Leonard Pearl is a lawyer in SSHD's Toronto office and specializes in Canadian immigration law. 

According to a Federal Court of Canada ruling the Citizenship & Immigration Canada Minister misled and ignored parliament last year. The Immigration Ministry was found to have dragged its heels on processing a backlog of immigration applicants desperate to get to Canada before strict new standards were imposed. Justice Kelen's decision directly affects 102 applicants who will now have a fresh chance to enter Canada. But the ruling refused to consider the 100,000 other immigrants who were disadvantaged by Citizenship & Immigration Canada.  

The Minister announced last year that the government would extend the deadline for the processing of applicants under the old law from December 31, 2002 to March 31, 2003. The extension followed the recommendation of a parliamentary committee, which said the department didn't have enough time to process all the applicants who had entered the system before tough new immigration standards were imposed in legislation announced in December 2001.

But the committee based its recommendation for a three-month extension on the testimony of a senior bureaucrat, CIC assistant deputy minister Joan Atkinson, on March 12, 2002.  

The deputy minister told the committee that the department anticipated a backlog of 30,000 applicants by January 1, 2003, and she indicated that the department could find ways to accelerate their processing during the extension period. 

Justice Kelen wrote "Based on the evidence before this court, which was subject to cross-examination, it is clear that the [department] provided the committee with significantly incorrect numbers...rather than the 30,000 such applications expected to be outstanding as of December 31, 2002, the evidence established that there will be 80,000 to 120,000 such applications expected to be outstanding as of March 31, 2003."

Kelen further wrote that the department "did not inform Parliament of this error when it became evident." 

He also wrote that the Immigration Department ignored the recommendations from the committee calling the department to make efforts to expedite application processing in foreign missions. He stated "[the department] ignored the legislative purpose and intent of extending the time frame for assessing such applications, failed to adopt the reasonable advice and recommendations from the parliamentary committee...and ignored the objective of [the new immigration act] which requires 'prompt processing' of visa applications."

The court application was brought by 7 Canadian lawyers on behalf of 102 clients.  Justice Kelen refused to expand his decision to those lawyers and clients that did not bring the court challenge. Leonard Pearl of Siskind, Susser, Hass & Pearl was one of the 7 lawyers.

The Minister has appealed the decision to the Federal Court of Appeal. The Immigration parliamentary committee has called the Minister to appear before them on March 20, 2003.