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OTTAWA - The Liberal government wants to streamline the citizenship application process and make it easier for immigrants to reunite their families by bringing parents and grandparents to Canada.
Sources say Immigration Minister Joe Volpe is also set to loosen rules on foreign college and university students, to make it easier for them to work while they're in Canada.
The moves are expected to be announced Monday by Volpe at a pair of news conferences in Toronto and Montreal.
The aim of the citizenship changes is to reduce the current backlog of cases that can see applicants wait up to two years for a decision. The government wants to cut the waiting time to a maximum of 12 months.
On family reunification, the goal is to triple the number of applications processed in a year, from the current 6,000 to about 18,000. The aim there is to reduce a massive list of about 100,000 cases currently on file.
The rules on foreign students currently restrict them to on-campus jobs while they attend school in Canada. Those regulations will be relaxed to let them work off-campus.
They will also be allowed to stay in the country and work for up to two years after graduation - rather than the current one year - if they take jobs outside the three major urban centres of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Federal officials say colleges and universities have been lobbying for the changes, in the hope that they will help attract more students from outside the country.
Volpe's initiatives come as the Liberals mount a concerted public relations effort to take the minds of voters off the sponsorship scandal that has shaken Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government.
Martin made a high-profile visit to Vancouver last Friday to sign a deal that will allow the city to share federal gasoline tax revenue - a major Liberal promise from the last election.
The prime minister also tried to project a business-as-usual image today, announcing a May 24 byelection date to fill a vacant Commons seat in Newfoundland.
That could be overtaken by a general election if the opposition makes good on threats to bring down Martin's government over the sponsorship affair.
But Liberal strategists insist Volpe's immigration reforms shouldn't be seen as an effort to buy votes in the event of a national campaign later this spring.
They say the minister has been working on the changes ever since he took over the portfolio in January - replacing Judy Sgro, who stepped down in the midst of controversy over her handling of the job.
Volpe is taking action because he wants to improve the system, not just to curry electoral favour in ethnic communities, said one cabinet aide.
That view was seconded by Jim Karygiannis, a Toronto-area Liberal MP who said he's been lobbying Volpe for months to streamline the citizenship and family reunification systems.
"I'm ecstatic," Karygiannis said today. "People can say it's opportunistic, but it's the right thing for the people of Canada, it's the right thing for the families of Canada."
The move to speed up the citizenship process will require additional expenditures to beef up personnel. The money will go not just to the Immigration Department, but also to the RCMP and CSIS to improve their handling of security screening - a prerequisite before citizenship can be granted.
Volpe is also expected to reiterate his commitment Monday to another initiative that grew out of the federal budget delivered in February.
That will see additional money and personnel deployed to fast-track the admission of about 110,000 immigrant wage earners with badly needed skills.
"We have to turn ourselves from a risk-management system into a recruitment system," Volpe told the Edmonton Journal on the weekend. "We have to rethink how we do business and attract people."
OTTAWA - The Liberal government wants to streamline the citizenship application process and make it easier for immigrants to reunite their families by bringing parents and grandparents to Canada.
Sources say Immigration Minister Joe Volpe is also set to loosen rules on foreign college and university students, to make it easier for them to work while they're in Canada.
The moves are expected to be announced Monday by Volpe at a pair of news conferences in Toronto and Montreal.
The aim of the citizenship changes is to reduce the current backlog of cases that can see applicants wait up to two years for a decision. The government wants to cut the waiting time to a maximum of 12 months.
On family reunification, the goal is to triple the number of applications processed in a year, from the current 6,000 to about 18,000. The aim there is to reduce a massive list of about 100,000 cases currently on file.
The rules on foreign students currently restrict them to on-campus jobs while they attend school in Canada. Those regulations will be relaxed to let them work off-campus.
They will also be allowed to stay in the country and work for up to two years after graduation - rather than the current one year - if they take jobs outside the three major urban centres of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Federal officials say colleges and universities have been lobbying for the changes, in the hope that they will help attract more students from outside the country.
Volpe's initiatives come as the Liberals mount a concerted public relations effort to take the minds of voters off the sponsorship scandal that has shaken Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government.
Martin made a high-profile visit to Vancouver last Friday to sign a deal that will allow the city to share federal gasoline tax revenue - a major Liberal promise from the last election.
The prime minister also tried to project a business-as-usual image today, announcing a May 24 byelection date to fill a vacant Commons seat in Newfoundland.
That could be overtaken by a general election if the opposition makes good on threats to bring down Martin's government over the sponsorship affair.
But Liberal strategists insist Volpe's immigration reforms shouldn't be seen as an effort to buy votes in the event of a national campaign later this spring.
They say the minister has been working on the changes ever since he took over the portfolio in January - replacing Judy Sgro, who stepped down in the midst of controversy over her handling of the job.
Volpe is taking action because he wants to improve the system, not just to curry electoral favour in ethnic communities, said one cabinet aide.
That view was seconded by Jim Karygiannis, a Toronto-area Liberal MP who said he's been lobbying Volpe for months to streamline the citizenship and family reunification systems.
"I'm ecstatic," Karygiannis said today. "People can say it's opportunistic, but it's the right thing for the people of Canada, it's the right thing for the families of Canada."
The move to speed up the citizenship process will require additional expenditures to beef up personnel. The money will go not just to the Immigration Department, but also to the RCMP and CSIS to improve their handling of security screening - a prerequisite before citizenship can be granted.
Volpe is also expected to reiterate his commitment Monday to another initiative that grew out of the federal budget delivered in February.
That will see additional money and personnel deployed to fast-track the admission of about 110,000 immigrant wage earners with badly needed skills.
"We have to turn ourselves from a risk-management system into a recruitment system," Volpe told the Edmonton Journal on the weekend. "We have to rethink how we do business and attract people."
