Interview on AM630CHED Discussing Trudeau Blackface and Immigration Process and Screening

J'lyn Nye:	Mr Sharma, welcome to the show.
Raj Sharma:	It's a pleasure.
J'lyn Nye:	I'll start by asking you about this... We've been talking about it today over the last... Well, since the news broke yesterday afternoon. Want to start by asking you about liberal leader Justin Trudeau. I know on your, on your website, it's right there. "Every lawyer at this office, has a son or daughter of immigrants, the majority of our support staff choose to immigrate to this country." Given you know who you work with, your clients, your personal background, what is going through your mind when you've seen those pictures of Justin Trudeau in brown face and in black face?
Raj Sharma:	Well I was born in Canada. I was born in Hamilton, Ontario. I grew up in a small coal mining town and I myself have experienced incidents of racism. I remember older kids spitting on me in grade four. These things sort of stay with you. So I suppose the first reaction really was a truly deep feeling of profound disappointment.
J'lyn Nye:	What kind of impact do you think that this could have on immigrants wanting to come to Canada and how they perceive our country.
Raj Sharma:	Well, I think immigrants, immigrants by their nature are optimistic. They're hoping for a brighter future for themselves and then particularly for their children. So I'm sure they share that feeling of disappointment. Again, perhaps that feeling would be tempered if the prime minister wasn't so vocal or at least let's say certainly he held himself out to a higher standard. And so when we fall short of standards that inevitably gives rise to this concerns regarding, for example, hypocrisy.
J'lyn Nye:	Was his apology good enough do you think?
Raj Sharma:	The apology would have been better if it wasn't sparked by him getting caught, if it wasn't sparked by the exclusive story by Time magazine, if it wasn't sparked by this revelation. So I suppose it would've been better if he had come forward on his own accord as opposed to being compelled to do so.
Raj Sharma:	And it would've been better if he disclosed, for example, the third incident of black face and so again, Canadians are very forgiving and so, you know, once could be a mistake twice could be a coincidence. I think third time is a, is usually a indicative of something deeper perhaps. But again, I'm not calling Justin Trudeau a racist. I think that this speaks more to his, his privilege growing up.
Raj Sharma:	It speaks to the bubble that he occupied since his birth. It speaks to his incredible immaturity until a very late stage in life. You know, clearly he's embracing two turban Sikh men and one of the photos and grinning. I honestly don't think he saw anything truly wrong with what he was doing -it just speaks to incredible immaturity and incredible sort of a lack of intellect I would say at that point. And again, you're 29 or 30 it's a, you're definitely have to be accountable or responsible for your actions.
J'lyn Nye:	One more question on this front and then it stems from a post that was on your Twitter feed. And today, Mr. Sharma and you know, [inaudible] this election campaign, and there was a post that talked about new citizens equal new voters and an added more than 556,000 naturalized citizens since the last election. Do you think what has played out over the past 24 hours will have an impact on the election with those new Canadians?
Raj Sharma:	I think so. I co wrote a paper with a Tyler Shandro, now the minister of health in 2015 and this was in the aftermath of the 2015 election and, and how immigrants and new Canadians would impact the 2019 and so we were able to sort of demonstrate the inroads that the conservatives made under Stephen Harper in the election prior with Jason Kenney; winning, for example, the 905 and that area code is very, very important.
Raj Sharma:	So I think the impact here, and I think, and again I'm not, I don't know who you take it for, what it is, my insight, I'm an immigration lawyer, but what I see here is that [Jagmeet Singh 00:00:04:52] as the only political leader or person of colour, racialized Canadian, his response and his campaigning in the last little bit, this may give wind somewhat to his wings and give him breathe new life to Jagmeet Singh.
Raj Sharma:	And now the NDP might actually challenge the and draw some votes away from the liberals in some writings, let's say in BC and in certain ridings in Ontario. So I think the immediate sort of, let's say impact will be, I think for the NDP fortunes because of a Jagmeet Singh.
