 Good afternoon. Welcome to the faculty public affairs research series. Today's event is border blues where we're going to be taking a look at some of the stuff that we haven't been hearing as much about over the past what now year and nine months or so yes the border open yesterday. But it's not really that open and I think our speakers will speak to the challenges that continue. As as we go on through this pandemic. We have three speakers today but before I introduce them. I want to first acknowledge that this event is hosted by Carlton University which is located an unsecured unceded Algonquin territory which is home to a not should not be nature. We are going to have three speakers today Laura Trusdale, Trusdale who is the assistant director at international study services and student life at Carlton. She currently oversees a variety of international focus portfolios on campus including immigration advising. Before she joined Carlton she worked as an RC IC in law firms supporting various immigration processes. Paul McKenzie Jones is a settler associate professor of indigenous studies at the University of Lethbridge and an external research affiliate with a pure a global indigenous and diaspora research center at the University of Newcastle Australia. This current research focuses on indigenous left intellectual and cultural erasure of imposed settle settler colonial borders. Our third speaker is Harmeet Sarai. She's a lawyer at her on law offices she practices immigration refugee and citizenship law. Her practice involves pro bono work as a board member of the South Asian legal clinic of British Columbia, the volunteer lawyer with Canadian lawyers for international rights. She received her JD from the University of Saskatchewan and was called to the bar of British Columbia and just last year. So those are our speakers and we'll get started with Laura please the floor is yours. Wonderful. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for having me. My name is Laura Trusdale and I manage the International Student Services office here at Carlton University. I appreciate the time to discuss how COVID-19 and the border closures have had real impacts on the international student experience. While every student will have a unique set of circumstances, our office like many who focus on international student support have seen some emerging commonalities and the types of inquiries that we're receiving during this complex time. This is a context for the impacts to international students I want to briefly highlight some of the expectations from local, provincial and federal governments that universities and colleges as designated learning institutions or D Li's as we're commonly referred to, have had to navigate in order to be approved to welcome international students. It seemed like a lifetime ago, you can cast your mind back to early 2020. The world was quite uncertain as to what we were facing, but those of us with responsibilities for all things international really braced for a wave of unprecedented changes that we knew were coming that would impact our communities. The majority of what we're going to focus on today will of course be the impacts of the Canadian border closure. It bears noting that this was not the only frontier that international students were navigating. Many international students within Canada were stranded here as a result of their own country's border restrictions. Some even before Canada's measures were announced universities and colleges were scrambling to accommodate these students beyond the winter term, and diligently making sure that they were abiding by their own countries border restrictions as well prior to making travel plans. During the summer of 2020 D Li's were tasked with putting together COVID-19 readiness plans that would demonstrate our ability to welcome international students safely to Canada, Ontario and our campus community. It had to cover everything from pre arrival information and supports to assistance with mandatory quarantine compliance with immigration and public health measures including COVID testing. A process for reporting symptomatic cases mental health supports and a whole other host of requirements as well. Once compiled our plan had to be reviewed and approved by local health units and the provincial and federal government bodies. In the international student services office here at Carlton we built out a robust pre arrival and arrival supports for students and we're proud to be one of the first institutions approved in October 2020 to welcome international students to Canada under this new challenging landscape. Well this cleared one huge hurdle for international students many other challenges continue to present themselves as a result of the border closure. And we continue to be felt by each new cohort of students that we're welcoming to our campuses. Some of these are unique to the COVID landscape and others were longer standing pressure points that have been exacerbated by the impacts of COVID-19. For many students they struggled with not understanding the short and long term impacts of their immigration status in this new landscape. While this isn't new students often struggle to understand the nuance of their student status working in Canada and post graduation plans with COVID-19 and the almost weekly updates to program delivery instructions. Students and practitioners alike were left feeling as though the expectations were either unclear or missing very key information. Now it seems like every student email coming into our inbox was very, very complex. Once students found the right place on the IRCC website to get the information that they were looking for they often struggled with how it applied to their particular circumstance. Very often falling into the trap of relying on bad advice that they had received from family and friends and other community members. For example, many students studying outside of Canada just simply did not apply for a study permit or let their status lacks while they were outside of the country. While this was permissible for them to continue with their online studies, it certainly posed a challenge when students were ready to return to Canada and or when they are looking ahead at applying for a postgraduate work permit and finding out that they may no longer be eligible. This is just one example of the many considerations that IRCC and CVSA both collectively simply felt students should know how to magically navigate and our office is still helping students navigate many of these pressure points on a daily basis. Air travel has also become a pressure point for international students that is really unique to this COVID landscape. Early on information was changing and evolving so rapidly that the entry requirements to Canada could literally change while a student was in the air en route. Then came flight bans from Pakistan, India and Morocco with students waiting with huge uncertainty when these would be lifted or devising complex and often very complex and costly alternative routes. The role that airlines have played during COVID-19 has been challenging in terms of offering student support. Airlines effectively became the first port of entry. And while of course airlines have always reviewed immigration documentation prior to boarding during COVID, they seemed a lot more emboldened to take on the role of IRCC CVSA and public health officer. They would decide if a student was a genuine student traveling for an essential purpose, they would look at whether the student had enough funds for their stay, and they would look at a whole host of documentation typically reserved for CVSA at a port of entry. When it comes to finances, being an international student is already a pretty expensive undertaking, and it just became a whole lot more costly due to COVID-19. Flight costs, sword, quarantine costs could be upward of four or five thousand additional dollars depending on if you were going through the government hotel process, this cost couldn't even jump further. Looking at PCR testing, a whole host of other unrelated costs due to your international student status and experience. This is wrapped in with of course economies around the world have struggled to adapt to COVID-19 and students would write to us that their parents had lost their jobs or lost their business as a result of COVID and students and their families were uncertain how they were going to make ends meet. Students studying online from their home country were also navigating unfavorable time zones and they would have to choose whether to take that job or whether to study online at the appropriate time during our classes, oftentimes having to prioritize work over sleep, or vice versa. While finances are often a difficult subject for international students, COVID-19 really highlighted the economic challenges around the globe and how interconnected these are to the international student experience, and it will take some time to rebuild and reestablish these financial pathways for students as well. And then when we look at the academic