published on 8 March 2016 @ 4:55 pm · COMMENT

Higher Immigration Levels Announced For Canada

Today, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, John McCallum, announced that Canada will welcome a greater number of immigrants in 2016.The Government of Canada plans to bring in between 280,000 and 305,000 new permanent residents in 2016. This higher quota means that Canada will reunite families, offer a place of refuge to those fleeing persecution, and support Canada’s long-term economic prosperity to a greater extent than in the past.

Most notably, the government has raised the target for high skilled worker immigrants to 58,400.

The government will increase levels of family class immigration, which will address the application backlog and reunite families more quickly and has raised the target to 60,000 for this coming year in addition to increasing the target of parents and grandparents to 20,000.

The target for refugees has been raised to 57,000, which is just one thousand less than the high skilled worker immigration class.
Important Changes to the PNP Programs Amendments to provincial immigration programs have been announced in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec. Tabitha Holland of BartLAW has addressed these changes in her detailed report which you can access here.

International Women’s Day

March 8, 2016 is International Women’s Day. Gender equality is a core Canadian value. All lawyers and other professionals at BartLAW have been honored to advocate for gender equality (i.e. feminism) for and on behalf our clients over the course of the past 25 years. We have seen great advancements in Canada over the past 100 years and we celebrate the accomplishments of Canada in this area. However, there is so much more work that must be done internationally to protect women’s rights to gender equality. At BartLAW, we will continue this work in law and through charitable contributions to the international education of girls and young women.

Firm Announcements

• BartLAW will be moving to a Canadian confederation era heritage building (built in the 1870s) in the center of the financial district of Toronto as of April 4, 2016. Our new address will be:

  8 Wellington Street East, 2nd Floor
  Toronto, Canada M5E 1C5

• Jacqueline Bart was awarded “Client Care Lawyer of the Year” by Lawyer Monthly – Women in Law 2016 in recognition of the outstanding legal expertise and contribution within her practice area.
• Jacqueline Bart was acclaimed as President of the International Association of Lawyers Annual Congress in Toronto 2017. At this conference, Ms. Bart plans to post-humously award the late Pierre Trudeau for his contribution to human rights law through the establishment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms–which has been used as an early example of excellent jurisprudence throughout the world.

filed under: FIRM NEWSIMMIGRATION