Borderlines

Mikal Skuterud is a Professor at the University of Waterloo. We discuss the impact of immigration on housing prices, foreign workers, lumping Francophone migration objectives under economic immigration, international graduates facing barriers to immigrating and more. Mikal's previous appearance on Borderlines can be downloaded here. The former immigration minister interviews that Mikal mentions include Chris Alexander, John McCallum and Sergio Marchi.

Canada's Federal Court is conducting a review of its rules. We discuss some of the proposals, which include letting consultants do judicial review, an upcomming pilot project to simplify judicial reviews, whether filing fees should be increased, ways to reduce the number of judicial reviews, and more. Cheryl Robinson is an immigration lawyer in Ontario.

Frances Mahon is a criminal defense lawyer in Vancouver at Pender Litigation. Connie Campbell is an immigration lawyer at Edelmann & Co. We discuss the law of prostitution / sex worker in Canada in the criminal context, restrictions on foreign nationals finding employment in industries such as massage parlours and strip clubs and whether foreign nationals can set up Only Fans accounts.

Martin Levine was a Visa Officer and Analyst at Citizenship and Immigration Canada from 1978 - 2009. He then worked as a contract employee as an ATIP Analyst for numerous federal departments. He previously appeared on Episode #108. We discuss locally engaged staff, reconsideration requests, recording visa office interviews, IRCC office politics, visa officers as police officers vs. social workers, rude lawyers and whether people should join the civil service.

Kyla Lee is a criminal defense lawyer at Acumen Law and the host of the Driving Law podcast. In this episode Kyla answers dozens of questions about common driving offenses, including impaired driving and dangerous driving. Topics include how these offenses work, roadside prohibitions vs. criminal charges, defenses to impaired driving charges, distracted driving and more.

This episode is a historical deep dive on Order in Council PC 1911-1324, an Order in Council from 1911 which stated that for a period of one year black people would not be permitted to immigrate in Canada because the Canadian government deemed them unsuitable to Canada's climate. I am re-uploading the episode to fix some audio issues and also to add more context on areas that people had questions about. The episode explores Order in Council PC 1911-1324, scientific racism, homesteading, Wilfred Laurier's term as Prime Minister, the 1911 Canadian election, the situation in Oklahoma that caused black people to migrate to Canada and more.

Martin Levine was a Visa Officer and Analyst at Citizenship and Immigration Canada from 1978 - 2009. He then worked as a contract employee as an ATIP Analyst for numerous federal departments.This episode is like reading the results of an Access to Information Act on how IRCC works, and then asking questions of the person who wrote it. We discuss the culture at IRCC, whether artificial intelligence will improve decision making, whether visa officers should have more discretion, budget cuts and training issues and how the biggest obstacle to meaningful change at IRCC might be the Treasury Board.

This is the second instalment (Part 1 is Episode #105 in this mini-series on Trauma-Informed Lawyering. In this segment, Deanna's own clinical counsellor, Dr. Deborrah Dunne discusses in more depth:a) vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue;b) the importance of self-care in running a trauma-informed practice;b) strategies for identifying trauma (in yourself and your clients);c) tools on how to "get present," and ideas for how to help your client get there tooThank you again, Deborrah for all of your precious time!