https://www.hilltimes.com/2016/06/20/people-are-asking-what-were-doing-different-from-the-previous-government-liberal-mps-set-up-regional-caucuses-on-no-1-constituency-issue-immigration/

By ABBAS RANA

PUBLISHED : Monday, June 20, 2016 12:00 AM

PARLIAMENT HILL—Government backbench MPs say they have set up regional caucuses to deal with immigration, the “No. 1” issue in major urban centres across Canada, because constituents are asking them what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has done in the last eight months to fix the system and MPs are communicating any problems to Immigration Minister John McCallum.

“People who put me in here, they come to my office and they’re banging on my doors [asking], ‘What are you doing different from the previous government,’” said rookie Liberal MP Jati Sidhu (Mission-Matsqui-Fraser-Canyon, B.C.), chair of the Liberals’ Western and Northern Immigration Caucus, who won the last election by a margin of only 2.3 per cent of the vote. “So, we’re trying to reform with the help of the immigration minister with the feedback from Members of Parliament to see what can we do together. It’s making his job easier because he can’t see 20 MPs every time.”

Mr. Sidhu’s riding of Mission-Matsqui-Fraser-Canyon has a total population of 88,840, and 12 per cent are new Canadians since 1991. As well, 20,350 constituents are visible minorities, including 16,890 of South Asian origin, 685 Chinese, 645 African, and 460 Southeast Asian. Mr. Sidhu immigrated from India.

In the last election, Mr. Sidhu won with 37.2 per cent of the vote and second place Conservative candidate Brad Vis won 34.9 per cent.



Meanwhile, in consultation with Mr. McCallum (Markham-Thornhill, Ont.), Liberal MPs have set up four regional caucuses on immigration: Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic and the Western and Northern caucus. The Ontario immigration caucus is co-chaired by Liberal MPs Julie Dzerowicz (Davenport, Ont.) and Peter Fonseca (Mississauga East-Cooksville, Ont.); the Quebec caucus is chaired by Liberal MP Steven MacKinnon (Gatineau, Que.); the Atlantic caucus by Liberal MP Alaina Lockhart (Fundy Royal, N.B.); and the British Columbia and Northern caucus by Mr. Sidhu.

Each caucus makes its own decisions on how frequently it meets and all meetings are held behind closed doors on Parliament Hill.

MPs say they formally established the caucuses in order to deal with an influx of questions from constituents and with specific needs in each region. Mr. McCallum tries to attend the caucus meetings and if he’s not available, his ministerial political staffers go in his place.

Asked why the Liberals decided to establish regional immigration caucuses, Mr. MacKinnon responded: “To examine issues that are more germane to one region than another.”



Mr. MacKinnon’s Gatineau riding has a total population of 104,810, including five per cent who are new Canadians since 1991. There are 7,520 constituents who are visible minorities. Of the 7,520, 3,350 are of African origin, 1,995 are Arabs and 1,065 are Latin American. Mr. MacKinnon won with 53.76 per cent of the vote in the last election, while the second place NDP candidate Françoise Boivin won 26.5 per cent of the vote.

Since the last federal election, Liberal MPs have been telling The Hill Times that immigration issues are top of mind for their constituents and that, depending on the riding’s diversity, immigration issues can constitute between 60 per cent to 80 per cent of the riding’s constituency work.

Most MPs have two staffers in their individual riding offices and at least one attends to constituents’ immigration needs. The most common complaints of constituents about immigration issues are related to long delays in the processing times of applications for family reunification, refugees, spousal sponsorship, temporary foreign workers, visitor visas, and Canadian citizenship applications.

“If you do a scan of all of our Members, it’s anywhere 50 per cent, to 60 per cent, to about 80 per cent, that’s the range depending on where you are,” said Ms. Dzerowicz in an interview with The Hill Times. “My riding is extraordinarily diverse, so, we have a lot of immigration issues.”

Ms. Dzerowicz’s riding of Davenport has a total population of 102,040, including 18 per cent who are new Canadians since 1991. There are 33,680 who are visible minorities. Of the 33,680, about 6,750 are of African origin, 6,715 are Latin American, 5,365 are Chinese, 3,210 are Filipino and 2,915 are Southeast Asians, according to Statistics Canada.

Ms. Dzerowicz won the last election by a margin of only 2.9 per cnet of the votes. She won 44.26 per cent of the vote besting incumbent NDP MP Andrew Cash who won 41.36 per cent of the votes.

