Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. Maybe I'll use the example of the U.K. government. They agreed to take in all the Hong Kong people with a BNO passport, but that doesn't apply to all the activists. It's only for people who were born before 1997 and whose parents are not from China. That excluded a number of people as well, but those with a passport will have a pathway to citizenship five years later, I believe.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. As mentioned, I'm the clinic director of the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. I'm also a board member of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China, TADC. I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to comment on the new immigration measures to support Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. In fact, just half an hour before this committee hearing began, I received an email from one of my colleagues from Alliance Canada Hong Kong who has recently, or just today, written to Minister Bill Blair about intimidation cases that they have to deal with right now with respect to two of their members.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. If we think that the situation in Hong Kong is bad, it's worse in Xinjiang, right? I think that—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  When the Conservatives implemented that program, there was a backlog of, if I remember correctly, over 100,000 cases in the system. They wiped it out by just refusing to process any of these cases. The backlog has reduced because of two things. First of all, you're making it even harder for people to sponsor their parents and grandparents by raising the MNI requirement to MNI plus 30%.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Once and for all get rid of the lottery system and just let people apply, just like with any other stream, and get rid of the quota. Then start putting in the resources that are needed to process the applications. What happened in the past—and this was used by the previous government as an excuse to introduce the quota system—is that there were very many applications and it created a backlog when they were not being processed in a timely manner.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They respond in part to our recommendations but not to all of them. It depends on the situation of those individuals. They may or may not fit into the announcement that was made on November 12. Also, certainly the situations of a lot of the people we are aware of who are now stranded in places like Taiwan and the U.K. are just as dire as those who are left in Hong Kong.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sir, just for Hong Kong people, again, I think that, for instance, it would be to remove some of the requirements around the education or the language, or at least lower them so more people can benefit from them. Why have open work permits for three years that only people with a university degree can apply for?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly, I would. In fact, we used to have those kinds of programs in the 1960s and 1970s. The immigration family class was much broader at that time. We had an assisted relative program. It was much easier to come here under those kinds of programs. All that changed over the last 20 years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I would, certainly. We're proposing a regularization process for everyone who is in Canada right now with precarious immigration status. That would include migrant workers as well as people who work in all kinds of essential work. Even with some of the pilot projects that have been announced, they have certain language-speaking requirements that many of these workers may or may not meet.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. The COVID period, the entire lockdown period, should not be counted to reduce the 24 month—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My recommendation around the dependent children is that you count the age as of the beginning of the lockdown, so it doesn't matter when the lockdown is lifted.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We are speaking with the minister's office. We're hoping that the government can think of other ways of helping the Hong Kong pro-democracy activists come here. If these measures were in place, for various reasons, we would not want to publicize them. At the same time, we're not getting too many details as to what these measures may look like.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They do have the option of the super visa. They can come as a visitor, but that's not a permanent resident application. With respect to permanent applications, the only option is through the lottery system. I would like to point out that parents and grandparents are the only ones who are subject to lottery.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not aware of how long the current process is. Of course, because of the COVID situation, it's kind of hard for me to comment on that right now. I do think that they have been able to expedite some applications. If they do expedite student permits from Hong Kong, it probably wouldn't take too long.