Canadian citizenship - now cheaper than ever!

"We want Chinese investors in Canada and the door is open," ImpMin Chris Alexander told the South China Morning Post back in March. "We are making these changes for them."

CBC :
"The Canadian government will give permanent residency to approximately 50 millionaire immigrant investors and their families per year under a pilot program set to begin in the new year.

Under the Immigrant Investor Venture Capital pilot program announced Tuesday, each investor will be required to make a non-guaranteed investment of $2 million over 15 years and have a net worth of $10 million."

By comparison, New Zealand requires a C$9.15 million investment over three years while in October the Australian government raised the price of admission to $15 million for a 12 month track to permanent residency.

Under the previous cash for citizenship scheme dating back to Mulroney in 1986, wealthy immigrants with a minimum net worth of C$1.6-million only had to loan the government $800,000 interest-free for five years but the loan was guaranteed and returned to them at the end of five years.
It was intended to encourage wealthy foreigners to set up businesses in Canada but according to the South China Morning Post earlier this year, the majority were wealthy mainland Chinese who never did move to Canada and only 16 per cent of them wound up operating businesses in Canada. 

SCMP, Feb 4 2014 :

A South China Morning Post investigation into Canada's immigration programme for millionaire investors has revealed the extraordinary extent to which it has become devoted to a single outcome: Helping rich mainland Chinese settle in Vancouver.

Since 2007, 80.8 per cent of Chinese applicants to the scheme have sought to live in British Columbia ... about six times the combined annual applications from all nationalities to the investor migrant programmes run by the US, Britain and Australia.

And it was a bust to boot . As Pete McMartin wrote in the Vancouver Sun in Feb :

"The investor class immigrants have been laughing all the way to the bank. According to the feds’ own research, over a 20-year period an investor class immigrant will pay $200,000 less in taxes than a skilled worker immigrant and $100,000 less in taxes than a live-in nanny. The immigrant billionaire living on the west side pays less in Canadian taxes than his immigrant babysitter."

Right. So back to the new rules. Having determined what we are, as the old joke goes, we are now just haggling over the price.

MinImp Chris Alexander gave a decent Q&A interview to the South China Morning Post on the new rules back in March. Excerpted  : 

Alexander : “In return for permanent residence, in return for the opportunity to do business with status from Canada, we’re taking your money for a good long time to help create jobs, growth, opportunity in Canada and for global businesses, we hope, through venture capital-focused that will be managed in Canada, and privately managed, not managed by the government. ... And believe me, there are Hong Kong and Chinese students, entrepreneurs, investors who are part of those small ecosystems driving this forward."

Will there be regional options for the scheme?

Alexander : "No, these will be pooled funds initially, so they’re going to have to be managed by professional private-sector investment managers in financial centres where those people exist. And that is quite a few Canadian cities now. We’ll have a competition to select who the managers will be, but I don’t think we’ll be directing the investment beyond that." 

"We are pursuing a strong partnership with Hong Kong and with mainland China in all fields. Our economic relationship is already approaching CA$75 billion million.  We want, as of January 1 2015, to process economic immigrants in six months."

Earlier this month, the Harper government quietly signed a customs-sharing agreement with China without announcing it to the public.

China Daily, yesterday, via the WSJ :

"Canada and China have agreed to a set of measures to support the increased use of the renminbi in trade, commerce and investment.
A reciprocal currency swap will allow a maximum amount of 200 billion yuan ($32.3 billion) and C$30 billion($26 billion).
Domenico Lombardi, an expert on the global economy from Canada's think tank Centre for International Governance Innovation, recently said, "We should prepare to see the renminbi be much more widely used, to become an international currency".

Edit : Updated figures for Australia, and typos
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Fakers

Fake F-35 mock up cockpit from Lockheed Martin for DefMin Peter Airshow MacKay to hold $47,000 presser in to announce purchase of 65 Lockheed Martin stealth fighters in 2010.
Tony Gazebo and Rona Ambrose attending.



Fake citizenship ceremony in which half of the participants were actually Citizenship and Immigration Canada staff passed off as new Canadians on Sun News Network





Fake lake, the $57,000 part of a $1.9 million display for the 2010 G8/20 summit, concerning which I asked some more questions earlier today.

Fake G8 border infrastructure slush fund that splashed $50M around Tony Gazebo's riding for gazebos and flower pots miles away from the border, and incidentally increased his vote margin win from 26 votes in 2006 to almost 11,000 in 2010.

Fake protesters made up of Conservative party interns and staff sent out by the PMO to heckle Justin Trudeau on the lawn of the House of Commons as he gave a presser announcing "new measures to increase transparency in the HoC." 

Fake apology to First Nations

Fake election phone calls, live and automated, presumably originating from the Cons' CIMS data base, either being obnoxious while pretending to be from an opposing party or advising voters their polling station had moved or closed.

