December 2022

First comes love, then comes marriage, and then comes an interminable wait for IRCC to process a sponsorship application.

Currently, Family Class applications have a processing time of 18 months. That’s a really long time for newlyweds to put their lives on hold.

As described in our previous newsletter, Visitor visas for romantic partners: tough to get, but not impossible; it can be very difficult for the romantic partners of Canadian citizens and permanent residents to get visas to come to Canada as visitors. For couples wishing to apply for a visitor visa for the sponsored spouse to come to Canada during the processing of the application, IRCC now has a policy applying the ‘dual intent’ section of our immigration legislation:

November 2022

One of the best books I’ve ever read about Canadian immigration is Maximum Canada: Toward a Country of 100 Million. In it, Globe and Mail international affairs columnists Douglas Saunders argues that Canadian immigration policies instituted by Britain led to Canada being underpopulated and deprived it of the critical mass of individuals necessary to create an economic environment conducive to innovation and entrepreneurship. This led and continues to lead to the ‘out-migration’ of Canada’s best and brightest, with the USA the primary beneficiary.

October 2022

IRCC has just announced the details of the 2022 Parent and Grandparent Program, and it will be of great disappointment to anyone hoping to apply who didn’t submit an interest form in 2020.

October 2022

Here in the city of Ottawa, we dispose of our waste using different coloured bins. Blue is for containers (think that empty bottle of ketchup), black is for paper, green is for organics, and your garbage can will be whatever is for sale at the local hardware store.

Introducing the municipal compost program in Ottawa was smartly done in the fall, so people could get used to recycling their organic waste before the hot summer months turned green bin contents into a smelly, sometimes wriggly affair.