Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney introduced the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act on February 16, 2012.
This legislation proposes further reforms to make the asylum system faster and fairer, steps to human smuggling issues, and to make it mandatory to provide biometrics with applications for temporary visas.
The changes proposed in this bill build on the reforms passed in 2010 as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. This bill would provide protection earlier to those who require it and remove those who do not require protection quickly as well.
There is one modification to the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act (Bill C-4) . Children below the age of 16 will be exempt from detention proposals.
The last part of the bill gives authority to make biometrics mandatory for temporary visa applicants to make it more difficult for forgery and stealing of documents and to ascertain the identity of the applicants.
The reforms are aimed at safe-guarding Canada’s immigration and refugee system. Minister Kenny surmised, “To maintain the support of Canadians for our generous immigration and refugee systems, we must demonstrate that Canada has a fair, well-managed system that does not tolerate queue jumping.”
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