experience as a result of the border closure has many of you can appreciate studying online as a science and certainly not for everyone. Now imagine that you're an international student studying online from your home country with an eight hour time difference from your classmates. Perhaps this is the first time that you're studying in English, attending lectures, keeping up with readings and making time for group work are all now significant challenges in your student experience. International students are often shifting their sleep schedules to accommodate course requirements and sometimes even doing away with sleep all together to ensure that they maintain their degree requirements and progression. They also struggled with the types of classes that they could take from their home country, navigating issues such as technology and censorship. Further studying certain types of topics in their family home could leave them open to some very difficult conversations with their parents. For example, a gender studies course with lectures and readings that had content that was considered taboo or even illegal in their home country was a challenge when students are studying from their family home at their dining room table with an earshot of their parents and grandparents. International students also had to contend with challenges and unforeseen events in their home country that could prevent online study from being a success for them. For example, students had to contend with rolling blackouts and electricity deficiencies natural disasters such as hurricanes and typhoons. And then we even heard of cases where students were being extorted by local gangs as they were perceived to have wealth, given that they were pursuing their education at a university abroad. As a result, many students had to carefully construct their class schedules in order to give them the best chance of success, really having impacts on their degree sequencing and overall progression within their program. And then we look at mental health and accessing support while students are outside of Canada, the ability to access these supports were considerable struggle for many international students. For many students even the discussion of mental health within their culture and family could be seen as taboo. Further when students were finally able to articulate their comfort in seeking out mental health supports from overseas the options were incredibly limited to them. Universities could offer virtual supports, which was a preference for some, but most really create that in person connection that they were lacking in order to discuss what was happening in their current circumstances. Being stuck outside of Canada was a real burden and barrier for students when it came to their mental health. If you look more broadly at a student's support network you would think that in an era of social media that students would feel right at home living their lives in virtual spaces, but unfortunately this was not the case particularly for international students. So much of their cultural learning comes from immersing themselves in a new society and this connection was noticeably absent and unable to be recreated in a virtual environment. Parents also struggled with the anxiety of sending their children off to Canada, often alone for the very first time for students particularly in their first year having their families with them can be a real source of comfort as they navigate those first couple weeks as they transition to life in Canada. Further students at the end of their studies graduating and now being able to celebrate this achievement with their family was a real source of a mental health struggle for students as they were unable to really celebrate the achievement that they've undertaken over the past many years. Restricting travel of the wider family network of international students really did contribute to overall mental health concerns within this population during the pandemic. And I'd like to just conclude by briefly touching on vaccination and looking to the future. So as we look to the future it does bear noting that the impacts of COVID-19 will continue to be felt by international students for years to come. Even if the pandemic miraculously ended tomorrow, international students will have to interpret their study compliance with terms and conditions and future applications and measures in place at the time in question. For example, students applying for postgraduate work permit will have to rely on much more robust documentation to explain their particular academic journey and how it aligns with the various COVID measures that were in place at the time that they were studying. Additionally, now that travel to Canada has begun to reopen vaccination status is looking to be potentially more of a border restriction than the border restriction measure to date. And they're going to select regions with low vaccine rollout rates or that have a vaccine widely available that isn't approved in Canada. There's still a lot that needs to be done in this space and looking at impacts of COVID-19 through our Canadian centric lens where we have very high vaccine uptake and very limited restrictions will only disadvantage our international student population. So really what can we hope for? We can really hope for clear communication from IRCC, CBSA and other partners in the international student space. This may seem rather obvious, but information and guidance for international students needs to be accessible and recognize that students invest a lot in our society, our economy and our rich, our Canadian culture through their countless contributions during their time in Canada. They have been and continue to be impacted by these incredibly complex and challenging times and compassion and decision making at the port of entry and by immigration officials can truly go a long way in this space. Thank you very much, Laura. Paul. Thank you. And I want to say especially thank you to Paxton for inviting me. I know it wasn't just your decision, but you're the one who reached out so I'd really do appreciate the invitation to speak today. I have a slide that I wanted to share just looking at the impact of the closure on Indigenous peoples and on COVID-19. I think many people would be surprised how many people actually aware that so many Indigenous nations are still quite so close to the border. And this map again, as Laura just talked about the Canadian-centric view, this is the same. The map doesn't do the opposite side of the border. I don't know whether it's just going to Canadian, but as we are here, I figured that's where we would either use this map. And I was thinking about how to start the talk and I think I finally decided to focus on land acknowledgments as a starting point. And most institutional formal acknowledgments I would argue are fundamentally inadequate and sort of flawed in the fact that they focus on the specific place being acknowledged. My university acknowledges being on Blackfoot territory, but very specifically in the framework of Treaty 7. So it's very much against that Canadian-centric viewpoint and especially sort of Alberta viewpoint of the territory that we are on. And if you speak to a Blackfoot elder, and there immediately will give you the full version of the territory, all the way up to what's now Edmonton, all the way down to what's now Wyoming, all the way to the Rocky Mountains in the west and beyond the Cybertiles into what's Saskatchewan. And so we've got two nations, two provinces, and two US states because we've gone right through Montana, all included in this territory and yet the land acknowledgment focuses, well here focuses on specifically Treaty 7. And so, even before COVID, the border's an issue. And there are multiple subtle variations of the border imposed before we even get to the border closure, there's conceptualization to vocation, there's conceptualization to terminology from the different borders. And yet, in all of this, Indigenous nations did and still do consider themselves sovereign nations with control over their own culture, their own territory, and they have their own systems of government, land and resource management, including the rights to that land and resource, including, again, sort of going from the Canadian perspective, what's now across the border in the United States. So, one of the first contrasts to be drawn between pre-border, and I say post-border, but it was really it's the border, so pre-border and border era, which can also be extrapolated into sort of the pre and post COVID closure, is when you speak to Indigenous people in locations such as this, obviously, so the Ontario as well. There was a, there was such a freedom of movement between territories, between what's now considered the US border, which was conceptualized at one point as the medicine line, because it protected that freedom of movement, it's a freedom of movement epitomized by sustaining livelihood, choosing sites for families to live on, journeying to ceremonies, sacred sites. Some of the sacred sites are on the United