Skating season is here!

Last night I was asking my Love, "I wonder when they are going to open the Natrel Rink at Harbourfront Centre?" So I looked on their site at the live webcam (see above), and what did I see? Skaters! This morning I was up at 6am, got bundled up, and walked over to the rink. It took me a little bit to get my feet under me again, and I did take one fall (the right way - on my butt), but after a short period I was skating again! So exciting. Nathan Phillips Square's rink will be open December 2, and I might go there a few times this year too (though it's usually packed), but having my rink open makes me so happy; makes the cold weather worth the struggle. I love skating!

If you are immigrating to Canada, I really encourage you to learn to skate. Want to learn? Hockey Canada has a program for you. It's great, fun exercise, it gets you outside during the long winter, and it's certainly a way to begin your cultural integration.

See you on the pond!

The Star - Immigration ministry paid for media monitoring of Minister Jason Kenney’s image

Bruce Cheadle and Stephanie Levitz
The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — The Department of Citizenship and Immigration spent almost $750,000 monitoring ethnic media over the past three years, including assessments of election campaign events and “perceptions” of minister Jason Kenney.

A series of contracts from March 2009 through May 2012 cost taxpayers $745,050, according to documents obtained by The Canadian Press under access to information law.

Those contracts state they were for work “monitoring key words and issues related to the department’s mandate.”

But the more than 7,000 pages of documents reveal the media monitoring went well beyond public policy issues related to citizenship and immigration.

“A series of interviews and appearances by minister Kenney and his representatives were strong contributors to the upswing in the ministerial image,” says a report from May 5, 2010, under a pie graph titled “Minister Overall Perception.”

The ministerial perception charts were weekly fixtures in the lengthy media monitoring reports in the spring of 2010, when the minority Conservatives were on a constant election footing.

And while the personal Kenney pie charts vanished after the spring election window closed that year, and were not reprised, the focus of the daily media monitoring remained profoundly political.

Read more

Vancouver Sun - Skilled worker immigrant backlog to be eliminated three years ahead of schedule

OTTAWA — The government is expected to eliminate a controversial, years-old backlog of skilled worker immigration applications by the end of 2014 — about three years ahead of schedule, Postmedia News has learned.

It means a plan to create a pool of would-be Canadians from which provinces and employers could cherry-pick newcomers based on labour market need as opposed to who applied first will also be in place sooner than expected.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is expected to make the announcement Friday.

“Employers are best positioned to decide who can best fill the open jobs rather than a passive and bureaucratic system,” Kenney said of the plan last spring. “It’s not about privatizing the immigration system, it’s about a more active role of recruitment for people so they have jobs when they show up. I’d rather have an engineer working as an engineer than as a cab driver. That’s really where we’re trying to go with this.”

Read more: 

Immigration Minister Calls on Regulators to Reduce Barriers for Canada’s Immigrants

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is seeking the cooperation of Canada's self-regulatory organizations in making it easier for new Canadians to get licensed to work in their field in Canada

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney attended the annual conference for Canada’s self-regulatory organizations (SROs) today and asked for their cooperation in helping recent immigrants to Canada become licensed in their field.

Read the article at CICS News

Election eve in the U.S.

This will be my first U.S. presidential election away from the country. I voted in my home state of Washington via absentee ballot a few weeks back. In general, states facilitate voting by those outside of the country by a number of methods. I had the option of a paper ballot or electronic one. I could submit my ballot via regular mail or by email (I simply needed to print and scan my completed ballot). I was surprised that I was able to vote a full ticket in my home state - just the way I would have had I been living where I lived before I immigrated.

The challenge for me as an absentee voter is that I did not receive a voter's pamphlet. This is a guide to the candidates and issues prepared by the state. So I had a long conversation with my brother about the ballot issues and candidates. We don't agree on everything, and in retrospect I feel like maybe the right thing to do in the future is vote with him on local issues. He's the one impacted by the results, not me. If he believes he shouldn't support a particular property tax, well - I feel like I should support that. On matters that do impact me directly, such as candidates for State and Federal election - I'll vote my own way on those things.

As a typical, independent Washington State voter, I supported candidates from both major parties and a handful of independents too.

Our own poll here at The Expatriate Mind shows Obama leading. But in the U.S. it's much closer, and democratic friends of mine are quite nervous. I guess we'll know in less than two days just where the American public's support is as a nation struggles with the ghost of its past and the vision of its future.

The Star - Immigration levels to stay the same in 2013, mix to change: Kenney

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced today that 2013 immigration levels are to remain the same as last year - somewhere between 240-265,000 persons to be admitted. However, the Minister plans to cutback on the Federal Skilled Worker program and re-balance in favour of Canadian Experience Class applicants. How to interpret this? The Tories are happy to allow you to immigrate if you have already been allowed into Canada. If you haven't already been allowed in, it just got harder.

