CPC: Convicted Criminals From G7 Countries Now Eligible to Enter Canada Under Bill C-3

2026/07/20 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, the government approach on this point was correct as a criminality check of citizens by descent would most likely not be upheld by the court. But the open ended nature of C-3 that in theory extends the right of citizenship to prior the Citizenship Act of 1947 and the birth of Canada as a country in 1867, may well create operational problems for IRCC.

Given the documentation requirements for Canadian ancestors that would anchor any claim, it may well be that relatively few apply and the reports from lawyers, archivists and others may reflect an initial demand, rather than an ongoing one:

Politically, of course, this plays well:

Today, the Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner, Conservative Shadow Minister of Immigration and Citizenship, released the following statement regarding reports of non-citizens convicted of serious crimes being able to travel to Canada freely because of citizenship law changes made by the Liberals in Bill C-3:

“Should a person with a criminal record be entitled to automatic citizenship in Canada? The Liberal government seems to think so.

“Back in November, Conservatives proposed an amendment to Liberal Bill C-3 that would have barred non-citizens with criminal records from being eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship by descent. While it was initially adopted, the Liberals later gutted the amendment.

“Now today, just like Conservatives warned would happen, we are finding out that non-citizens who have been convicted of serious crimes, such as those in the United States, are eligible to apply for citizenship through Bill C-3. This is happening precisely because the Liberals gutted our amendment.

“This isn’t the only fallout of the Liberals’ misguided Bill C-3. Continually conflicting information from the Minister on who is eligible to apply is creating massive backlogs in legitimate citizenship application processing. Unfortunately, this is the direct outcome of a law that was overly expansive and doomed to fail from the start. 

“All that was needed was a very targeted law change, and the problem of lost citizenship for a very small group of people would have been fixed. No political party had a problem with fixing that precise issue, but the Liberals instead went far beyond what was required and decided to open the floodgates.

“The result? We have seen a Pandora’s box unleashed with the changes the Liberals pushed through over warnings the Opposition raised. Millions of people are discovering they are eligible for citizenship. Our citizenship laws are now some of the most overly-permissive in the whole world, with the ability to claim citizenship if a single relative, no matter how distantly back they are, was a Canadian citizen.

“This is a fundamental change affecting what it means to be Canadian. Citizens of convenience are not what this country is founded on, and it goes against everything we stand for. Bestowing citizenship on those with no connection whatsoever to Canada is a surefire way of asking for trouble, and lets those we may not want into our society, with full legal and voting powers.

“The problems created by Bill C-3 are already showing themselves. How long until a US mass murderer receives citizenship? Or those who have never paid into the system seek to access Canadian healthcare? I call upon the Liberals to support common sense amendments Conservatives proposed to Bill C-3 in order to fix the mess they made.”

Source: Convicted Criminals From G7 Countries Now Eligible to Enter Canada Under Bill C-3

Detailed brief from immigration consultant Amir Ismail (RCIC #R412319) where this has become a new line of business for many consultants and lawyers:

Bill C-3 and the Felon Question: Why American Criminals Can Now Legally Enter Canada

Bill C-3 is a genuine human rights achievement. It corrected a constitutional injustice that fractured Canadian families for decades and left hundreds of thousands of legitimate descendants without access to a status they were always entitled to hold.

It also created a real, legally airtight pathway through which individuals with serious criminal records in the United States can obtain Canadian citizenship and enter Canada without any border recourse available to CBSA.

Both of those things are true at the same time.

The political fight over this law is not over. The debate about mandatory criminal checks will return to Parliament. The volume of applications from the United States will keep climbing. And the operational strain on IRCC will intensify.

Filed under C-3, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Abela | Of course my employers need certain private information — but their questions are getting more uncomfortable, and I think I know why

2026/07/20 Leave a comment

Good distinction between census and employer questions:

…All in, one could perhaps be excused for thinking the right way to answer my employer’s question concerning my “pattern of sexual, emotional, and/or romantic attraction to men, women, and/or people of other genders” is not to tick the “I prefer not to answer” box but to opt instead for a respectful “none of your business” write-in.

Are there places where the reservations I’ve suggested don’t come into view?

Yes: the Canadian census, for example, asks some similarly probing questions — but from my perspective, it has a different standing. The information it requests is part of the relationship of citizenship, in which the government has obligations to the citizenry, and the citizenry has reciprocal obligations to the government. Census data can be crucial for governments to effectively discharge their democratic obligations, as well as to materially and legally protect personhood and dignity. And this data is, in the aggregate, also made available to the broader public.

No such symmetry of right and obligation in an original social contract exists between employees and employers. Within the enabling constraints of law, I sell labour to my employer — nothing more, nothing less.

Perhaps we have here a case of competing interests colliding, with no easy reconciliation in sight between protecting the personal sphere and creating a more just working environment. Even still, we owe it to ourselves not to be blind to the casual erosion of the personal sphere.

Paul Abela is an associate professor of philosophy at Acadia University.

