DEVELOPING 120 active fires burning across Canada, 30 are 'out of control'
The 2024 wildfire season has begun, and it's shaping up to follow last year's unprecedented destruction in kind, with thousands of square kilometres already consumed.
Advocates worry that Ukrainian refugees attempting to flee to Canada will be sidelined by bureaucratic red tape as thousands of Afghan interpreters and their families fight for their own promised resettlement.
Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada will get as many Ukrainians to Canada as quickly as possible through two new immigration streams.
Under the Canada Ukraine Authorization For Emergency Travel program, there won't be a limit on the number of Ukrainians coming to Canada on a temporary basis.
But those who are trying to flee the country amid a violent Russian occupation are already facing red tape, raising concerns that the program will fall short of its promises.
“The last thing on a person's mind is when bombs are falling over your head is: ‘Do you have your COVID vaccine,’” Bohdan Dolban told CTV National News.
Dolban is attempting to help his cousins flee Ukraine and come to Canada. While they are safe for now, they live just an hour away from where Russian forces bombed a Ukrainian military base.
“They didn’t give a lot of information and when they tried to call, it would keep ringing or go to an answering machine with no answer,” he explained.
The Mississauga, Ont. man says he’s concerned that the red tape involved in the immigration process will jeopardize his family’s safety -- a concern many Afghanistan refugees know all too well.
In August 2021, Canada vowed to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees after the Taliban’s takeover of the country. Many of those refugees include interpreters who aided the Canadian military during their time in Afghanistan. Now, they and their families are in hiding, targeted for their role in the war.
In seven months, almost 15,000 Afghans have applied through the special immigration process and more than 10,000 have been approved, but just 8,580 have actually arrived in Canada.
“They're left applying mostly through the regular immigration routes, which of course takes a very, very long time,” Chantal Desloges, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer, told CTV National News.
“Most of the time it’s not an attainable situation for them to wait that long because they are in danger.”
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says more than 8,500 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Canada since January. However, it’s unclear how many of those cases are directly related to the current Russian crisis.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser has called the situation in Afghanistan "quite different" from what's happening in Ukraine, saying that most of the displaced Ukrainians want to return home in the future.
"One of the big differences is the fact that the people who are fleeing Afghanistan, we're planning to have them become Canadians and to live here forever. When you have a permanent resettlement process, that works into our annual levels planning to make sure that we're prepared to resettle and set people up for success on a permanent basis," Fraser told CTV's Question Period on Sunday.
Fraser also pointed out that, unlike Ukrainians who have safe passage towards neighbouring countries to the west of Ukraine, many Afghans have struggled to leave Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
- With files from Tom Yun
The 2024 wildfire season has begun, and it's shaping up to follow last year's unprecedented destruction in kind, with thousands of square kilometres already consumed.
Veteran TSN broadcaster Darren 'Dutch' Dutchyshen, one of Canada’s best-known sports journalists, has died. He was 57. His family says 'he passed as he was surrounded by his closest loved ones.'
A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has sentenced the mother and stepfather of a six-year-old boy who died from blunt-force trauma in 2018 to 15 years in prison.
The Speaker of the Saskatchewan Legislature Randy Weekes has severed ties with the Sask. Party after accusing some members of harassment and intimidation tactics, including a situation he claimed saw the Government House Leader bring a hunting rifle to the legislative building.
Kevin Spacey is pushing back on the 'rush to judgment' against him and is being backed by some big names as he seeks to reclaim his acting career.
A ‘lifetime of abuse’ led Dallas Ly to snap and repeatedly stab his mother inside their Leslieville apartment in 2022 but he never intended to kill her, his defence lawyers argued during his murder trial in Toronto on Thursday.
A father has been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of his 34-year-old daughter in southern Quebec.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assailed New Brunswick's premier and other conservative leaders on Thursday, calling out the provincial government's position on abortion, LGBTQ youth and climate change.
Canada's new $10-a-day child care program is expanding, but there's growing evidence that demand for the program is rising even faster, leaving many parents on the outside looking in.
A Starbucks fan — whose name is Winter — is visiting Canada on a purposeful journey that began with a random idea at one of the coffee chain's stores in Texas.
Members of Piapot First Nation, students from the University of Winnipeg and various other professionals are learning new techniques that will hopefully be used for ground searches of potential unmarked grave sites in the future.
ALS patient Mathew Brown said he’s hopeful for future ALS patients after news this week of research at Western University of a potential cure for ALS.
When Adam Kirschner wrote 'Slap Shot,' he never imagined the song would be embraced by his favourite team.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.