States side, so people travel in South, and then there's the Canadian side and people travel in North. So the border, even if again, before we sort of, well, not before we get to COVID, but also I suppose during the COVID closure, is the effect that the border has on culture and family and land. And I've got a visualization of contrast, but this is Waterton Park, which is an international lake in Alberta, and this is, again, it was all Blackfoot territory, and you can see sort of the other natural boundaries of the mountains through the water. There's sort of this manmade section of the US border where it's just the trees that come down to mark this specific line. If you go all the way through, there are obliques, peppered all the way through this line to mark the US border. During COVID, this is literally, you know, normally you can go all the way to the other side. You can go into Montana, there's a, at the base of a mountain, there's a little park ranger. There's a little hut, which constitutes a border crossing, and you can go in, you know, people go to hike, etc. During COVID, you literally got stopped halfway at the river, and halfway during the lake, rather, and then turn around and come back. And so this is, you know, this is as a settler, I experienced that. But again, I'm just doing this as it was on it for research point to prove a point for research. And that extrapolates into this COVID closure, stopping indigenous people getting to their sacred sites. Because ceremony is not considered an essential travel. One of the examples of this was his chief mountain, which is a sacred mountain. Now, and this is really where all this relates to the COVID border closure. The border closure immediately reasserted travel travel restrictions for indigenous people. That a couple of elders expressed to me are very similar to the past system that was in place in the early 1900s late 1800s of that you cannot lower you, you're not allowed to leave. You cannot pass from reserve to reserve. It's the same now that your chief mountain is something that several elders have said every black foot person at some point will have a relationship with this mountain. It's one of the most sacred mountains. But now people can't get to it. You know, and this is again a picture. I took the sort of approval points of, you know, this is the border. It wasn't deliberately hazy chief mountain in the background measures to what the day I took this we were full of smoke from the BC and Saskatchewan fires but I think it's such a strong representation of how out of reach such an important site is joining the COVID closure and it disrupts, you know, so many cases of just simple access to ceremony being access to prayer, which many of us. For those of us who are religious, we still are able during COVID to go to our places of worship, you know, whether it be a mosque or synagogue or church, etc. There's still, you know, there was someone shut down all the restrictions in certain places, you know, only 15 people allowed or 15% and so on and so forth, but for most parts, still accessible. And yet here is one of the most sacred sites completely unavailable, because of the border closing down, and which is also seen as an infringement on sovereignty, you know, if you've got this territorial sovereignty. And yet has the settler government saying this this line cannot be crossed you cannot travel on your own territory. And so there was a federal report published in February of this year. And so what we had indigenous peoples and cold. So this is a public health report, they public health agency Canada. And one of the biggest frustrations from indigenous communities was the lack of consultation over the initial closure, and then any potential reopenings, because the reopenings potentially affect people coming into reserve to come into communities, possibly that this is in February so we now know, you know that the restrictions are in place for people coming back into the country as of yesterday. Well, the conversations happening in February indigenous people were given a clear idea of what that border reopening would look like there was no consultation for them. At the same time, you know, the federal government, the arguments being made to all border communities should be should be having these conversations with the federal government the federal government should be talking to all people. And so, one of the other frustrations is that there was no formal approach to indigenous people all the way across the board. But this came back to the idea of the issues of location and geography. We've got some indigenous communities whose land still crosses the board or the border crosses their lap. And in one such so that the government ended up with a sort of ad hoc approach to indigenous territory, where in almost all cases the border lockdown is formally in place, but in some rare instances the border restriction is lifted. So, you know, I'm an amaki wasing is one of those reserves so you've got this sort of the, the, there's a part of the reserve called Windigo Island. And in order to leave Windigo Island, you have to take a boat across the center Minnesota. Once you're in Minnesota, you can then have the only roads available to get back into Canada in order for grocery shopping and so on and so forth. So Jordan, the COVID lockdown residents on Windigo Island were required. Simply give a phone call to the board of agents to let them know you're coming across. And that's all you need to do. There's a lot of complaints of harassment, you know, by either border agents, trying to tell people that they were not allowed to go across, even though it's literally the only way they could get food and this is why the new that the agreement was reached. There were instances of people going across, going back into Canada so literally the only access they have that literally the only thing they did in the United States was get into a car. You know, drive back into Canada, but then immediately they were back into Canada if you started to get in those phone calls, you need to quarantine for 14 days if you've not been tested. And so that you're going to get fined if you don't quarantine for 14 days and so these complaints have been made. And of course, the government says that, well, we're not going to talk about specific cases so we've only got one side of the conversation here but this is a constant. This is a constant arrangement, but we every time we go to buy our shops once a week once a month, we immediately start getting these phone calls from Health Canada, threatening us with fines if we don't isolate even though we're not required to isolate. So, one of the other recommendations the report made was the provincial and territorial government should be working with indigenous communities regarding border openings. You know, there are problems with that in the case in many cases it seems that the federal government was sort of passing along passing the books lately you know, sort of allowing somebody else to take control of something they should have been in control of. But then, when you think of aquasarsening, it becomes even more complicated because which provincial or territorial government works where there's this one community this one reserve, Canada, the United States, New York, Ontario, Quebec, all claim some form of jurisdiction oversight. So there are no again returning to the geographical issues with the border. There are multiple competing claims of jurisdiction in multiple locations. So, the potential letters for one agreement to be made in one place that wasn't necessarily you know equate to a different place on the same reserve. And you can see so you know just from the map how, how complex aquasarsening is as a, you know, there's a long history of border issues on Cornwall Island, especially as well with a different conversation. So, the Mohawk Council here came to an agreement with Canada, where they could travel 160 kilometers from their homes, again without needing to quarantine upon return. But, because the territory crosses the border, or the border crosses the territory, there were different, there were competing mask rules, depending on what state or what country or what province you were in. There were other issues of the reasons for this agreement being reached not being properly conveyed to the general public. Harassment from non-indigenous people, angry at the closure and indignant of what seems to be a free pass for the Mohawk who could cross the border. There's still issues of harassment from border agents who are drafted in from different locations and not being brought fully up to speed as to why this arrangement exists. There's the complication of the fact that many residents within aquasarsening are dual citizens, so they've got, you know, triple citizens if you include the Mohawk citizenship, so I apologize. So they've got triple citizenship, primarily in the case of the border, you know, the dual US and Canadian. So there's multiple, multiple complications here that never really got resolved and just created