The Current - Canada’s Gaza visa program failing Palestinian-Canadians

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Omar Omar is one of many Gazan Canadians with family in Gaza, and his family is desperately waiting to get out through Canada’s temporary resident visa program. A program many, including the former Immigration Minister Marc Miller, now call a failure. We’ll discuss why only a fraction of the people promised have been able to come to Canada, and what reforms are needed to improve the program.

There are two kinds of Canadians. Those who feel something when they hear this music. And those who've been missing out so far. I'm Chris Howden. And I'm Nile Coxall. We are the co-hosts of As It Happens. And every day we speak with people at the center of the day's most hard hitting, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious news stories.

Also, we have puns. Here Why As It Happens is one of Canada's longest running and most beloved shows. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. We are here for Palestine. Reunite our families now. That's a group of Palestinian Canadians and their supporters singing outside an immigration office in Vancouver.

There were several sit-ins organized yesterday in cities across the country, including Ottawa, Toronto and Halifax. In the protests in the cities across the country, including Ottawa, Toronto and Halifax, protesters are demanding reforms to Canada's temporary resident visa program.

The federal government opened up 5,000 spots for Gazans who have family in Canada. Advocates say

only a small fraction has ended up here through the program. Even Mark Miller, who was

then immigration minister, last year called it a failure. Omar Omar is the founder of the Gazan Canadian Families League, the organization that planned the sit-ins. He's in Vancouver. Good morning. Good morning. Why did you organize these cross-country demonstrations? Because we have been talking to Immigration Canada in the past for many months and we have reached no result and recently we tried to contact them with the new administration and they rejected our offer to

even meet the minister who was scheduled to meet us on June 3rd. Now you have family in Gaza, what has been your experience with this program? It's been daily calls, weekly calls from my family saying that they're hungry and they are waiting. It has been two years almost with this situation. We asked immigration refugees in Citizenship Canada about the temporary resident visa. They say they've reached their limit of 5,000 applications and that quote, as of July 8th, 2025, more than 1,750

people who exited Gaza have passed security screenings, have been approved to come to Canada, end quote. They add that as of the same date, 864 people have arrived here from Gaza. What do you make of those efforts? Those numbers are for people who paid bribes last year to exit through the Gaza Strip to Egypt. An average bribe between $5,000 to $10 thousand dollars per person. These people were not evacuated by the Canadian government, which is a fraction of the program, the numbers of people who are under the program. There are people in the Gaza Strip who have been stuck for two years, for almost two years. None of them has been evacuated and many of

them were killed. Some of them are now over 300 are in need for critical medical attention. Many of them have cancer, including my sister and my brother who's having a critical health situation. And for that particular reason, we are asking Immigration Canada to evacuate people. So they issued a policy, but did not act on it. Now, you mentioned your sister. You were able to get your sister and your mother to Egypt. How did that happen? Well, I spent months begging the Canadian government to evacuate her through the WHO, World Health Organization. They were answering my emails that they would do it, they will

do it. But then I figured out that they were doing nothing. And I had to cooperate with an organization on the ground and with an American member of parliament, congressman, and actually advocate for them in the US for her and those other people who evacuated her. I figured out that Canada did not do anything for these people. Meanwhile, they were emailing me saying that we are talking to the Israeli counters, we are talking to the WHO. I figured out that they were doing nothing.

Danielle Pletka So you're saying it was the Americans who helped them, not Canadians? Shailesh Prasad Not at all Canadians, no. And if I waited, she could have been dead by now. And why haven't they come to Canada yet? Because my sister is in Egypt taking medical treatment for chemo for her cancer. You also have family in northern Gaza. How are they surviving? They're barely they're barely surviving. I have my father who is in his mid-70s. I have my nieces and nephews, and they are in, living in a starvation mode. I see their pictures and they are skinny, they're getting skinnier.

My nieces and nephews are now developed in the last two years. They're having seizures. One of them was born four months before the war and this person is now facing brain damage even. There's no food. We have been seeing that there's no food. That if there is some food, it has been extremely expensive to continue supporting them and sending them money in extremely expensive to continue supporting them and sending them money in high quantity. Like I'm sending a lot of money just for them to try to keep them alive because there's no good in the Gaza Strip, so the inflation rates are 900%, you can say. 900%. So can you give us an example of how much something costs right now? So, a can of beans used to be 10 cents, 5 cents.