Ms. Dzerowicz said the Ontario immigration caucus holds bi-weekly meetings which are usually very well-attended as immigration issues are top of mind for constituents.

“For many of us, it’s the No. 1 issue in our community or constituency offices,” said Ms. Dzerowicz. “It provides an outstanding opportunity for us to really be delving into the issues and really be sharing information on what are some of the top issues that we’re experiencing and how we move forward to look at some of the ways to resolve them.”

According to the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Department website, application processing times vary from one category to the other and when and where the application was filed. For example, if someone filed an application to emigrate to Canada between 2008 and 2010in the skilled workers category, the application processing time is 73 months. Also, if someone filed an application from a South Asian country and another from the United States, the processing time frames are different.

In the family class, the application processing time is 26 months if a Canadian sponsors a spouse living inside Canada. For the spouses living outside Canada, in some cases, the processing time is more than two years. For parents and grandparents’ sponsorship applications, the department is currently processing applications that were filed in 2011.

Ms. Lockhart declined to share any information on specific issues that her caucus has been discussing because all meetings are confidential, but she said that they mostly centre around the issues of aging population in Atlantic Canada and how to attract more immigrants to the region and retain them.

The riding of Fundy Royal has a total population of 78,780 which includes 1,335 visible minority population. Of the 1,335, about 370 are of African origin, 225 Korean, 135 Chinese and 130 are South Asian.

In the last election, Ms. Lockhart won by a margin of 3.7 per cent of the votes. She won 40.8 per cent of the vote besting second place incumbent Conservative MP Rob Moore who garnered 37.09 per cent of the votes.

“We’re really focused on the fact we have an aging population. We’re talking about the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead,” said Ms. Lockhart.

All MPs, no matter the political stripe, pay close attention to constituency work and ensure that their constituents receive the help they need because it is the key to getting re-elected. MPs receive a variety of requests for assistance from their constituents on immigration, citizenship, funding from the government, legal issues, and individual federal government programs.

Moreover, since January, a number of Liberal MPs have been raising immigration issues in their weekly national caucus meetings and have pushed Mr. McCallum to address them as quickly as possible. In closed-door meetings, MPs told the immigration minister that, up until the last federal election, the Conservatives were to be blamed for immigration problems, but now that the Liberals have been in power, their constituents expect to see some progress.

Mr. Sidhu said last week that he understands the lack of progress in addressing immigration issues is because Mr. McCallum has been busy in fulfilling the Liberal Party’s campaign promise to bring in 25000 Syrian refugees to Canada. The government met this promise in February and Mr. McCallum is now working hard to come up with plans to fix the immigration backlog, but he said his constituents are getting impatient and want immediate action.

“According to John McCallum, it’s a lot of work, it’s going to take a while, which I understand,” said Mr. Sidhu. “But, then, the constituents they don’t understand this. They see the government has changed, [they expect] it’s going to happen overnight. It won’t happen overnight.”

Since February, Mr. McCallum has announced some changes in the citizenship and immigration system. On Feb. 25, in a press conference, he announced that the Liberal government was scrapping measures introduced by the Stephen Harper (Calgary Heritage, Alta.) government to revoke citizenships of Canadians holding dual nationalities convicted of terrorism, treason and spying offences. The Conservatives brought in these measures in 2014 under the controversial Bill C-24, the so-called Strengthening of Canadian Citizenship Act.

He also announced that permanents residents between the ages of 18 and 54 would have to demonstrate language proficiency of one of the country’s official languages. In the Harper government, the same requirement was for all between the ages of 14 to 64. Under the new rules, permanent residents will have to be physically present in Canada for three of five years from the previous four of six year.

Last week, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Department announced that this year, the government has created a total of 62,000 spaces for spouses, partners and dependent children, 14,000 more than last year.

Canada grants immigration to about 260,000 immigrants each year in all categories, combined. According to the statistics available on the Immigration Department website, in 2014, 66,661 individuals from around the world received Canadian immigration in the ‘family class’ category, 165,089 in the ‘economic class’ category, and 23,286 in the ‘refugee class’ category

In 2013, Canada took in a total of 259,023 immigrants including 81,843 in family class, 148,155 in economic immigrant class and 23,831 in refugees class.

arana@hilltimes.com