provide quality services to support low-income residents.”
The report also found that low-income children are struggling to succeed: children in schools in low-income neighbourhoods are less likely to be meeting provincial standards in Grade 3 math, reading and writing than children in higher-income schools.
The report was co-released by Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, Family Services Toronto (Ontario Campaign 2000), Social Planning Toronto, and Colour of Poverty-Colour of Change.
Report is available at www.socialplanningtoronto.org

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