a mass confusion, just for the indigenous community, both for people around which created aggression and resentment towards them, which if we're going to be honest already exists on, you know, even in the present day, but it shouldn't do. So, you know, we've got four different, we've got conflicting rules within Canada for different indigenous communities, based on current understandings of the territory. The Georgia takes me all the way back to the first comment about land acknowledges. You know, you should have the traditional Blackfoot territory crosses the border, but it's not logistically the same as aquasarsening, which is still in its present form intact on both sides of the border. So the government takes this sort of different approach to it, but then indigenous people themselves are looking across the country and saying, well, you know, if it's okay for them, why can't it come to the same, you know, come to the same arrangements for us. Or at least why cannot we go to somewhere like Chief Mountain just to, you know, just for ceremony. And then you've got to depend on which side of the border people find themselves. You've got all these multiple completing assertions of sovereignty. So, you know, I wanted to keep it short because I know we were talking about sort of 10, 12 minutes, and I'm not sure how much time I've used so far. Well, to sort of wrap it up in the midst of all this, in the midst of all this confusion, there's a 10 year court case going on about territorial sovereignty, and it was resolved on April the 23rd of the Supreme Court of Canada. So the Supreme Court, this is a sanite gentleman who hunted in Canada and was arrested for bill because he's a US citizen he was arrested and charged with, you know, poaching and trespassing. So he's been fighting this for 10 years. Supreme Court decided Canadian Supreme Court ruled in April. The indigenous people from within the US, whose traditional territory straddles the international border, are free to exercise indigenous rights in Canada under section 35.1 of the Constitution, even if they're not citizens of Canada, or even reside in Canada. So in the midst of this border closure, while causing all these additional issues for indigenous peoples, the Supreme Court says, even if you are no longer even if you are, if your traditional territory was here. In the case that the Canadian government classifies the sanites as being extinct. So the recognized in the US, but not actually even recognized in Canada. And that's a whole different fight that's still going on. But as a sanite, who's of the lakes nation, who was classified as because he's of the lakes and they are the descendent nation of the side right then therefore he constitutionally has a ancestral right to that territory. He, you know, yeah, after 10 years, you are free to exercise this, this, this indigenous rights. So it complicates our understanding of the border. At a time when the borders closed, and I would have argued that this then it's probably the closest the Canadians governments ever got other Supreme Court has ever got to a firm in the J Treaty, you know, even implicitly if not explicitly. And I would have argued that the I will I do argue that this couldn't should have resulted in a more equitable relaxing of border closures for all border adjacent indigenous communities. So once this ruling is in place, then, okay, let's look at all of these nations, not just the black book, but the other part of what's in the creed that there are so many nation nations who crisscrossed the border and see if we cannot come to a similar arrangement that we have with the moho that we have with you know, the animatic and, and it didn't. Now, why it means for indigenous people in the post covert closure world will have to wait and see, but it further complicates an already complexion complicated issue with the border as it stands and as we all acknowledge the border reopened yesterday, the privilege of cost of the test you need to get back into Canada is still going to restrict many indigenous people from being able to get back to those sites that they've been, you know, stopped from visiting for the past months while the border was closed. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. And our third speaker, please, the floor is yours. Great. Thank you for having me on this panel. I like to focus my presentation on discussing how the border closures due to the global pandemic have affected international students, those who had applied for their permanent residents families and spouses. So just going back to pre pandemic. In 2019, Canada had welcomed the highest number of new immigrants and more than a century, opening its doors to over 340,000 people. And then in early 2020 before March, Canada was set to welcome more than 1 million new immigrants as permanent residents over the next three years. And of course, due to the pandemic, the reality was that in 2020 Canada only welcomed about 184,000 new immigrants down by almost half from 2019. So, as soon as COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, the Prime Minister announced that beginning March 18, 2020, the federal government was closing the border except to Canadian citizens permanent residents and Americans. The border closure caused many issues, for instance, there was a story published in the Toronto Star where a nanny carrying a foreign non Canadian passport had traveled to Mexico with her Canadian employer. But due to the Canadian border being closed and her being a foreign national the nanny could not return to Canada with her employer. Many temporary residents such as those with valid work and student visas were not exempt and many temporary residents were stranded overseas and banned from re-entering Canada. So in a sense, you can say that initially the border closure measures definitely overlook the interests of the country's temporary residents. And however, not long after the Prime Minister announced that the government would restrict non-essential travel between Canada and the US and those exempt included truck drivers, health care providers, airline crews and infrastructure workers. The government also relaxed their travel rules to provide exemptions to migrant farm workers, fish, seafood workers and other temporary foreign workers. So as you can see the federal government eventually recognized that foreign workers were vital to the Canadian economy, including food security for Canadians. I just want to move on to firstly talk about how international students were impacted by border closures during the pandemic. It's important to note that, like as Laura had mentioned that it wasn't just the Canadian borders that were restricting international students from coming to Canada. It was also border restrictions from the students home country that impacted travel. There were also flight cancellations and closed language testing sites and closed visa officers which posed major challenges for students in their home countries. You are probably aware those who graduate from a Canadian college or university are granted what's called a postgraduate work permit that lasts between one and three years, depending on the duration of their academic programs. And it's important to emphasize that many international students count on postgraduate work permits as an ultimate pathway for permanent residents as it gives them the opportunity to get that one year of Canadian work experience that is required to get PR under the Canadian experience classroom. And due to the pandemic travel restrictions, the federal government announced in February of this year that international students would be able to complete their entire studies online from abroad. And these studies completed outside Canada would still count towards eligibility for a future postgraduate work permit in Canada. Although this was an important measure and ease the worries of many students overseas who are completing their studies online and abroad. Many international students who graduated from their program and were in Canada express that they were struggling to find their first job, especially jobs that were managerial and skilled professional levels, which is a requirement to be eligible to the Canadian express the Canadian experience classroom. For others they were laid off during the pandemic and also face their own set of challenges in securing new employment. For example, employers were not looking to hire someone with a work permit that was going to expire in say four months. These decided it was best to delay applying for their postgraduate work permit because they didn't have a job lined up. So they decided to take more courses or enroll in another program to buy themselves more time essentially, but those who didn't have that luxury of applying to another program due to financial struggles, going back to school was not an option. Many international students also expressed that they were competing for jobs with Canadians and so those people who had already some work experience in Canada, and which somewhat are you look more favorable