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