My Canada Includes All Families - Campaign Fact Sheet

My Canada Includes All Families

A Campaign to Stop Further Restrictions on Family Class Immigrants

The Government of Canada has proposed changes to theImmigration and Refugee Protection Regulationsto further limit family class immigrants to Canada.Such as:

• Restrict sponsorship of dependent children to those under the age of 18;
• Increase the sponsor's eligible income requirement to 30% above the Low Income Cut Off (LICO);
• Double the sponsorship period from 10 to 20 years;
• Cap the number of parent & grandparent applications to be processed in 2014 at 5,000.

These changes are to take effect on January 1, 2014.

Those who are most negatively affected by these changes are members of racialized communities, refugees, women, and others who are disadvantaged due to their socio-economic status and who embrace an extended family concept.

While the time for submitting a formal response to the proposed regulations has passed, there is still time for us to stop the new regulations from becoming law.

A Coalition of community based organizations, immigrant and refugee rights advocates has been formed to launch a new Campaign, “My Canada Includes All Families”.The goal of the Campaign is to stop the Canadian Government from passing these regulations.

We need to show our Government the importance of families to all Canadians, including those who came to Canada as immigrants and refugees.We need to convince Members of Parliament and the Canadian public that family class immigrants make important contributions to Canadian society.

To do so, we need your help.We ask you to consider doing one or all of the following:

• Join the Campaign;
• Contact your local MP and local media to talk about why you oppose the changes;
• Collect and share stories and promote positive messages about the contributions of immigrants and refugee families;
• Participate in the CIC consultation for the 2014 immigration levels and mix to support family class immigrants:http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/consultations/index.asp

For more information and/or to join the Campaign, please contact:

Amy Casipullai, OCASI at (416) 524-4950,amy@ocasi.org

Avvy Go, MTCSALC at (416) 971-9674,goa@lao.on.ca

Shalini Konanur, SALCO at (416)487-6371, ext 40,konanurs2@lao.on.ca