CANADIAN POLITICS:
EXPOSE BILL C-50:
Last June the federal Conservative government passed, by underhanded means, Bill C-50, a piece of legislation that is inherently undemocratic and anti-immigrant. Tomorrow, July 22, Diane Finley, the Minister of Immigration will be in Toronto to hold sham "consultations" behind closed doors. Supporters of immigrants will be on hand to demonstrate against this farce. The following notice from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) tells it all.
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Expose Sham Bill C-50 'Consultations' of Immigration Minister:
*****please forward widely***
PICKET TO EXPOSE SHAM OF IMMIGRATION MINISTER’S C-50 “CONSULTATIONS”
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
11am
Park Hyatt Hotel
4 Avenue Road (Avenue Road and Bloor)
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, Immigration Minister Diane Finley will be in Toronto conducting consultations on the implementation of Bill C-50. These so-called 'consultations' behind closed doors at the Park Hyatt Hotel with what she calls “key stakeholders”. Community groups and agencies, such as OCASI and others, have been denied access to these consultations, leading us to believe the only 'key stakeholder' that matters to Finley is big business.
On June 18th, the Harper government passed Bill C-50 even though the majority of members of Parliament opposed it. This was done by slipping immigration changes into a budget bill and then virtually forcing the Liberal Party into abstaining by threatening an election if the bill was defeated. Now the government is holding sham"consultations" about implementing Bill C 50 to give these anti-democratic maneuvers a fig leaf of "transparency" despite the fact that many immigrant and refugee rights organizations opposed the bill from the start.
Bill C-50 is an amendment to the Immigrant and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) that will supposedly address the backlog of applications.Instead, Bill C-50 puts a greater amount of power in the hands of the Immigration Minister, giving her the ability to arbitrarily reject applicants – including putting quotas on applicants from areas of the world she may consider ‘undesirable’. This undemocratic move aims to sneak in significant changes that will perpetuate a restrictive,exploitative, and racist immigration policy in Canada.
Bill C-50 further legitimizes the use of human beings as a form of indentured labour and further legalizes racist discrimination through immigration policy. With Bill C-50 we will likely see more temporary work permit programs, thus ensuring greater exploitation of migrants as they are simply used as disposable commodities to fill the labour needs of corporate Canada, tossed aside as those needs are filled.
We have a better idea:
NO ONE IS ILLEGAL!
STATUS FOR ALL!
SCRAP BILL C-50!
Contact nooneisillegal@riseup.net for more information
1 comment:
I'm simply amazed at the hypocrisy of NDP, Liberal and Green party-types, who--claiming to be pro-environment--push for mass immigration. The staggering urban sprawl problem is caused by the intake of over a quarter million immigrants a year, period. No amount of fanciful New Urbanist planning will arrest the loss of farmland and greenspace caused by a bulging population, mostly fuelled by immigration. Aside from ethno lobbies (like Olivia Chow's constituents), the real push for mass immigration comes from Canada's powerful housing and development industry. All of this talk of addressing labour shortages and the pension system are bogus. Canada needs a hard cap on immigration and population, like proposed in the UK.
We can't be a safety valve for the developing world. Countries like India and Pakistan need to adopt responsible population-control policies and not offload their population surplus on North America. The environmental movement also needs to get a spine--not like the Sierra Club, who accepted over U.S.$100M (from David Gelbaum), to NOT discuss immigration. Aside from the sprawl problem, we have immigrants unable to function in either of our official languages, gangs (e.g., the aptly-named Fresh Off The Boat Killers), hitherto unknown social ills like honour killings, clitorectomies, and khat and doda addicts.
What we need IS an uncensored debate on immigration.
Adam C. Sieracki
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