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“A perfect example of this is the number of applications that came in for temporary resident permits during COVID,” he said in the House. “We were compelled to process them, because there was no mechanism … to be able to cancel or suspend those applications. This essentially gives additional tools” to the immigration minister “to do just that.”

While it remains unclear in what areas immigration officials would apply the new power, legal experts spoke to the Star about which applicant groups or particular programs would likely be targeted, and why.

The possibilities could be unlimited, allowing officials to create knee-jerk policies on the fly making immigration pathways more unpredictable and unfair to applicants, critics said.

“When they say public interest, that’s anything really,” said º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøimmigration lawyer Daniel Kingwell. “They can turn on a dime. They can suddenly refuse to process many cases. They don’t have to deal with the messiness of finding some reason to refuse that might not be reasonable” to a court.

Canada has been viewed as one of the world’s most welcoming countries, with relatively clear pathways for permanent residence. However, over time, the system has put more weight on immigration candidates’ Canadian education credentials and job experience, creating an incentive for migrants to come as temporary residents to study and work.Ìý

Given limited processing capacity, the queue has gotten longer and longer, especially since the pandemic, when generous policies opened the door for many international students and foreign workers to extend their stay here.Ìý

As of July 31, more than 2.2 million applications were in the system, including 892,400 for permanent residence and 1,079,300 for temporary residence, with the rest for citizenship. Half of the permanent resident applications and 38 per cent of the temporary resident applications had exceeded the government’s own processing timelines.

The problems echoed the challenges faced by former prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which in 2012 passed a law to eliminate the permanent residence backlog in the federal skilled workers program from before Feb. 27, 2008, by terminating those that had not been decided by March 2012.

The Federal Court dismissed a lawsuit by affected applicants, ruling the legislation was compliant with the Bill of Rights and the Charter.Ìý

With Bill C-2, which has a good chance of passing with the Conservatives’ backing, experts expect the Immigration Department to take into account the size of the backlog and length of processing times in deciding what programs to go after. Humanitarian programs that bring little economic benefit to the country would also be likely on the chopping block.

Vancouver immigration lawyer Marina Sedai believes the start-up visa program and self-employed persons program might see applications pending in the system cancelled, as the former’s processing time has reached 53 months while the latter has already been suspended earlier this year until 2027.

“Many applications are from people inside Canada,” said Sedai. “If they unexpectedly have their permanent resident applications returned and their temp residence (is) done, they are going to fall out of status. The Canada Border Services Agency is going to be … on the hunt for these people.”

Lawyer Andrea Baldwin said Ottawa already has certain power to restrict application intakes for things such as study and work permits, but Bill C-2 would greatly enhance the government’s power to cancel, suspend or vary issued documents like visas and permits in “prescribed circumstances,” which are undefined.Ìý  

She fears migrants in lower-skilled, lower-wage jobs would be disproportionately affected.

“So they are going to come, work for a couple years and make some money to send back home,” said the Halifax-based immigration lawyer. “And then they will have no future here, which is what many other countries do.”

Another targeted class might be refugees sponsored by private groups for resettlement in Canada, a process that’s now taking years, said Ken Zaifman, who practises immigration law in Winnipeg. The goal of the bill, he added, is unequivocally to clear the backlog in order to reset the immigration system.

“We know what Bill C-2 may do, but we don’t know what the policy reset looks like,” said Zaifman, adding that Ottawa would need to impose program “filters” to cap application intakes and keep backlogs in check.

In addition to targeting specific immigration programs, Kingwell, the º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍølawyer, said the broad stroke of the bill could allow profiling of individual applicants such as those with minor criminal records, those represented by an immigration counsel found breaching the law, and from certain countries.

“It’s good for them politically to be able to just cater to whatever the flavour of the day is whether it’s anti-immigrants generally, whether it’s suddenly all Chinese students are potential spies, and other political outgroups in Iran,” he said.

“There’s no way the Conservatives are going to shoot this down unless for some reason they think it’s advantageous to make the Liberals look bad on not passing it into law.”