www.theasianstar.com VOL 23 - ISSUE 5
Trudeau in trouble as Canada’s ‘student trafficking’ industry backfires Canada’s radical immigration experiment, which has given it one of the world’s fastest rates of population growth, has run into big trouble in the ring of suburbs and small cities around Toronto. A post-pandemic surge of international students is causing prices for rental housing to soar and placing a spotlight on the uncontrolled growth of colleges that, according to the government’s own immigration minister, are taking advantage of vulnerable young people with inferior academic programs. Continued on Page 10...
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Canada fired two scientists for sharing information with Beijing Canada fired two scientists working at a high-security infectious disease laboratory in 2021 because they provided confidential information to China, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported on Wednesday. Officials concluded that the husband and wife team were “a realistic and credible threat to Canada’s economic security,” the paper said, citing a mass of documents that the government released after a long fight with opposition legislators who had demanded information behind the sackings. Health Minister Mark Holland, decrying what he called unacceptable security lapses at the lab at the time, said there had been no risk to national security. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding
Cheng, were escorted out of the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg in 2019 and their security permits revoked. They were fired in 2021. Canadian police said in 2019 they were launching a probe into the matter but Wednesday’s revelation was the first time that details of the sackings were revealed. The documents show the Canadian Security Intelligence Service concluded Qiu “had intentionally transferred scientific knowledge and materials to China”, the Globe said. It is not clear whether the couple is still in Canada. The news is likely to worsen already chilly ties with Beijing, especially since Ottawa has set up an investigation into alleged Chinese interference in domestic Canadian affairs.
Canadian households’ debt-to-disposable-income ratio now highest in G7
How an airlines worker allegedly exploited Canada’s immigration laws to admit people from India
It is no secret that the household debt in Canada is the highest debt of all G7 countries, but new data from Statistics Canada shows that the situation is far more complicated than we might’ve pegged it to be. Last year in May, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) reported that Canada’s household debt was the highest in the G7. CMHC Deputy Chief Economist Aled ab Iorwerth found that it had risen “inexorably” compared to other countries. “At the time of the recession in 2008, it stood at about 80% of the size of the economy; in 2010, it rose to 95%, and by 2021, debt exceeded its size,” he said. Mortgages were one of the biggest culprits. According to the Statistics Canada report released Wednesday, Canadian households are the second wealthiest in the G7, with the US snagging the top spot. Continued on Page 10...
A former British Airways employee has allegedly fled to India after being arrested for allegedly helping Indian citizens get around immigration laws so they could claim asylum in Canada. As initially reported in The Times of London on Tuesday, the employee who worked at Heathrow airport in London, U.K., is said to have enabled people without proper documentation to get on flights to Canada so that they could claim asylum upon entering the country. He allegedly charged £25,000 per person or about $43,000. The alleged scam is estimated to have made 3 million pounds or over $5.1 million. After taking the money from the Canadabound asylum seekers, the 24-year-old former employee allegedly told them to fly from India to the U.K. on a temporary visa. This is not the first time that Indian citizens have entered Canada on false pretences. Over the past half-decade, dozens of Indian students faced deportation after unknowingly using falsified acceptance letters to Canadian universities.
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