Source: Opinion | Of course my employers need certain private information — but their questions are getting more uncomfortable, and I think I know why

Filed under DEI, employment equity, Multiculturalism Tagged with

Bill 21 brings Chief Justice Richard Wagner to the decision of a lifetime [citizenship]

2026/07/20 Leave a comment

Good long read on Justice Wagner, including the discussion of the Vavilov case where I understand the issue of coherence in rulings of administrative tribunals. On the other hand, the Court completely missed the substantive citizenship issue, that foreign officials did not benefit from their children being granted Canadian citizenship if born in Canada. That they were not “official” diplomats but undercover spies, and the resulting “loophole,” failed a basic common sense test:

…The Chief Justice’s most important ruling will sound a bit boring: a 2019 judgment called Vavilov that resolved a legal debate in administrative law. This is a mostly unseen but omnipresent part of the legal system, where the courts assess government decision-making and citizens can seek review of rulings from tribunals such as the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. 

Until the Vavilov ruling, how judges reviewed such decisions was a mess. There was little coherence and a lot of wasted court time.

Chief Justice Wagner sought to solve the problem. The Supreme Court took on three similar appeals, invited interveners to join in and, unusually, solicited outside legal help. 

The central case was that of Alexander Vavilov, born in Toronto in 1994. His parents were Russian spies, the inspiration for the television show The Americans. After the FBI arrested the spies in 2010 near Boston, Mr. Vavilov applied to renew his Canadian passport. In 2014, the federal Registrar of Canadian Citizenship cancelled his certificate of citizenship.

The registrar’s reading of federal regulations, and the Citizenship Act, determined Mr. Vavilov should not have been granted Canadian citizenship at birth because his parents had been employees of a foreign government.

Mr. Vavilov won at the Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision. Chief Justice Wagner, the lead author, ruled that the registrar’s conclusion was unreasonable. The larger legal breakthrough: the judgment clarified how courts should review administrative decisions writ large. …

Source: Bill 21 brings Chief Justice Richard Wagner to the decision of a lifetime

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Tombe: Population aging doesn’t have to slow us down

2026/07/17 Leave a comment

Good discussion and analysis of an aging population and the economy:

…The lesson for Canadian policymakers is not that we need not adapt to rapidly changing demographics. It is that slower growth is not a necessary consequence of them.

If we respond to labour scarcity by adopting new technologies, shifting the composition of economic activity, and boosting productivity, we may fully offset the drag of an aging population on growth.

That requires investment. If barriers prevent firms in Canada from investing at the levels they otherwise would, or prevent economic activity from reallocating toward more capital-intensive sectors, then we may well find that aging is a drag on growth after all. But it is not a future we are stuck with.

There is also value in ensuring that policy is not artificially increasing labour scarcity, just in case innovation doesn’t save the day. Some policies encourage people to exit the labour force. Others weaken work incentives by raising taxes to fund ever more generous elderly benefits. Considering reversing these policy choices should be a part of the conversation.

Canada’s population will age. Whether it slows our growth is a separate question, and the answer largely depends on us.

Trevor Tombe is a professor of economics at the University of Calgary, the Director of Fiscal and Economic Policy at The School.

Source: Population aging doesn’t have to slow us down

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Court ruling opens door for Canadian immigration delays — and minister’s power — to be challenged

2026/07/17 Leave a comment

Hard to argue against“transparent and intelligible justification” in any area of government, unfortunately “more honored in the breach than the observance”:

…In a judgment released last week, Federal Court Justice Michael Battista said the minister, despite the legal authority to set priorities, still has the duty to provide “transparent and intelligible justification” for application processing delays.

“What Justice Battista is saying is that implementing ministerial instructions in itself doesn’t make them reasonable and doesn’t justify a delay,” said Ottawa-based immigration lawyer Jacqueline Bonisteel, who is not involved in the case.

“It’s not enough for you to have suddenly pivoted and said, ‘Now this is the processing time.’ They still need to provide a reasonable, intelligible justification for the delay … (this ruling) allows us some fuel to push back on the use of these instructions in all different areas.”…

Source: Court ruling opens door for Canadian immigration delays — and minister’s power — to be challenged

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Immigration department pauses applications to sponsor parents, grandparents to settle in Canada

2026/07/17 Leave a comment

Of note (endemic problem in terms of demand always exceeding allotment):

…In a statement, Taous Ait, a spokesperson for immigration minister Lena Metlege Diab said the measures are “part of broader efforts to restore balance across immigration programs and support timely processing, while maintaining public confidence in Canada’s immigration system.”

She said decisions to open or pause new intakes to the program follow assessments of the number of people in “its inventory and application inventory, each year.”

“IRCC will continue processing up to 15,000 individuals this year who have already applied, in line with our Immigration Levels Plan,” she added. 

The Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) is a lottery-like pathway to permanent residence for family members who are foreign nationals. Demand to settle here under the program has far outstripped the number of permanent residence spots available under the government’s immigration targets. 

In the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan, published in last year’s budget, the government cut its target for new permanent residents under the parents and grandparents program to 15,000 in each of the three years. 

…Calgary immigration lawyer Yameena Ansari said the waits are so long for people wanting to bring their parents and grandparents to Canada some have died during the process. 

