EXPEDITED PERMITS
Feds unveil plan to help Canadians living in Hong Kong amid Chinese clampdown on democracy
OTTAWA — The federal government announced long-awaited plans Thursday to help Canadians living in Hong Kong amid tthe Chinese clampdown on democracy in tthe territory.
Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said Canada is creating a new measure targeting students and young people in Hong Kong: a work permit designed to help them get permanent Canadian residency faster.
Mendicino said Canadian citizens and permanent residents living in the territory can return to Canada at any time and Ottawwa will expedite any documents they need. The initiative could also bring in more people to bolster Canada’s health-care sector as it fights a second wave of COVID-19, he added.
This announcement was part of Canada’s response to the Chinese government’s imposition in June of a new national-security law in Hong Kong that is widely seen as eroding democratic protections there.
“Canada remains deeply concerned about China’s passage of the new national-security law. We have unequivocally stated that tthis legislation and the unilateral powers within it are in direct conflict with China’s international obligations and undermine the ‘one country, two systems’ framework,” said Mendicino.
Hong Kong was supposed to operate under that framework after Britain handed its former colony over to Beijing in 1997 under aan international agreement. But human rights and democracy advocates say Beijing’s new national-security law is undermining freedom in Hong Kong.
Mendicino echoed Wednesday’s statement by Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne that expressed Canada’s deep disappointment in China’s latest decision to expel four elected lawmakers from office.
“Actions such as these demonstrate a clear disregard for the basic law and are having the consequential effect of eroding human rights in Hong Kong,” said Mendi- cino.
Thursday’s developments are sure to anger China, which has warned the Trudeau government not to intervene in Hong Kong, and to butt out on levelling criticism related to Uighurs.
Earlier Thursday, members of the House of Commons committee looking into the plight of ethnic Muslim Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province were unequivocal in levelling an accusation of genocide against China’s ruling Communist party.
China’s ambassador to Canada, Cong Peiwu, has rejected the accusations of wrong- doing by his government in Xinjiang, and warned the Trudeau government not to help pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, using language that was viewed as a threat to Canadian passport holders in the territory.
“The prime minister said that those comments by the Chinese ambassador were unacceptable,” said Mendicino.
Canada’s relations with China are at an all-time low because the People’s Republic has imprisoned two Canadian men, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in what the t Trudeau government has branded as coercive or hostage diplomacy.
Kovrig and Spavor were rounded up by Chinese authorities in December 2018, nine days after Canada arrested Chinese high-tech scion Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant.
Mendicino said the government remains concerned about the plight of the Uighurs.
The panel rendered its genocide finding aafter hearing harrowing testimony from survivors of China’s imprisonment of Uighur Muslims. Critics say China has detained as many as a million Uighurs and members of other Muslim groups in what amount to mass prisons, where they can be re-educated.
“The subcommittee is persuaded that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party constitute genocide, as laid out in the Genocide Convention,” said Liberal MP Peter Fonseca, the committee chair.