Sixty days: This is the time available to Quebec’s Immigration Minister Christine Frechet to resolve lingering delays in family reunification cases, or the file will end up in Superior Court. Radio-Canada learned he was served a formal notice on Tuesday.
Ottawa is also blamed, albeit to a lesser degree. So this information was also sent to his federal representative minister, Mark Miller.
The ultimatum comes from Me Maxime Lapointe, an immigration attorney. According to him, Quebecers waiting to reunite with a foreign-born spouse do not have an average of 41 months.
As a professional, I represent dozens of files per year and I notice a gap in the quality of service for files for the province of Quebec compared to the rest of Canada.
Me Lapointe refers to in an interview.
Me Maxime Lapointe, Immigration Lawyer
Photo: Maxime Lapointe
Elsewhere in the country, the average delay for Canadians waiting for family reunification is just 12 months. The disparity is large because Quebec has nearly 40,000 pending family reunification files.
Despite this presence, the Legault government limits the number of admissions to about 10,400 per year, creating a bottleneck, creating an explosion of delays and causing a lot of suffering among the couples involved.
However, Me Maxime Lapointe analyzes that under the Canada-Quebec Agreement, which specifies the role of each state in immigration matters, the provincial government does not have the power to impose quotas in the family reunification category.
In my opinion, Quebec’s immigration minister and the government CAQ There is a mistake in imposing a cap on enrollment in Canada, which is the work of the federal government.
That interpretation is shared by the Quebec Association of Immigration Lawyers (AQAADI).
As a result, Me Lapointe believes Ottawa is not honoring the terms of the Canada-Quebec Treaty by processing only the number of files the Legault government wants.
We see it in the media, both levels of government are waging an open war, wanting to say whose fault it is if we have processing delays. Everyone passes the buck
He mentions.
Edit the threshold
Therefore, Me Lapointe is calling on Ottawa to complete within 60 days all family reunification files destined for Quebec, exceeding the 12-month deadline currently in place in the rest of the country.
As for the Quebec government, Me Lapointe calls it Reduces inventory completely
In family reunification and abolishing the target of 10,400 admissions per year in this category.
If Minister Christine Fréchette doesn’t comply, Me Lapointe suggests another path: create an enrollment target will change
This will be adjusted according to supply and demand so that an average processing time of 12 months is always respected.
The challenge is to reunite families as quickly as possible [au Québec] Within federal service standards.
Me Lapointe orders both levels of government to re-open the Canada-Quebec Treaty in order to review the roles and responsibilities of each.
This is the right way to go if you want to review immigration powers. This is not the way of François Legault, who says: “I want to regain all the powers of immigration, without knowing what it is.”
The lawyer believes.
If the two governments do not act within the allotted 60 days, Me Lapointe intends to file a petition for a declaratory judgment in the Supreme Court.
At the time of writing these lines, neither Christine Frechette’s office nor Mark Miller’s office have confirmed that formal notification has been received.
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