for employers. Unfortunately, the federal government did recognize some of these issues of international students not being able to find meaningful jobs or being laid off during the pandemic and not being able to qualify for PR. So in January of this year, the federal government launched a temporary policy to allow international students with an expired or expiring postgraduate work permit to apply for a new permit that would be valid for up to 18 months to be considered under this public policy, among other requirements applications must have been submitted between January 27 of this year and July 27 of this year. And I would say currently the downside is that international students are no longer able to apply for this extension despite COVID still being a real thing and lack of employment opportunities still being an issue for many. In the middle of this year, Canada declared a new one time special program that would open its doors to permanent residents for 40,000 international students. International students would qualify for the new program if they had graduated from an eligible post secondary program within the past four years after January 2017 and if they were currently employed. The key thing here was that they did not need to be in a specific occupation to meet the requirements. So as you can imagine this program generated a great amount of interest. However, one of the issues that arose with this program was that in order to qualify the applicants must meet the language proficiency requirement. With all of this interest, it was a struggle for people to get a date for the language test. The cap of 40,000 for the international graduate stream was actually met within 26 hours after applications had opened on May 6 of this year. And the downside is that this program is no longer available to those still struggling to find meaningful work that would allow them to meet the requirements to then apply for their PR. Currently, international students studying abroad online abroad may be authorized to enter Canada to attend in person classes. If the school is included on the list of designated learning institutions with an approved COVID-19 readiness plan in place. It's important to keep in mind that boarded border agents do have the authority to assess and reviews at the port of entry. They have the authority to make those calls. I also wanted to briefly touch on those individuals who had a permanent resident visa issue to them to settle in Canada permanently. Those with their visa stamped after March 18, 2020, after the Canadian borders closed, new policy required them to apply for an authorization to travel before they could board a flight, unless they were coming from the US. And so the issue with needing to apply for authorization and waiting to hear back meant that for many, their visas had expired. And also it wasn't until July 2020. For months later, did officials introduce a web form for expired visa holders to apply for an authorization letter and be assessed by a list of criteria, including whether they had compelling reason to travel to Canada. Even with the authorization letter Canada Board of Border agents still had the final say a ports of entry. Part of this was that many were not expecting the border closures. And so these newcomers had sold their homes, their jobs, pulled their kids out of school, bought plane tickets only to have the borders closed with no communication from the government for months as to when they would be able to come to Canada. This is an example of how the government was not adequately prepared for the circumstances the pandemic brought on. Perhaps a possible solution could have been for the government to honor expired permanent resident visas and let them into the country provided they abide by public health rules. However, at the same time ours IRCC also needed to do an admissibility checks again, like criminal records for certain individuals because quite a bit of time had he laughed since the expiration of their visas. But to move on to discussing travel restrictions for immediate family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents and spousal sponsorship files so when the Prime Minister first announced the border would be closed to non-Canadians, he made exceptions for immediate family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents. What was not made very clear by the government was that foreign nationals married to Canadians could and would be refused at the border if their travels were deemed non-essential and illegal, such as tourism, visiting, recreation or entertainment. This became an unexpected reality for many couples who were not prepared for this physical separation from their partners. Currently, despite it being 20 months 20 months since the border closures were first announced, there are still many Canadians separated from their foreign national spouses due to border closings and a backlog on processing spells and sponsorship files. Spousal sponsorship applications do take an average processing time of 12 months, but during the pandemic many foreign partners have had to wait overseas for as long as two years or more since pre-pandemic to receive feedback on their application. While foreign spouses from visa exempt countries like the US or the UK could enter Canada to visit their Canadian partners while they wait for their spousal sponsorship applications to be processed, this was not the case for many others. Foreign spouses who are nationals of visa-required countries are required to make another application for a visitor visa, also known as temporary resident visa, simply to enter Canada to visit their spouse. And officers often deny visitor visas to people with family in Canada because they believe the applicant's ties to Canada are too strong that they will overstay their visa. Perhaps in unprecedented times like these, the government could create a special temporary resident visa for outland applicants with reasonable eligibility criteria and conditions, which would allow spouses and their children from visa-required countries to easily apply for the special temporary resident visa online and not be refused simply because they have loved ones in Canada. In terms of the future, according to government plans, Canada will welcome more than 1.2 new immigrants over the next three years with an annual intake that would reach 401,000 this year, 411,000 in 2022 and 421,000 in 2021. For me, this really begs the question, what will happen to the backlog of spousal sponsorship applications, permanent resident applications, the backlog of study permit applications waiting to be processed. It will still take time to increase the flow of new immigrants back to pre-pandemic levels. I think it would really help if the government was more transparent with their plans going forward so that individuals, spouses, families can plan for their future and not have their lives on standstill, which has been the case for many. Thank you. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the three presentations. I have a couple of questions, and then we'll ask those in the audience to ask questions as well. For the three of you, I'm curious about two things. There are some themes that came across many of the presentations. So, I guess the first thing is, over the course of the 20 months or so, did you see significant change and learning on part of the government? Part A and Part B, was there learning on the part of those that were dealing with the government where they found it? Did they find strategies to be able to lobby the government to push it to change its policies? How sticky was the government that they learned and was there any ability on the part of those who are impacted by these things to push the government to modify or creatively interpret the policies so that way they'd be less harmful? And we might as well go in the order that people presented. So, Laura, Paul, and then Harmeet. I'm not sure how much learning has happened from the government in terms of international student support. I would say that largely they have been reactionary in this space and those who navigate the immigration landscape for a living would not be surprised by this. There's not a lot of proactivity in this space, but I do think that there has been some learning from the government on the fly and I think where international students maybe differ from that of the other categories of immigrants coming to Canada is the financial element that they bring. And so I think there was probably more of a lobbying effort to kind of speak to point B that could be done from established international groups such as the Canadian Bureau for International Education, such as universities, Canada, such as colleges in Canada and international that were very well established groups that had well trained ears to government contacts that could put forward strong financial arguments as to why the government needed to be more flexible for international students in this space. I'm not confident that but for that financial argument there would have been as much movement