Liberals scrambling on family-immigrant targets after promising to double intake ‘immediately’

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The federal immigration department has said it will be accepting the same number of applications this year as it did in 2015 from parents and grandparents wanting to join family members in Canada, despite a Liberal election promise to double the intake “immediately.”

Doubling the number of applications from parents and grandparents to 10,000 a year was a central part of the Liberals’ election platform. While the party said this was important for immigrants’ economic and social stability, it was also seen by some as a way for the Liberals to woo immigrant voters away from the Conservatives.

The Liberals were frequent critics of the previous Conservative government’s immigration policies, particularly its emphasis on temporary and skilled workers rather than on refugees and reuniting family members. Some immigrant communities had previously complained about long delays in bringing family to Canada.

But when Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on Monday announced that it would begin accepting applications for parent and grandparent sponsorship, the department’s website said the government would only be accepting 5,000 applications.

The federal government is supposed to table a plan on how many immigrants in each different category — including refugees or parents or skilled workers — it plans to accept into Canada each year. Those numbers dictate the government resources allocated to each type of immigrant stream.

The plans are supposed to be tabled before the start of the calendar year. But the 2016 plan hasn’t been released, and likely won’t be for several weeks.

Friesen said this means no one knows if the government will take resources for some types of immigrants to pay for its Syrian refugees or family reunification promises.

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