Fake Jobs Grant from the same people who thought it was a super idea to grant businesses a 15% wage reduction pass NOT to hire Canadians. This new idea, which doesn't exist yet despite a recent Hockey Night in Canada ad blitz at $95,000 a pop, would again subsidize business while rolling back $300M from the provinces should they agree to hell freezing over.

Fake Commander-in-Chief shtick while surveying Alberta flood damage, and good lord, he's wearing fucking wings.
Unsurprisingly reminiscent of Bush photo op surveying Katrina.  Mr. Dress Up's spox explained it was "in tribute to the military".  
See Boris : last paragraph.

Fake CIDA "not", crayoled in at Bev Oda's request above the signatures of CIDA dept heads, making it look as if they, not she, had gutted KAIROS' funding from CIDA. After initially fudging about it, eventually she fessed up.
Meanwhile over in Israel, Jason Kenney told the Israelis he'd done it for them, then retracted it when he got back to Canada.

Fake security at the G20. $1-billion and 19,000 police unable to prevent a few black bloc from rioting but as protests wind down on the last day, kettling without first giving the crowd a chance to disperse nets many shoppers, media, and people returning home from work in the largest police bust in Canadian history. Public Safety Min refuses to divulge origin of command for police state crowd control exercise.

Fake 'red menace' scare. 
Steve, Airshow, MacKay, and PMO staffers make ridiculous remarks about bravely staring down Russian bombers in the Arctic. Meanwhile Canadian Forces are participating with those same Russian bombers in a Canada/US/Russia exercise in joint air traffic coordination in the Arctic. 
aka Fake justification for purchase of 65 F-35s.

 Fake "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act", which made no mention at all of child pornography because up to an hour earlier this bid to require internet service providers to give police your name, unlisted phone #, and IP address without a warrant was called the Lawful Access Act.

Steve's fake outrage at Lib/NDP/Bloc coalition proposal - with separatists! and socialists! - following the 2011 election.
Following the 2004 election, Harper himself proposed a Con/NDP/Bloc 'cooperation' with those same separatists and socialists to unseat the minority Libs.
In 2000, a proposed coalition of the Bloc, Alliance, and PC parties sought to make Stockwell Day Prime Minister of Canada.

Fake 'grassroots' website Ethical Oil
Alykhan Velshi left a six figure job with Steve's gov to relaunch Ezra Levant's Ethical Oil  -"mooching off free Wi-Fi at coffeehouses and wearing flip-flops” - after which he returned to the PMO fold. Con Resource Bureau-connected webserver Go New Clear hosts Ethical Oil, Jason Kenney, Joe Oliver, Kathryn Marshall, etc.

Faked support for abolishing StatsCan long census. 
MP Maxime Bernier claimed "thousands" of complaint emails per day during 2006 census, all unfortunately deleted, vs. the 22 recorded "expressions of concern" sent to StatsCan. 
When Tony Gazebo falsely claimed StatsCan support for abolishing long census, StatsCan chief Munir Sheikh at left resigned in protest.

Fake smaller government

The Cons' 2012 budget proposed slashing 19,000 positions from the federal public service over five years, but added more than 34,000 between 2006 and 2012 - a 14% increase.                                                                                            Additionally, a 2011 CCPA study discovered a shadow public service: "Over the past five years, federal personnel outsourcing costs have risen 79% ... and remain above $1 billion a year."

Fake emergency preparedness
"It's really just posing," Alberta Fire Chiefs Assoc. Pres. said, singling out fed politicians like SafetyMin Vic Toews showing up to "help out" Alberta flood victims after Cons' 2012 budget slashed federal funding for the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program. "They can just stay in Ottawa. They got in the way."

Fake "cooperation" with Elections Canada, including stonewalling on EC reports of election fraud 3 days before election,  'reviewing' Poutine logs at Responsive Marketing Group before EC, cutting their budget, taking 3 months to not provide EC with witnesses, delaying promised election reforms, and in the words of Judge Richard Mosley : generally engaging in "trench warfare". 


Dr. Dawg sees much of this as Conservative theatre.

I think they're just fakers always hoping not to get caught.

Feel free to add your own "faker" suggestions and links in comments - updating as they come in.

Video version on Youtube 
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Passport woes

Welcome home, Suaad Hagi Mohamud. Welcome home.

I am sorry to hear you are seriously ill since your eight day incarceration in a Kenyan prison.

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Haroon Siddiqui at The Star has a good article up :

How Harperites are damaging our citizenship

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And Boris at The Beav has a theory as to why this might be happening : Passport photos?

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If Boris is right, and never underestimate the likelihood of a really mundane ass-covering move from the HarperCons, then ironically they will probably use their own mean-spirited incompetence as a further reason to push for their already planned biometric passports.

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