in the international student space and I think we see that reflected in how other categories of immigrants and border crossers have been treated throughout this pandemic. Thank you, Paul. Yes and no. In terms of the government learning. In terms of public health policy on indigenous communities that seems to have been a lot of finally acknowledging that indigenous communities know how to look after themselves if given access to resources. So there's been, you know, and there's been a lot of, and that not say reports of acknowledges that there's been a lot of growth in the public health relationship to I mean there's still problems. But it's never going to get fixed until we address issues like clean water, but in terms of giving nations and communities access to the resources they need, you know, not creating issues when they close their own borders, you know, then that there's been growth there from both sides in terms of the relationship when it comes to the border itself on now. And this is something that's been a, you know, and sort of a side and so it's separate or maybe part of larger research project and talking to to elders and former, you know, chief and council members. The complaint is that when it comes to just general border crossing issues that have been going on for, you know, there are multiple reports of the, you know, there are multiple other reports of indigenous issues with the federal border crossing system. The arguments every time there's a new government, a new tribal government, a new indigenous government, you know, the federal government takes it as a reset. Now we've got to start negotiations all over again. Every time there's a new federal government, oh we've got to start negotiations all over again. And so even basic such as, you know, more cultural understanding of the significance of medicine models and the reasons why random border agents shouldn't be opening them up and picking them and accusing people of using them to smuggle drugs, even small things like that get lost. And so, while COVID was, or while this as the pandemic has been a perfect time with the border being closed for a reset in that relationship, the fact that they're still complaining there's no consultation over the board itself, and I guess that was the government in that instance has not really learned or made any desire to approach any differently than the constant promises of that we're already there beforehand. So, yeah, whether whether that changes again in the future. I'm not really too confident but you know you never know. There's a follow up before we want to meet, which is lower address the money situation that that international students have some influence because they have they bring in money their source of income. And universities have become much more dependent over the past 20 years on foreign tuition although our provincial leadership often forgets this. So I guess Paul the question is not so much money but are there ways in which just meetings have any kind of lobbying power or is this just something that has always been a real problem and their agenda the problems are so stark and broad and deep that that they just can't push either or, or, or nation countries to move very far on this. I mean, the stories you gave of communities are split across the border. You know, obviously they're they're impacted very very strongly but we haven't really heard much about it and so I'm just curious as to what, what are they, they can lobby and whether lobbying efforts are just, just, they're just no way that they can move the needle on this. The, the, much of it is optics, I think that the same locally that the Ghanai nation or blood reserve has a lot of I would say power but optically within the university with a lot of influence within the university but then when it comes to the federal government, but even the provincial government. It's constantly, you know, it's met it falls on deaf ears and it quite often. There's a, there's a scholar out at UBC shadow life photos. She, she works with you know she works in the UN she will embedded in the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples and you know she calls it colonial shifting. The, the lobbying from indigenous peoples will result in minor changes. Those minor changes are presented as big changes for in implemented in ways that actually quite often end up being even worse for the indigenous community than the original place they started. There's constant shift in the goalposts and so, you know, we see sort of, if you if you take the TRC and that the, you know, all the recommendations made there, and we're still in a process of well, we have these, we're going to set up a panel we're going to set up an investigation that we're going to set up. And then when that investigation or a panel comes to its, to its conclusions, another panel is then set up to investigate those conclusions. And so nothing is ever actually implemented both the government and you know, is the same and then our current political climate and Alberta. The current education, the education minister has described indigenous content as a fad. So there's a struggle even to get indigenous history and contemporary life taught in K to 12 schools so that gives you an idea of the sort of, and it's quite, if you don't know about economics, you know, there are communities who do provide an awful lot of income to the province and to Canada, but it's never really acknowledged because the focus on the window was always placed on inadequacy and need and so the, yeah, the in an equitable world of would be and should be more lobbying power but the system is still so weighted that, you know, it's a lot of smoke and mirrors from both provisional provincial and federal government when it comes to addressing those those issues. Thank you. So, I'm good. I was going to say yes and no for me as well. I think people have been great at going to the media and creating advocacy groups and committees to voice their concerns and I think it was largely due to that that you know there have been some government action. Like last year the government announced to assign 66% more staff to process spousal sponsorship applications. However, there's still a backlog and it's going to take some time. And Canada has already moved citizenship ceremonies and some of its other processes online again I think there's a lot of work to still be done. But I don't think that this would be the case without the lobbying and without going to the media and without people sharing their stories. I'm not very optimistic that the government going forward will be any more transparent about their plans beforehand and I just see that being a continued issue going forward. Thank you. Why don't we open it up to the audience if people got questions raise your you hit the raise your hand function. We do have one question from Melissa. Would you say this is a security issues this. Who's this for Melissa, all of them. Everyone okay. So, one of the questions that comes up and when we talk about the border, and when we talk about the pandemic is is whether it's a security issue and then whether we define it whether defined as a security issue that makes things better or worse. So, I think the question is really is, do you have you seen the definition of the of the pandemic and the border as a security issue. The reason why we asked this or I think one reason why Melissa is asking this is that the notion of closing the borders is to improve our security. The reason why we're having this panel is is that it may have improved some people security but it harmed other people security. If you can't get your food and more, you know, things because you can stop to the border all the time, because all your foods on the side of the border that that obviously impacts your security that students who are in countries with less freedom of war censorship. And, you know, that the participation in schools in school work here in Ottawa, or in Canada, can threaten their security because their participation can lead them to being arrested. And so, so I guess the question is, is, how do you see either the stuff that you've been talking about fit into the larger rubric of security and, and whether we should try to avoid that or embrace that starting with Laura. So when we look at specifically with the pandemic I think when people think about security they they really are talking a lot about public health measures that are in place. And I think when we look at, for example, among temporary residents if you had to complete a immigration medical exam to come to Canada as part of your application your temporary resident visa was canceled. And so, you know, these are the policies and your, your medical exam had expired so this was a clear signal from the government that we were not going to make any accommodations in the public health space we wanted to see. We wanted you to show up with the valid immigration medical exam that didn't even really address COVID or any of the other things that you would think of but this from an optic standpoint