She said there is a scramble to apply when windows to do so are opened as they were from July to October in 2025. 

Ms. Ansari said the current system “is kind of like a lottery, but there’s hundreds of thousands of people in the pool.”

“Every two years or so they open the lottery and people have a limited amount of time to submit to the lottery and then they close it. The majority of time it’s closed.”

“I do think there should be a rethink,” she said, adding the government did not seem to want older people to come here from abroad because of the strain on the health care system. …

Source: Immigration department pauses applications to sponsor parents, grandparents to settle in Canada

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Government of Canada announces new members to be appointed to the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments

2026/07/17 2 Comments

Of note: Gender parity, 2 visible minorities, 1 Indigenous.

Comparison table below:

….The new members bring a sound understanding of the parliamentary and legislative process, which will allow them to provide high quality recommendations to the Prime Minister about who could contribute to the work of the Senate. Adding to the constitutional requirements, the members will be focused on recommendations that will achieve greater expertise in the Senate on the emerging issues and challenges facing Canada including trade, finance, artificial intelligence and technology, diplomacy and foreign affairs, criminal justice and community safety and strategic Canadian capabilities and industries.

This is especially important following the expansion of the criteria for new applicants to the Senate, and the removal of the non-partisanship criterion for Senate appointments, recognising the valuable contributions made by Canadians who have chosen to serve in elected office or in other partisan roles…

Source: Government of Canada announces new members to be appointed to the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments

Filed under Government, Politics Tagged with ,

Colby Cosh: Ontario’s welfare-for-illegal-migrants scheme could be dropped overnight

2026/07/16 Leave a comment

Valid observation:

…There’s a point in the Social Benefits Tribunal ruling that is easy to overlook. When the appellant originally applied for welfare in 2023, there was a check of immigration records to see if he was subject to deportation or a removal order, which would have disqualified him under the current law. There was no second check at the time of the administrator’s decision in 2025. A second search, we’re told, was not conducted by a caseworker “in order to avoid possibly jeopardizing the appellant’s situation in Canada.”

It is hard to understand this as anything other than a sign that the Ontario welfare apparatus — full of social workers no doubt pledged to the sacred principle that “no one is illegal” — is already unwilling to recognize technical citizenship requirements. In this case, the technical requirements turned out not to exist at all. But what do you suppose will happen if Premier Ford gets on the phone this afternoon and orders that the welfare loophole be closed?

It seems welfare caseworkers have a lot of discretion to avoid “jeopardizing situations,” and perhaps it is not their job at all to enforce the (federal) law of citizenship. But even assuming they are willing to safeguard the public treasury against unscrupulous and potentially infinite exploitation, which is definitely part of their job, there’s still another problem. Any new Fordist regulation written to limit public welfare to persons lawfully present in Canada is bound to face near-immediate Charter scrutiny in front of a real court — and how do we imagine that might go these days?

Source: Colby Cosh: Ontario’s welfare-for-illegal-migrants scheme could be dropped overnight

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As Canada modernizes Senate appointments, it can also broaden how it understands Black representation

2026/07/16 Leave a comment

True, the Black community is very diverse in terms of countries of origin, period of immigration etc, more so than any other group perhaps save Muslims. StatsCan did a good analysis of this diversity. Most communities have considerable ideological diversity which is largely unmeasured. However, operationalizing in employment equity would be a challenge:

…The implications extend well beyond the Senate. Governments, universities, corporations and public agencies increasingly rely on diversity metrics to measure progress toward equity. Counting the number of Black people in leadership positions is an important first step. But it should not be the final measure of success.

More detailed and separate data on the wide array of Black communities in Canada, more nuanced reporting and broader engagement with different Black communities would help institutions understand which communities have access to leadership opportunities, which remain under-represented and which perspectives may be missing from decision-making.

Canada’s commitment to equity has never been simply about filling seats. It has been about ensuring that public institutions benefit from a wide range of lived experiences and perspectives.

As Canada modernizes how senators are selected, it also has an opportunity to broaden its understanding of representation. That means asking not only whether Black Canadians are represented, but also whether the diversity of Black Canada is reflected in the voices helping shape the country’s future.

Sheri Adekola, Sessional Instructor, Migration and Labour Markets, University of Guelph

Source: As Canada modernizes Senate appointments, it can also broaden how it understands Black representation

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

ICYMI: Applications for federal public service jobs drop by almost 30 per cent

2026/07/15 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see overall impact on hirings, separations and promotions by group in next year’s report:

The number of people applying for a job in the federal government plummeted last year as Ottawa works to slash the size of the public service.

Two years ago, there were more than a million applications for jobs in the federal public service.

But between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026, that number fell by nearly 30 per cent, to less than 735,000.

The number of job ads the government posted was also down almost 40 per cent, while the number of people who left the public service, including retirements and resignations, increased 12 per cent.

There were also around 52 per cent fewer promotions within the public service in 2025-26, compared to a year earlier. 

In Budget 2025, the Liberal government committed to cutting the number of public service positions by about 40,000 people by April 2029 from a peak of almost 368,000 in 2024. …

Source: Applications for federal public service jobs drop by almost 30 per cent

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

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