From the CIC web site:


You must meet these minimum requirements to apply for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class. You must:

• plan to live outside the province of Quebec (emphasis added)
• be either:
• a temporary foreign worker with at least two years of full-time (or equivalent) skilled work experience (emphasis added) in Canada, or
• a foreign graduate from a Canadian post-secondary institution with at least one year of full-time (or equivalent) skilled work experience in Canada
• have gained your experience in Canada with the proper work or study permit
• apply while working in Canada or within one year of leaving your job in Canada
• include the results of an independent language test (from an agency designated by CIC) showing you meet the minimum language requirements with your application

Read the article here 

Huffington Post - Canada: A Nation of Foreign Terrorists According to Bill C-43

Irwin Cotler writes:

Simply put, bill C-43 is seriously flawed in several particulars. First, it grants the Minister of Immigration new and ambiguous powers to bar people from entry to Canada for a period of three years on the grounds of "public policy." This reform is likely to lead to further politicization of our immigration system. Second, the new measures for faster deportation of residents will invite Charter challenges, particularly as the bill lowers the sentence for which a person can be deported from a two year sentence to six months -- thus shifting the focus of deportation away from serious criminality towards petty crimes.

Read the article here

Far from the home I love

I was watching "Fiddler On The Roof" the other day - one of my favourite musicals. It's directed by Canadian Norman Jewison.

There is a scene in it when the daughter, Hodel (played by Michele Marsh), and Tevye (played by Topol) are sitting at a lonely train stop, and Hodel is explaining to her father why she is leaving home to follow here love to Siberia, where he is serving a sentence for sedition.

In the song she sings, "Far from the home I love", I heard many an immigrant's story, who, like myself, left my home to follow the one I love. Here are the lyrics for you. Like the rest of the story, it's as beautiful as it is sad.

How can I hope to make you understand
Why I do, what I do,
Why I must travel to a distant land
Far from the home I love?

Once I was happily content to be
As I was, where I was
Close to the people who are close to me
Here in the home I love...

Who could see that a man would come
Who would change the shapes of my dreams?
Helpless, now, I stand with him
Watching older dreams grow dim.

Oh, what a melancholy choice this is,
Wanting home, wanting him,
Closing my heart to every hope but his, 
Leaving the home I love.

There were my heart has settled long ago
I must go, I must go.
Who could imagine I'd be wand'ring so
Far from the home I love?

Yet, there with my love, I'm home.

Back in the USSA

I'm back in the U.S. for a few weeks visiting family and keeping busy with the ongoing move to Toronto. Seems like I'm moving a suitcase at a time - or 50-pounds at a time. I pretty much know that there's not a lot left in Seattle that I need to have with me in Toronto. If you can live without something for a year, you pretty much don't "need" it. There are still a few things I want to have with me though. Some of those items will make it home when I fly back in a couple weeks.

One shift is very evident this time around. I feel like I've left "home" (Toronto), and that I'm visiting Seattle. Now you may think, how can I feel that way considering Toronto has only been my home for a year and Seattle was my home the whole rest of my life, but it is so true that "home is where the heart is". My heart is in Canada and Toronto.

The nonsense of the U.S. election season immediately got on my nerves. Being reminded of the excess of it just makes me mad on behalf of the people who live here. The press reported that the Obama campaign raised over $180 million in the month of July alone for his campaign.

As a point of reference, under Canadian law, political parties are only allowed to spend $21 million on advertising for their entire campaign.

And while issues of same sex marriage rights are debated, gas prices soar above $4.00/gallon. It's just business as usual: nothing getting done for the people. It's frustrating to be back in a country that so poorly serves the interests of its population.

I know - Canada is not perfect. Just look at Harper's omnibus approach to legislation and you can see that. But Canadian politicians recognize they can't ignore the needs of their people for long. If they do, they not only can lose their jobs - they can lose their entire party. Just ask the Liberals about that one.

So I have another couple of weeks here, then I'm back home. I miss Seattle when I'm away. I miss friends and family, of course. But miss the U.S.?

Not so much. 

Bill C-43: another tactic to keep permanent residents in their place

I believe in the best qualities of man. For instance - I don't believe that, in general someone would take the time and effort and expense to immigrate to Canada because they wanted to come to break the law here.

But the Tory's see things a little differently. Under proposed legislation (Bill C-43), if you are a permanent resident who gets in trouble with the law, you could lose your status and be kicked out of the country with no ability to appeal if the sentance for your crime is over 6-months in length. For a little context here, the crime of shoplifting a candy bar can carry a six-month sentance.

But that's not all Bill C-43 would do, according to The Star: "Not only would the new regulation punish those who ran afoul of the law, it would go after permanent residents found to have misrepresented themselves when they applied for immigration, Jackman said.

"An honest omission on a person’s employment history or incorrect dates of certain events written down on an immigration application could come back to haunt the immigrant years later.

Current law allows convicted immigrants to lose their immigrant status and be banned from re-entering Canada for two years. The new law would prohibit readmission for five years."

Read the article here