was something that they really signaled was important during this time period. And so at this point reflecting on, how do we look at security and what does security mean for the individual population that we're talking about and whose security interests, are we protecting in this space when you look at censorship students who are being able to undertake certain courses or even receive textbooks in the mail on certain topics students were sharing that you know their textbook packages had been opened by their border security and gone through and pages ripped out or or textbooks fully missing from their course packages if the content was seen as being subversive so I think when we look at security I think this is a big word that the government will like to beat their chest and and show that they are making strides within this space to protect security of XYZ whatever the public health or whatever the the current landscape and dictates but I think for those of us that are practitioners in this space we really see the the inequity when it comes to how security is defined and how we look at who it impacts when and for how long afterwards to these to these policy decisions impact the security of folks well beyond just the initial position time frame. Okay, Paul. Yeah, and this is this is something that the digital security that many Indigenous people around here have commented on that since now there's always been cultural insensitivity there's always been harassment and bullying of Indigenous people with the border but it got worse after 9-11 you know that 9-11 everything sort of changed in terms of you know even even on border crossings that are literally almost slapped next to the reserve itself some of the smaller ones like chief mountain border crossing and then that has also been extrapolated in terms of COVID as well there was I think the guy and I had an excess number of the vaccines and so they set up, no it wasn't it was the black foot, it was the black feet in Montana and Browning they had an excess set of number of vaccines so they set up a free vaccine clinic just outside the border and people were queuing up for like 3-4 hours some people queuing up overnight from Alberta to go into Montana to get the vaccine and the government shut it down you know that this is this is a security issue and they actually cited security as an issue for it you know that it created problems with the border conversely though when it comes to the border there was a lot of the openings going back to that report in February there was a lot of concern from Indigenous communities about their security you know the province is saying well if we open the border you know that doesn't mean non-Indigenous people can get onto your reserve and the community is saying well you don't actually help us and force you know you don't help with you know we don't want RCMP on controlling our border reserves we've been down that path you know many years ago so the province doesn't provide any support to close or to maintain and protect the reserve borders so how are you going to feel how can you argue that non-Indigenous people will stay away and if you go you know there are no trespass signs on the reserves around here and that is specifically relating to hunting and camping you know you need a license to hunt and camp on the reserve it doesn't mean people cannot just drive through there's nothing to stop you know we've seen how open reserves are you can be driving through a reserve but if you've missed the sign you probably don't even realise you're on a reserve and so there's been a lot of pushback from Indigenous communities about their security in terms of the border being reopened while the Canadian government has talked about the drugs is quite often used as an excuse as well that we can't allow freedom for Indigenous peoples to cross the back and forth on the borders because so many drug gangs infiltrate and you know reserves and that's how they smuggle across and so that's one of the excuses you know it's more commonly associated with the Mexican border the border is a common motif sort of for this border too in terms of and COVID has enabled them to ramp that to the rhetoric to a certain degree as well and yet another blockade to Indigenous freedom removal. Thank you, Hamid. I think I had kind of touched on this but a possible solution could have been for the government in terms of just temporary permanent residents to have honored expired permanent resident visas and let them into the country provided that they do abide by their you know healthcare protocols but of course IRCC also needed to do in-immissibility checks again like criminal records for certain individuals because like I mentioned at some time had he lost. I understand that I appreciate that but I just hope that the government doesn't use that as a blanket statement to validate their slow processing times lack of transparency because people have been waiting for almost two years now and so I think the issues that people are facing right now go beyond security and I don't think that can just be swept under the rug. I guess one of the questions that is being asked is are we to get to normal anytime soon so we're having this event the day after the border with the United States. The Americans open their side of the border the Canadians opened theirs a couple months ago. Let's go in the reverse order. Do you see that the announcement yesterday or the decision that took place yesterday changing things much that we're going to return to normalcy soon or do you find that there's going to continue to be pretty high barriers to movement going forward but you know beyond just the insistence on PCR tests, which I've had to pay out of pocket a couple different times now. Thank you. I'm actually not very optimistic. Just considering all the backlog and applications and also just, you know the covert conditions across the world are unpredictable. I know Canada has a high vaccination rate compared to other countries, but we also have to look at other countries, third world countries, how they're accessing vaccines. And so I'm a little bit skeptical due to that and also just our weak economical conditions in Canada right now. Canada is making these assertions that they're going to be increasing immigration and increasing the number of newcomers coming to Canada, which is great but I just hope that there are resources in place to support these newcomers. And I, and again I think the common theme here has been transparency with the government and those waiting. So cautiously optimistic I would say. Paul. Yeah, I'm the same. I've been in Canada now for, and it's why I got my permanent residence halfway through the lockdown. Yeah, we'd applied to what my wife says is, well, why I came on a temporary worker permit. My wife came in on a international student. So it's, you know, listen to both of your talks and yeah, we've sat there and been through all this stuff ourselves. And then their visa expired, and we drove, we wanted a two hour drive from the border. We drove to the border to renew our student visa because that's where we've done it all last time. And we got there and they said, I don't know the website says you can't do it at the border, you've got to do it online. All right, the website says no such thing or if it's really small print because we didn't find it. So then we went back home. Started on the process of very new nose on visa and then within a sort of like two or three days of that. I got the notification we got permanent residence so like okay, thankfully we don't have to do that anymore. Still, you know, we still have not completely freed ourselves from from watching us news, you know, and so on and so forth and so you'll sort of was watching with interest as a couple weeks ago. You know, Biden is, you know, getting those ports in LA 24 hours a day, you know, in the hope of boosting goods and services. At the same time, I'm a modern law sector, you know, they're being warned that the shops are going to be empty at Christmas so if you buy any kids toys you want to go get them now. You know, there's a personal level I'm in it. Getting very frustrated with my daughter's school buses because they're not turning up after time because there's drivers shortages and so the local bussier doesn't have a driver's school bus can't find drivers. There's a country finding drivers for all these goods and services especially when there's so many of these restrictions and backlogs on immigration applications. Yeah, I think it's going to be probably a couple of years if I'm being optimistic. And then you're on a personal level of travel when the border was shut down. I couldn't go back to England because I would have been a temporary worker wouldn't have been allowed back in at that point. Now we're permanent residents, technically it can, but I'm looking at Europe, and I'm especially England. I don't want to go home. It's too risky. It still doesn't feel that especially the way they're going with the other hand, you know, it seems to have just decided to give up