Position Papers & Backgrounders

OCASI - Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic and Colour of Poverty - Colour of Change submitted a joint community response to Canada's nineteenth and twentieth reports on the status of compliance by the Canadian government with respect to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discriminiation.

The Joint Report was submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in February 2012.

OCASI Comments on Federal Budget 2015

Federal Budget 2015 tabled on April 21 in the House of Commons contains two measures targeted specifically to immigrants – Foreign Credential Recognition Loan project changes and Access to remittance services. Many of the new investments contained in the budget are delayed for implementation in 2017-18 and later.

OCASI Executive Director Debbie Douglas appeared as a witness before the Standing Committee on Justice Policy on 16 April 2015 to make a submission on Bill 49 - Ontario Immigration Act, 2015.

The OCASI submission makes several recommendations to strengthen the Bill, including: prioritize permanent immigration over temporary migration; expanding Provincial Nominee Program selection to include low-skilled workers; and strengthen protection of employment and labour protection for migrant workers.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration has recommended that the Government of Canada evaluate conditional permanent resident status (of sponsored spouses), and monitor the number and outcome of abuse exception requests, percentage of tips that result in removal, and incidence of reported abuse within these sponsorships.

December 18, 2014/Toronto – OCASI is calling on the Government of Canada to mark International Migrants Day 2014 by adopting and ratifying the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on December 18, 1990 and in 2000 proclaimed 18 December as International Migrants Day.

December 9, 2014/Toronto - The Auditor General (AG) of Ontario has found serious shortcomings in the Ontario Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) in her 2014 Annual Report, released on Tuesday December 9, 2014. The report makes several important recommendations, which when implemented will bring a transformation to ensure program integrity.

The PNP as a policy tool is critically important to Ontario, Canada's largest province, to compete with other countries as well as provinces and territories for highly qualified immigrants. 

The Ontario government is pushing Bill 18, Stronger Workplaces for a Stronger Economy Act, 2014 through the legislature to have it passed as soon as possible. The Bill amends various employment-related statutes, with many of the proposed changes impacting temporary help workers.

OCASI has submitted comments on the federal government's proposed compliance framework for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and International Mobility Program (IMP). An overview of proposed regulatory changes was provided in an Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) discussion paper, “Regulatory proposals to enhance the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and International Mobility Program compliance framework” and interested parties were asked to submit comments.

Colour of Poverty - Colour of Change (COP-COC) commends the Ontario Government for its ongoing commitment to poverty reduction, expressed through the release of its second Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), Realizing Our Potential – Ontario's Poverty Reduction Strategy (2014-2019) on September 3, 2014. In it the Government reaffirmed its commitment to “reducing poverty among children and youth through targeted investments and supports”, and adds a new focus on ending homelessness while moving towards employment and income security, particularly for “vulnerable populations”.

Update: The government has included in the Budget Bill (C-43), provisions from Bill C-585 that may lead to refugee claimants being denied access to social assistance. The Budget Bill was introduced on Thursday October 23, 2014. It is making its way very quickly through the House of Commons.