It's now $20, if you can find it. They haven't been eating any kind of meat or chicken or anything that is protein for the last eight months. What are you telling them from your end? I stopped telling them anything. I actually tried to not ask for their calls anymore because every time they're calling me they're saying, hey, when are we getting out? We are seeing many people and many other countries getting their citizens, their RICT family

members out of the Gaza Strip, what is happening with the Canadian government. My brother, who is 24 years old, he has been tracking the news and his English is perfect, and he has been following up the news and he's been sending me direct links from different government websites, official websites, stating that they have been evacuating Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and he's sending them to me and saying what is happening with Canada? I don't have an answer to him. Now, Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada says the government

does not have a presence in Gaza and quote, Canada continues to put forward names of people who pass preliminary eligibility and admissibility reviews to local authorities for approval, but does not ultimately decide who can exit Gaza. Where does this process as it stands leave those like your family still in Gaza? Well, the result is zero evacuation. What is happening on the ground is other countries like France, Belgium, any European country you can name have been able to get people out in thousands.

And these countries do not have presence in the Gaza Strip. Romania does not have presence in the Gaza Strip. France does not have presence in the Gaza Strip. None of those governments have any officials in the Gaza Strip. It's a war zone. But they are able and they have been capable of getting people out of the Gaza Strip, except the only country in the world that has established a program especially for the Gaza Strip. The irony here is none of those countries established special measures for Gazans or for Canadians who have Gazan

families. But other countries were able to evacuate them. France just evacuated on April over a hundred students from the Gazan ship who got admission in French universities, and they evacuated them with their families in hundreds. But if you open a CBC website, you would read an article that, and we are aware that students who have been waiting to come to Canada on admission with Canadian universities, they were killed while waiting. Not only our direct family members. This tells you something. AMT – Omar, we don't have much time, but you mentioned trying to get in touch with the new

immigration minister, Lina Diab, without much success. What is your message very quickly to the immigration minister? Make it work because they don't want to. My message is make it happen. You can be still racist. It's fine we understand that, although no one should be racist, but this racism is causing people to be killed and die. understand that although no one should be racist, but this racism is causing people

to be killed and die. When it comes to people life, you need to act as a human being. Omar, thanks for speaking with me today. Thank you so much. Omar, Omar is the founder of the Gazan Canadian Families League. Debbie Rackless is... Hey, I'm Jill Deacon and I'm excited to share my new podcast with you. A Love Affair with always And I realized I haven't dealt with anything. My family's motto was, I'm not going to be able to, I'm not going to be able to handle that. Listen and subscribe to A Love Affair with the Unknown wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

As an immigration lawyer who has been working with Palestinian Canadians and their family, families. Earlier this year, she was part of a group of lawyers who filed the case against the federal government on behalf of 53 people inside Gaza over the delays in processing visa applications. Good morning. Can you walk us through how processing these applications

works or how it's supposed to work? Okay. Well, it's a sort of a complicated program and I will say I think it was set up to be a needlessly complicated program program and I will say I think it was set up to be a needlessly complicated program. So I will do my best to walk you through the steps.

So the first step in the program as it was supposed to work was that Canadian citizens or permanent residents who had close family members in Gaza could file a statutory declaration. So it was a form and a sworn statement on the form, giving their identity information and the names and information of their family members that they wanted to bring to Canada, as well as, you know, signing and, you know, in front of a notary or a lawyer, a promise to financially support those people for one year. And once that was done, they were supposed to submit it using a web form to Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada with copies of their identity documents proving their status in Canada and that they were residents of Canada. The next step was that immigration was supposed to do a quick evaluation to make sure the form was complete and if everything was, you know, submitted as it was supposed to to issue unique reference codes which could then be used to submit temporary resident visas

through the sort of regular temporary resident visa online portal. Once that was done, immigration was supposed to review those applications for completeness, make sure, you know, do some preliminary security and eligibility checks. And then people were told to sort of wait for information about leaving Gaza, right? And that IRCC would give them instructions on doing that. And once that was done, they would cross into Egypt, presumably, and do their biometrics. So normally biometrics are done at the front end. Because biometrics are not available in Gaza, this was sort of pushed off to a secondary stage. And then assuming everything was great, they should move on, you know, be able to then

join their families in Canada. And of course, none of that actually happened. So what did happen to some of your clients when they tried to apply for these initial codes? Well, I mean, amongst the sort of of the 53 Canadian sort of Gazans, they never received codes and they submitted those applications. All of those Canadian anchor relatives, as they're called, those applications, all of those Canadian anchor relatives, as they're called, submitted their web forms within one month of the program opening, often the day that it did open on January 9th, 2024, and did not receive codes or received codes for some family members and not others. And then have now been told that the program is closed and these family members are not eligible to be even evacuated from Gaza,