J'lyn Nye:	Mr. Sharma wanted to talk to you specifically today about the immigration [process] to come to Canada. That's why we'd originally arranged for this interview is we kind of take a deep dive on immigration as we outlined some of the, the planks in the platforms that matter to Canadians. And of course immigration is one of those ones that I would say rank top five. When you look at the process for the people to come to Canada, you've been doing this for many, many years now. Is there a way that you can explain easily the process and how it works?
Raj Sharma:	I'll do my best.
J'lyn Nye:	Okay.
Raj Sharma:	Right.
J'lyn Nye:	[crosstalk] depends as well.
Raj Sharma:	I think if I were to say that Canadians are very supportive of immigration, generally speaking. And so we have a high degree of confidence in our system that has been shaken in the last couple of years because of the flows of irregular migrants across the border coming across the our border with the United States.
Raj Sharma:	So support for our regular immigration system is high because we get to pick our immigrants and so the point system which was brought into force under this prime minister's father's regime almost 50 years ago, this was the points based system, the merit based system that other countries have sought to emulate. I mean the UK and the US this is the envy, they envy this meritocratic system, which is based on an immigrants or migrants sort of potential to contribute. And so we, we pick immigrants and these are called economic class immigrants.
Raj Sharma:	So we picked them based on their age, their education, their work experience, their language proficiency. So migrants under that class are selected for their ability to settle or integrate economically in particular. And so that's one major sort of a basis of our immigrants. So somewhere around 300,000 or so per year, you're looking at a population, more than the population of the city of Saskatoon.
Raj Sharma:	So that's the economic class. And that's how my father immigrated to Canada in 1970 you then have the non economic class. So the noneconomic class is made up of family class. So what, what the US calls chain migration. We call the family class and we can sponsor parents and grandparents and we can sponsor dependent brothers and sisters for example, and other family members. So that's the family class.
Raj Sharma:	And again, that usually is not very controversial. And then we get into other classes such as refugees, refugees that make claims inside Canada or refugees that are sponsored from outside Canada. So that's broadly speaking, those are the different sort of classes.
J'lyn Nye:	So when we were looking at refugees and asylum seekers, how does that process work?
Raj Sharma:	Well, there's again let's break that into two different types of refugees. So there's refugees that come to a port of entry, make a claim from inside Canada. So those claims are handled by a tribunal called the Immigration Refugee Board. And Immigration Refugee Board was set up about 30 years ago or so, and that was done under Brian Mulroney.
Raj Sharma:	And that was done in response to the Supreme court of Canada decision called sing, which held that refugees need to have a hearing, refugees inside Canada need to have a hearing, an oral hearing. And so that's the internal mechanism that we set up. And that's the place where I started working as a refugee protection officer about 17 years ago. Then we have the ability to bring refugees in from outside Canada.
Raj Sharma:	So these are sponsored refugees and there's two sort of general ways of doing it. Canada's the only country in the world that allows Canadians or Canadian premier residents, individuals to sponsor refugees from outside Canada. So there's, there's a private sponsorship, sometimes known as a group of five. There are sponsorship agreement holders, there's some churches, for example, other community organizations that are authorized to bring in claimants or refugees from outside Canada. And then there's the government assisted refugees.
J'lyn Nye:	All right. I know that there has been some talk over the years concerns about secure being concerned about maybe we're folks are coming from if you look at Middle East, people are worried about, again, the security checks on them on, on, on these people there. And it's not obviously everyone, I believe it's a very small group, but I see it and I hear it, and when we talk about this, I don't even have to look at my text line mine right now and I can guarantee you there are people. I'm wondering about the vetting process. What does that look like?
Raj Sharma:	Well, the vetting process for government assisted refugees is fairly robust. First of all, the individuals have to be recognized as refugees by the UNHCR or they have to be certified as refugees in the country that they're in for example. So first of all, you have that process where the UNHCR has already screened these individuals and has sort of verified their claims in the past a little bit.
