Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper has something to think about ahead of the next elections – virtually all announced reforms in immigration have turned out to be failures
The fact is that in just 4 months, on October 19, 2015, federal elections will be held in Canada, which will decide which party will be in power in the coming years. The position of the ruling Conservative Party is currently extremely difficult, and there is very little chance that they will retain the majority that allowed them to make any decisions without consulting other parties. In October, everything could change, leading to changes, including in the immigration sphere – and changes for the better.
Over the past years, the Conservatives have ruthlessly slashed immigration programs, starting with the basic approach to selecting immigrants. All of this was done under promises to create an efficient system that would significantly improve the quality of immigrant selection. Now it can be stated that these promises have largely turned out to be empty.
The Conservatives do not have much time left to fix the immigration situation. The main thing is that this is not the area they will be focusing on now, as they have to deal with problems several orders of magnitude more important (for example, in the economy, which is going through hard times due to falling energy prices).
Nevertheless, something must be done in these four months if only to avoid looking pale in the election process. The question is only what can be expected, what improvements, and whether there will be any at all?
For example, despite all the restrictions on the number of applications accepted for family sponsorship, just approving a Canadian resident as a sponsor now takes 47 months. Even the process of sponsoring a husband or wife who are in Canada currently takes 27 months (a few years ago this process took 6-8 months). And the time to obtain citizenship has increased to 2-3 years.
To top it all off, according to a report by the Migration Policy Group called the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), in 2015 Canada slipped in the global rankings from 3rd to 6th place in terms of ease of immigrant integration.
All of this together indicates that the Conservatives' immigration policy has been a complete failure. Can they fix anything, especially before the elections?
2015 was a critical year for the Harper government. After many years of virtually closed immigration to Canada, they needed to show a result before the elections to rehabilitate themselves. Unfortunately, what we see now does not even come close to meeting the stated goals. Therefore, I do not expect any radical changes in the coming months.
Obviously, changes need to be expected after the elections. Although preliminary poll results show the Conservative Party leading, it is extremely insignificant compared to the Liberal Party and the NDP, which are neck and neck with the Conservatives. Therefore, it is realistic to assume that even if the Conservative Party wins again, it will only be able to form a minority government, which will largely depend on the mood of the Liberals and New Democrats, who have a completely different view on immigration. And then changes will be inevitable.
So, in my opinion, the second half of this year, and especially 2016, promise noticeable improvements in the immigration sphere.
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CONSERVATIVE STAGNATION