should Canada even be able to do that. And no explanation has been given. So how many people were actually able to get across the border in Gaza using this process? None, zero. Everyone who has arrived, and I do have clients and know people who have come to Canada, and I believe the numbers you said when you were speaking to Omar were about a thousand people

had been granted visas. So those were all people who had made their own way to Egypt, right? To primarily- Using some of these, using companies, right? Right. Sort of different means, right? Exactly. And sometimes other ways as well. Some people, you know, were evacuated by employers, facilitated by employers and others, right? But none by the Canadian government. Now Omar mentioned that other countries have been able to help people get out. I mean, what's the problem with Canada? I mean, why is this happening? I mean, and that part is really unclear

because we do know that other countries have been able to evacuate people. We also know that Canada has been able to evacuate other people, including Canadian citizens and permanent residents this year, as well as they have been involved in medical evacuations. So we know it's possible. So we don't know why this is not happening for these people. You've got this legal case underway now. What are you

trying to accomplish with it? Well, a few things. We're hoping to get code for our clients on the chance that this program does become viable at some point. The government has been clear that only people who have received these unique reference codes would be eligible for any assistance in leaving Gaza. So without those codes, our clients are going to be left behind. We also are really seeking some transparency

and explanation as to what happened here because this program has been really a disaster from the very beginning, from the moment it launched, it had problems. Attempts to address those problems with IRCC have been largely unsuccessful. And we're sort of left on, you know, sort of a, I guess quite some time after this program launched with no answers

as to what happened here, and no accountability on the part of IRCC for what happened here. We asked for an interview with the Federal Immigration Minister, Lena Diab, but she declined. Her office did send us a statement, which, as you heard, points to the more than 800 people who have arrived in Canada from Gaza.

Is that a sign of progress? I mean, it's very slow progress. I have a number, a fairly large number of clients who are in Egypt and have been stuck there for a year and a half. They can't work, their children can't go to school, they are surviving on money sent by family members here, often fundraised, right? They've exhausted their savings. They're not eligible for any government services. They don't fall under, because of complicated historical issues, they don't fall under the jurisdiction of the UNHCR, which is the UN

refugee agency that operates in Egypt. They also don't receive any assistance from UNRWA, which provides support for Palestinian refugees. So they're really surviving on funds from savings, funds from people in Canada and charity. Right? funds from people in Canada and charity, right? The government has also said that things have been complicated because it's not up to the Canadian government to decide who can exit Gaza. The Israeli and Egyptian governments are involved in that. It says the Canadian government continues to, and I'm quoting, work closely with local

authorities to facilitate the exit of people from Gaza. I mean, do you think Canada should be applying more pressure? I mean, absolutely. I cannot imagine that a country like Romania, for example, has more sway with the Israeli government than Canada. And if countries like Romania are able to evacuate people, why not Canada? So what's going on behind the scenes here that is causing this delay, right? If France can get students out for student visas,

why can't Canada? And I think that's a real question. And I think the other question is what is being done for people who are stranded in Egypt and why are those applications moving so slowly? Right, right. They can control that a little more, I think, than Gaza. Absolutely. Omar echoed what one of the families you represent said earlier this year to Al Jazeera,

and that they felt the program, the Canadian program was quote, designed to fail and not to evacuate people from Gaza. Do you agree? Yes. I mean, I think that it is perhaps, I think that's a fair reading. I think that's a fair take. I think that designed to fail, or certainly not designed to succeed, right? That no efforts were, it's seemingly, from what we can piece together, because again, there's no information available that would actually happen here. There didn't seem to be much concern in making sure this program was actually viable and that the sort of other people on the ground, so in this case the Israeli authorities, were going to be willing

to allow people to leave. So this is what we're sort of left with. It doesn't seem like anyone had really considered seriously what this was actually going to look like. Right. We just have a few seconds left, but how optimistic are you that the courts and this case can actually help get action for your clients and their families? I'm somewhat optimistic. I'm hopeful that we'll at least be able to get people the codes that they need should this program function at some point. And I'm hopeful that we can sort of try and continue

to keep the pressure on and keep the spotlight on the sort of failure of this program to sort of meet its objectives and to do what needed to be done in this really awful situation. Debbie, thanks for speaking with me today. Thanks for having me. Debbie Rackless is an immigration lawyer based in Toronto.

You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.