Raj Sharma:	When we did bring in larger numbers, the Syrians for example, you did have teams of Canadians processing teams and you know, Canadian processing teams that were sent to various areas to interview and screen potential candidates for resettlement in Canada. So I understand the concerns. Look, when you're dealing with other countries and you have countries that perhaps have undeveloped, under developed police or judicial or legal systems, your screening can only good as for example, police clearances or the information or Intel that you have on the ground. So we will never get to perhaps perfect screening and it's very hard to predict what people will do in the future even if they don't have at present a criminal record.
J'lyn Nye:	Mr Sharma. Now, earlier this year, I think that it was earlier this year there was word of a major backlog of legacy refugee claims and I know that I've heard from different people about trying to get to the country to can take a very, very long time as that process or has that timeline eased up at all?
Raj Sharma:	That's a great question. I think we have to bear in mind there's been a lot of misinformation and in fact I believe that Andrew shared kind of perpetuated a sort of myth about the irregular claimants that are arriving crossing the border. So these are different streams. So for example, if you have an overseas process, that overseas process is going to take a couple of years, it's going to take about three years. That's not going to be impacted by the sort of exceptional inflow that we've experienced over the last couple of years across the border. So the in Canada system doesn't impact the overseas system and vice versa.
Raj Sharma:	There is a backlog at the refugee, at the board that handles in Canada claim. So that backlog, and it's because refugee flows are episodic. And so when I started at the refugee protection division, we were dealing with the massive tens of thousands of inflow after September 11th and so a backlog developed at that time. And so again, we have the board was set up and was handling about 20,000 or finalizing about 20,000 claims per year.
Raj Sharma:	And then you had inflows much more than that. So the immediate consequences that there's going to be a backlog. So again, the immigration refugee board has responded, the episodic sort of flows seem to be, have abated for now let's see what you know Donald Trump or his administration does next. Because that could impact the hundreds of thousands of individuals in the US with precarious status. So what will happen with the dreamers, what will happen with their parents? What will happen with these individuals with the so-called temporary protected status from Central America? So that may well change one way or the other. For now. It appears that the inflow has abated to some degree
J'lyn Nye:	Reading this morning, that Canada's population projected to flourish as a result of immigration statistics, Canada reporting that a Canadian population could reach 55 million people by 2063, and population growth in Alberta from immigrants will be the highest among Canadian problem promises over the next 25 years. Saying the population could reach a high of 7.3 million people by 2043. What is it about Alberta? Why is it that people are coming to Alberta want to come to Alberta?
Raj Sharma:	Well, I think this hearkens back to a bit to Jason Kenney, when Jason Kenney was the minister of citizenship and immigration. I think Jason Kenney recognized that many immigrants share conservative ideas. There's a sort of a distrust, let's say, of authority or, or governments. There's this sort of a entrepreneur ethos. There's some degree of social conservative views. And so if those things are present in Alberta, and again, Alberta itself is changing since I've been around, but that speaks to immigrants because immigrants again, tend to be create business. They're small business owners, but that that ethos is with them and, and Alberta rewards. Is this sort of this Western ideals actually accords quite well with immigrant values.
J'lyn Nye:	Before I let you go, with this influx expected with this growth expected Mr. Sharma, are the supports in place for these new Canadians and if not, what needs to be done?
Raj Sharma:	I'll call it a work in progress. You're always going to play catch up to some degree or the other. And so again, because we have refugee flows are episodic, resources are always going to try to play catch up there. In terms of the other to the degree that we plan our immigration and we plan our immigration levels quite well. For example, we've announced that we're going to take over 300,000 for the next little bit in the next couple of years. We're going to achieve a million in a three year span. So, presumably the bean counters at immigration have also done what's necessary and support immigration settlement agencies such as the CCIS here in Calgary, the Calgary Catholic Immigrant Services and immigrant services, Calgary and other some of the agencies in Edmonton as well. So hopefully everything is going hand in hand.
J'lyn Nye:	Well, fingers crossed on that one and without a doubt to you will be busy over the coming years to say the least. Mr Sharma, I want to thank you for taking your time and taking the time this afternoon and helping explore this and answer some questions on it. I really, really appreciate it.
Raj Sharma:	It was my pleasure. Thank you.