and whatever happens will happen. So, and that is going to have a knock on effect globally as well. So, I think that, yeah, to echo. I think that the cautiously optimistic for within a few years I think there's still too many moving parts for anything to sort of fall back into place anytime soon. Speaking of caution as an academic who became a permanent resident in Canada. I advise you to make sure that that your university processes your permanent paperwork, because I found out that I was supposed to be fired. And my previous job, because I went to the library and found out I was supposed to return my books very soon, because the people are supposed to process my new permanent resident paperwork. I didn't make it all the way through the university bureaucracy and I would only found out about it when I didn't get paid in August of that year so they won't, they probably won't notify you if it isn't processed. Or if it is, you know, you'll find out. Yeah, I hope they are because they took my new, they took my new social insurance number but I think I probably should double check. Double check because you just don't know. And I, when I got my citizenship I went through the same thing I was like, did you process that know we didn't like, that's great. So, Laura, should we be optimistic or pessimistic about changes in the near future. I also need to kind of grapple with as a country and probably globally, what we mean when we think of a return to normal. I'm not sure that normal really worked for a lot of folks and I think based on what we've discussed on our panel today a lot of the pressure points that we highlighted that emerged during the border closures were simply just exacerbated ongoing cracks in the system and are the folks that we interact with more regularly were the first victims of this ongoing process and so I think our border closures really did expose our priorities as a nation and how we created who was exempt and who could come through also really speaks to what we value you know we wanted the economic drivers in the country but we weren't as necessarily focused on the family and humanitarian and and refugee relationships and and foundations within our country as well so I think we kind of have to grapple with that. So, let's turn to our normal when we look at at this as well and then I think any normal that we obtain is going to have to have mobility with some flexibility baked into it in some format as we grapple with vaccine inequity around the globe as we grapple with unknown variants that have yet to emerge COVID is probably going to be one of, you know, multiple pandemics or other challenges that we're going to have to face when we look at our borders and so if the blueprint that we carved out this round is anything to look at I think there's certainly a lot that we need to tackle before we even think about a return to normal and what that could look like. Thank you. I'm just going through the questions now. One specifically for Paul, which is consultations with indigenous nations doesn't go well with the government Canada. Is there something that, you know, is there do you have a good reason why the government Canada keeps on messaging these things up and whether there's a learning process that could that they could go through. I could be here all day with that one. The process goes, you know, to do on a slightly larger theoretical level of processes of settler colonialism were meant to have the point where indigenous people no longer existed all those policies and you know in the history that we've looked at for Canada for the United States, you know, the treaties were never meant to to to still be in existence they would stop gaps to get what was needed at the time at some point. You know assimilation is in process signage treaty while the Indian Act already exists. Oh look, now you're trying to treat the subject to this. And so there's a, there's a, I think, a resentment from governments. That they have to deal with indigenous people still. And there's, you know, the United Nations deals with the declaration on rights of indigenous people. And even that doesn't go far enough in that it's still, it puts the power really or the responsibility with settler nations, so it's still this this idea of domestic dependency that most governments Canada United States really don't would like not to have to deal with anymore. There are still resources on indigenous land. Anyway, and it's, it's constantly complicated by, I think that the 2014. Again, we can have the Canada Supreme Court argued in the shield court in case the indigenous title to land has never been seated. But in the same Supreme Court decision, where that would suggest a stronger protection of rights to land, the same Supreme Court decision actually made it easier for provinces to interfere with that. And so there's sort of this legal, but highest court in Canada implicitly acknowledging indigenous sovereignty, and then sort of the same sort of time, trying to strip it out of provinces now, you know, for things like pipelines, provinces can argue, you know, the greater good sort of sort of thing overrides indigenous sovereignty. And I think that is still very much a legal and an intellectual and a procedural attitude that indigenous people are in the way. Whenever indigenous people come and say, you know, we demand the right to, to, to fair treatment on our land, we demand the right to, to control our own resources, we demand the right to negotiate on our own business deals. It's, it's, it's seen as an imposition upon the federal government. You know, a sort of case in point is that, you know, in the US, 1922, the Supreme Court argued that indigenous people have the right to water on their land, the Winter's Doctrine. Now in Montana, a few years back. The Salish Kourtney wanted to buy back the dam on the river in the territory in the reservation. And Montana senators and politicians actually stood up in government complaining that this had to be stopped because the Al Qaeda were infiltrating the tribe, and they were going to use it as a way to overthrow the United States. So, you know, this, this, this weird, I don't know, sort of paranoia about recognizing indigenous rights to land rights to resources rights to, you know, this is where we live this constant sort of paranoia that they're going to kick us all out the country. You know, we, we had with when the declaration, you know that the Canada was one of the four countries that refused to acknowledge on trip when it first came out, you know, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, all four countries refused to acknowledge it. And the United States eventually said, okay, it's a workable, it's a workable aspirate. It's an aspirational document. You know, but then turned around and said there's no way that these, this could be implemented into Canadian law, which really just means that it'd be too much work and too much effort and too much time to implement it. And someone pointed out about, you know, a comment about student cancellation the other day. Someone pointed out, yeah, we've just all sat there and decided to 3am is actually 2am. You know, if we can do that we can do anything we can regulate time we can do anything. So there's no reason indigenous legal system can't be part of the Canadian legal system, apart from fact we don't want to do it. So I think it's very long-winded answer to assure, I think, did the, yeah, there's still too much resentment at the federal level of indigenous people still actually exist and still maintaining their sovereignty, because the grand experiment was they weren't supposed to be around Well, thank you. I, the depressing answer, but, but one that I think captures things quite well. Are there any other questions from the audience or do any panelists have any questions for each other. In that case, I want to thank Rachel Wallace and Paxton mayor for organizing this event. I want to thank Stephanie of the faculty public affairs for doing a lot of the heavy lifting of registrations and and publicity. And of course, Melissa Jennings and Haji Mohammed from the Center for Security, Intelligence, Defense Studies for their help and organized event and most of all I want to thank Laura, Harmeet and Paul for their expertise and their time. I definitely learned a lot in the course of this conversation. And I think that even if the government Canada can't learn. We certainly can and since we are voters and we do have voices out on Twitter and elsewhere, we can put pressure on the government because the government does respond slowly sometimes but say sometimes to respond when there's enough and outcry. So we'll keep pushing on these issues and I want to thank you again for, for your expertise so thank you very much Laura Paul and Harmeet for your time and and your views on all this stuff. Thank you again for inviting us. Yeah, thank you for having me on this panel it was great thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. Take, take care and good luck managing the rest of this pandemic. Oh that's really craziness.