Wibbly-Wobbly Ramblings

Asylum seekers left sleeping on Toronto streets amid funding stalemate between city, feds | CBC News

A funding stalemate between the City of Toronto and the federal government over who is responsible for sheltering the influx of asylum seeke

CBC

For two weeks since fleeing violence in Uganda and arriving in Canada in search of asylum, Prosscovia Namusisi has been sleeping on Toronto's streets.

Namusisi is one of a group of asylum seekers from Africa sleeping outside the city's shelter intake office at Peter and Richmond streets downtown. The reason, she says: the city tells them everyday there is no space in any of its shelters.

Namusisi says she has only intermittently been able to go inside the facility to use its toilet and showers, while most of the food and supplies they've received have come from local aid organizations.

"I ask myself that if there were no people who come and give us some stuff to use, how will we survive?" she said. [...]

Amnesty International report pans Canada's record on Indigenous rights | CBC News

Amnesty International is denouncing Canada's record on Indigenous rights, which the group's secretary general in Canada says remains "a majo

CBC

Global non-governmental organization Amnesty International is denouncing Canada's record on Indigenous rights as it releases its latest annual analysis on the state of human rights worldwide.

In the report released on Monday, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization expresses concern that Indigenous people in Canada continue to face territorial expropriation, resource extraction without consent, widespread inequality, systemic discrimination and repression by the state.

"The rights of Indigenous peoples remain a major concern and a grave concern for us," said Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary general for Amnesty's Canadian branch in Ottawa, in an interview.

"We see Canada significantly failing in its obligations to uphold the rights of Indigenous peoples, but also to tackle the climate crisis and to fully support refugees and migrants." [...]

Thousands assigned to inactive immigration officers and IDs. Are you one of them? | CBC News

Canada's immigration department has assigned tens of thousands of applicants to immigration officers or placeholder codes that are inactive

CBC

Canada's immigration department has assigned tens of thousands of applicants to immigration officers or placeholder codes that are inactive and no longer working within their system — some who've last logged in and processed files up to 16 years ago, and from airports and visa offices around the world.

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) data on "inactive users" on their Global Case Management System (GCMS) — its worldwide internal system used to process citizenship and immigration applications — show 59,456 open, pending or re-opened applications that were assigned to 779 former employees or dormant computer placeholder codes used to hold applicants in queue as of this February.

The department told CBC once a user is set as inactive, "it means they are no longer using the system and their access is no longer available."