Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Advocates worry that Ukrainian refugees attempting to flee to Canada will be sidelined by bureaucratic red tape as thousands of Afghan interpreters and their families fight for their own promised resettlement.
Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada will get as many Ukrainians to Canada as quickly as possible through two new immigration streams.
Under the Canada Ukraine Authorization For Emergency Travel program, there won't be a limit on the number of Ukrainians coming to Canada on a temporary basis.
But those who are trying to flee the country amid a violent Russian occupation are already facing red tape, raising concerns that the program will fall short of its promises.
“The last thing on a person's mind is when bombs are falling over your head is: ‘Do you have your COVID vaccine,’” Bohdan Dolban told CTV National News.
Dolban is attempting to help his cousins flee Ukraine and come to Canada. While they are safe for now, they live just an hour away from where Russian forces bombed a Ukrainian military base.
“They didn’t give a lot of information and when they tried to call, it would keep ringing or go to an answering machine with no answer,” he explained.
The Mississauga, Ont. man says he’s concerned that the red tape involved in the immigration process will jeopardize his family’s safety -- a concern many Afghanistan refugees know all too well.
In August 2021, Canada vowed to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees after the Taliban’s takeover of the country. Many of those refugees include interpreters who aided the Canadian military during their time in Afghanistan. Now, they and their families are in hiding, targeted for their role in the war.
In seven months, almost 15,000 Afghans have applied through the special immigration process and more than 10,000 have been approved, but just 8,580 have actually arrived in Canada.
“They're left applying mostly through the regular immigration routes, which of course takes a very, very long time,” Chantal Desloges, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer, told CTV National News.
“Most of the time it’s not an attainable situation for them to wait that long because they are in danger.”
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says more than 8,500 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Canada since January. However, it’s unclear how many of those cases are directly related to the current Russian crisis.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser has called the situation in Afghanistan "quite different" from what's happening in Ukraine, saying that most of the displaced Ukrainians want to return home in the future.
"One of the big differences is the fact that the people who are fleeing Afghanistan, we're planning to have them become Canadians and to live here forever. When you have a permanent resettlement process, that works into our annual levels planning to make sure that we're prepared to resettle and set people up for success on a permanent basis," Fraser told CTV's Question Period on Sunday.
Fraser also pointed out that, unlike Ukrainians who have safe passage towards neighbouring countries to the west of Ukraine, many Afghans have struggled to leave Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
- With files from Tom Yun
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.