Syed Khan – 26 October 2021
Nova Scotia’s Sean Fraser replaces Marco Mendicino as Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada. The latter has now been moved to the Department of Public Safety. This is the first time Fraser has been elected as a Cabinet Minister, almost 6 years after his first foray into politics.
Fraser is by profession, a lawyer and was raised in the small town of Merigomish in Pictou County. He obtained his degree in B.Sc from St. Francis Xavier University in 2006 before proceeding to the Dalhousie University and Leiden University to get his law degree in 2009.
He practiced law in Calgary for three years as an associate at the Blake, Cassels & Graydon firm. He has been parliamentary secretary to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland. He has also served as Ottawa’s spokesman for fiscal issues during the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recovery.
He has been a part of human rights efforts in South Africa and is recognized as a noted orator.
While many have congratulated the Minister, some have taken a cautious approach with these new developments. Many hope that the Minister will resolve setbacks of the previous government and Canada achieves its immigration goal of welcoming 401,000 new permanent residents this year.
Steps taken by Canada to increase immigration under its 2021-2023 Immigration Levels Plan:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada had closed borders and put in place restrictions to control the wave. However, it still welcomed new immigrants by introducing special regulations, creating pathways, and regularly holding draws to invite people to Permanent Residency.
In May, Canada announced a new pathway to Permanent Residency and offered international students and workers in essential occupations open work permits. This pathway is projected to accept over 20,000 applications for temporary workers in health care, 30,000 for temporary workers in other selected essential occupations, and 40,000 applications for international students who obtain their education from eligible Canadian Universities.
“This new open work permit ensures that those who have been playing critical roles throughout the pandemic can continue their extraordinary service. Our message to them is simple: your status may be temporary, but your contributions are lasting – and we want you to stay” Minister Mendicino said.
Temporary Foreign Workers constitute a large percentage of new permanent residents welcomed to Canada as 70% of 222,275 welcomed here belonged to this category.
The IRCC under Minister Mendicino also made investments and took measures to speed up the processing time of applications. New staff was hired and efforts were made to increase efficiency.
Due to the Guardian Angels program, support workers, nurses, orderlies, etc were invited to apply for asylum and receive PR. This program received a lot of interest and at the end of the application period over 4,000 people had applied as asylum seekers.
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