Stanley's Blog


Friday, February 10, 2012

Border News!!

A policy announcement was made advising that effective March 01, 2012 a Special Public Policy will be put in place which will allow for a CBSA officer to grant a Temporary Resident Permit (TRP), to those individuals who have had only one minor conviction, where the sentence was less than 6 months in length. There will be no fee for this TRP, and the issuance of the TRP will be at the discretion of the CBSA official. However, it is understood that this special public policy should significantly reduce the number of inadmissible visitors to our country.

It was explained that the intent of the present Inadmissibility Policy was never to keep out people of good faith who have had only one minor conviction, and aren’t seen as a security or criminality threat. Government policy and law is not easy to change, and this was acknowledged as an interim solution. The government of the day will continue to work towards a longer term solution and we should all be thanking our MP Greg Rickford for his contribution in having this issue addressed, through his tireless efforts.

It should be noted that the Government does not want this Special Public Policy to be perceived that criminal acts are condoned in Canada, nor seen as a change indicating an open door policy to allow all criminals into Canada - but rather as an interim solution for allowing those individuals into Canada that do not present a security nor criminality threat to our country, and who simply made a one time error in judgement and now want to enjoy everything that our great country has to offer.