Petition raised in the House of Commons

In early 2002 Deborah Grey, a Member of Parliament in Edmonton, presents a petition to Canada’s House of Commons signed by hundreds of Canadian citizens and that includes, many First Nations on behalf of the Premakumarans, who came to Canada from the United Kingdom in 1998 as skilled professional immigrants with their three children.

The Members of the House of Commons should wake up to the a few facts: Prem and Nesa Premakumaran are highly qualified and experienced immigrants who are able to hold top positions in their fields of exper­tise in many parts of the world. They have indisputable grounds to feel cheated. If they were driven to petition to the House of Commons with spontaneous support from the community, then there is something surely wrong with Canada’s immigration policy. The Canadian House of Commons has failed them and in consequence, the thousands of new immigrants placed in such a situation. It tells you that the concept of Canadian Experience is a shoddy joke that even goes against Canada’s own Charter of Rights. But rights in Canada are very selective. Everybody’s equal, but it is obvious that some are less equal than others.

The Members of the House of Commons should wake up to the a few facts: Prem and Nesa Premakumaran are highly qualified and experienced immigrants who are able to hold top positions in their fields of exper­tise in many parts of the world. They have indisputable grounds to feel cheated. If they were driven to petition to the House of Commons with spontaneous support from the community, then there is something surely wrong with Canada’s immigration policy. The Canadian House of Commons has failed them and in consequence, the thousands of new immigrants placed in such a situation. It tells you that the concept of Canadian Experience is a shoddy joke that even goes against Canada’s own Charter of Rights. But rights in Canada are very selective. Everybody’s equal, but it is obvious that some are less equal than others.

Today this same party who took the trouble to read our petition in Parliament, and promised to help the Premakumarans before coming to power, and now in power… remains silent. It’s deafening.

The Constitution Challenged

What is equality as defined by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the rights to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. (Section 15)

Yet even with this section in place, professional immigrants, such as we the Premakumarans exist in a disadvantaged state. We are not and have not been full participants in this society, due to the fact that hidden institutionalized biases and prejudices combine to make us second tier citizens of this country.

While the Charter states that in theory, all are equal before the law, in practice the result of government’s role in immigration patterns and its failure to protect us from institutionalized prejudices, result in a fundamental inequality.

Proposal to resolve problems faced by professionally skilled immigrants was made to the Government of Canada

Through our own personal experiences and the amount of government and privacy documents obtained in the process we discovered the various problems in the system and created a unique and workable fix, that could have been strategically implemented quite easily.

This proposal was handed over to Rahim Jaffer, the Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament, who subsequently forwarded it directly to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office. According to the correspondence we received, the Prime Minister seemed in favour of the proposal and forwarded it to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Diana Finley. 

But this is where the trail has come to a grinding and predictable halt. To this day, we have yet to hear from the office of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Repeated inquiries made by our Edmonton MP, Rahim Jaffer and ourselves, have produced a deafening silence.

The government is unable to keep its promise to one single individual family, how can they keep their promise to the nation !