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.

The program will run in an almost identical fashion to how applications were accepted in 2021:

• IRCC will send out 23,100 invitations to potential sponsors. They hope to accept 15,000 complete applications. (I.e., they expect 8,100 potential sponsors will either not apply or submit an incomplete application.)
• Applicants will be randomly selected from interest forms submitted in 2020.
• Selected applicants will be notified starting this week. It will take IRCC two weeks to send out all the invitations.
• Invitations will go to the same email address used to submit the interest form. Individuals who no longer have access to that email address or lost their confirmation number will be able to retrieve it or provide a new email address after all the invitations have been sent.
• The minimum necessary income for 2021 and 2020 will be the low-income cut-off for applicable family size. For 2019 it will be the low-income cut-off plus 30%. Employment Insurance and COVID-19 benefits such as CERB may be included in the income for 2020 and 2021.
• Applications must be submitted online.
• Applicants not selected are encouraged to submit a super visa application. Super visa applicants are now permitted to enter Canada for five years with the option of requesting a two-year extension.

The 2022 Immigration Levels Plan targets 25,00 new Canadians through the Parent and Grandparent Program (which includes accompanying spouses and dependent children.) 2023 will see a target of 28,500, with a further increase in 2024 to 32,000. Hopefully, in 2023 new applicants will finally be able to submit an interest form. There have long been calls for IRCC to amend the PGP to allow for a weighted lottery or a similar process that will more fairly balance the demand for the program within the levels plan. By selecting applicants who applied in 2020, IRCC has chosen bureaucratic efficiency over equitable access to the program.

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.

September 2022

 On May 11, 2022, the Canadian parliament approved a Private Member’s Bill, M-44, brought by Randeep Sarai, a politician from British Columbia. The motion required the Immigration department to develop a plan to expand the economic immigration streams available to individuals with Canadian work experience. The motion required the government to develop the plan within 120 days.

As soon as the Bill was passed, I started getting emails from clients holding post-graduate work permits. Some have already set up an Express Entry profile, and others are waiting to obtain a full year of work experience to be able to do so. They wanted to know what documents they should have prepared so they could apply for the new program when it was announced.

September 2022

Ten years ago, I ‘hung up a shingle,’ opening my own law firm exclusively focused on immigration and refugee law. It’s not where I expected my life’s journey to take me. I started law school keen on criminal and family law. I summered with a lawyer (now a judge) practicing in both areas of law and later articled for a general practice firm with a focus on family law.

The first bump in the road came only a year after starting work as an associate lawyer. A beautiful baby girl came into my life by way of adoption. Bumps two and three came shortly thereafter, also by way of adoption. With three children under the age of four, going back to work as a full-time lawyer didn’t seem feasible. I made the decision to be a stay-at-home mother.