Immigration Minister Marc Miller says Ottawa’s 1,000-person cap on temporary resident visas for Palestinians looking to escape the Gaza Strip is not set in stone.
Mr. Miller, in an interview on CTV News Channel’s Power Play, was adamant the federal government’s stated 1,000-person maximum for its temporary resident program is not absolute.
“It is conventional for a number of these programs to have an internal number that is established,” he said. “This was one that we thought at the outset—in the context of something being done in a relatively short period of time understanding that it’s a war zone in Gaza—was something to manage flow, understand what the numbers are, and then you know remain flexible on the fly if we do see numbers that exceed that.”
The federal government on Jan. 9 announced the opening of its new “temporary resident pathway” for extended family members in Gaza of Canadian citizens and permanent residents.
The program comes after months of Palestinian Canadians asking the government for help in rescuing their loved ones as the Israel-Hamas war continues.
Program details, which were released last week, indicated the program would stop taking applications either after it received 1,000 requests, or after a year elapsed.
Now that the door is open, Miller said Canada would be “flexible” in the number of people allowed entry, but emphasized the program is not for “generalized resettlement.”
“It is a specific targeted program for families of loved ones that are Canadians, to keep people safe and alive,” Mr. Miller said in the interview.
Advocacy Groups
The immigration minister’s comments come on the heels of calls to remove the 1,000-person cap by several advocacy groups.The National Council of Canadian Muslims said it has already been in contact with more than 1,000 people who want to help family members in Gaza.
“There should not be a cap,” said Uthman Quick, the council’s director of communications.
The groups Gaza Family Reunification Project and Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) have also called for Ottawa to let more people in.
Bueckert said the program is operating under a “double standard,” noting that more Ukrainians were allowed to enter Canada after Russia’s invasion. He said Ottawa did not implement a cap and approved hundreds of thousands of applications.
Temporary Resident Pathway
The temporary residency program is a bid to provide visas to Palestinians, permitting them to take refuge in Canada for three years as long as their families are willing to financially support them. Eligible family members include a spouse, common-law partner, child, grandchild, sibling, parent or grandparent of a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, as well as the eligible person’s immediate family members.“The situation on the ground in Gaza is challenging and volatile. These new measures provide a humanitarian pathway to safety and recognize the importance of keeping families together given the ongoing crisis,” Mr. Miller said. “We will continue to monitor the situation in Gaza very closely as it evolves and adapt our response accordingly.”
Gaza has been under near constant bombardment since the terrorist organization Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people and taking approximately 240 hostages.
Israel launched a war on Hamas. The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry says the war has resulted in the deaths of more than 21,900 people in Gaza. The health ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.
Israel’s Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told reporters in a televised statement late last month on the Gaza border that the war would go on “for many months,” saying there are “no shortcuts in dismantling a terrorist organization, only determined and persistent fighting.”
