Cancelled Canada visa case continues

In an effort to overhaul the Canadian immigration system, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney introduced legislation which simply wiped out almost 100,000 Canada visa applications.

The move allowed Mr Kenney to introduce his new application system which is intended to allow the government and provinces to handpick suitable immigrants depending on their own economic requirements; Mr Kenney is reportedly very happy with his new system.

However, the thousands of people who applied for their visas are not and the legislation has been subject to a number of legal challenges.

Lawyers representing approximately 1,000 of the applicants affected by the change argue that over 80% of the cancellations were to applicants from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

"The backlog was not a function of volume [of applications], it was a policy of choice," argued one of the nine lawyers on the case.

However, Keith Reimer, representing the government, argued it was within the law to change the application process and the new system was much better equipped to deal with large volumes of applications; a capability that would not be possible with such an extensive backlog.

"The government is entitled to change the law and control Canada’s immigration program," said Mr Reimer.