The Canadian Press Dept: The Canadian Press reported Thursday that six federal bureaucrats were drafted to pose as new Canadians for a reaffirmation ceremony broadcast on the TV channel last October, according to The Chronicle Herald. The co-hosts of the show, who say they were unaware of the presence of the stand-in immigrants, repeatedly referred to the group of 10 as new Canadians who had finally received their citizenship and oTTAWA Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and the Sun News Network are laying the blame for a misleading televised citizenship ceremony squarely on the shoulders of federal civil servants. Kenney s office had asked the department to organize the event on short notice, adding it to the 60 events bureaucrats had planned for Canada s Citizenship Week. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

Cellphone Dept: The verdict will likely disrupt the country s massive cellphone market and is a further embarrassment for the scandal-riddled government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, according to The Star. The court ruled that the 122 licenses granted in that deal be scrapped and that a fresh auction for licenses be held in the next four months and nEW DELHI India s top court ordered the government on Thursday to cancel 122 cellphone licenses granted to companies during an irregular sale of spectrum that has been branded one of the largest scandals in India s history. The 2008 sale of second generation, or 2G, cellphone spectrum at cut-rate prices in a bewildering first-come, first-served process netted the government only 124 billion rupees $2.5 billion CDN . Government auditors said the sale might have cost the treasury as much as $36 billion in potential revenue. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

Cph Dept: Rather than reintroduce unhealthy foods into our schools, which is something that parents do not want and which we as a society would not welcome at a time of exploding childhood obesity levels ... we need to find better ways to make the choice of healthy foods more attractive to young people, McGuinty said in Kitchener on Thursday, according to The Star. The Ontario Public School Boards Association is tracking the impact of the new food rules. Email Print Add to Favourites function Func ctl00 ctl00 cph contentBody cph leftContentContainer c bottom Template0 ctl00 CaseTemplate10 UserFavoritesButton1 funcName, param var p = param == undefined ? '' : ' if TD.Identity.IsAuthenticated var url = "/Toplets/User/UserFavoritesButtonPage?AssetUID=1125437" + p + " //alert url ; $.get url, , function data $ "#ctl00 ctl00 cph contentBody cph leftContentContainer c bottom Template0 ctl00 CaseTemplate10 UserFavoritesButton1 UserFavoritesButtonHolder" .html data ; ; Func ctl00 ctl00 cph contentBody cph leftContentContainer c bottom Template0 ctl00 CaseTemplate10 UserFavoritesButton1 'Func ctl00 ctl00 cph contentBody cph leftContentContainer c bottom Template0 ctl00 CaseTemplate10 UserFavoritesButton1' ; Report an error Rss var addthis share = templates: twitter: " title : url via @TorontoStar" Profits are down about 20 to 30 per cent in cafeterias across the province; the Toronto District School Board alone is facing a shortfall of $700,000 or more this year as students turn to nearby fast-food outlets or even bring in their own lunch. The board relies on that money to buy new equipment and fund school maintenance and repair. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

Copenhagen S Cafe Teatret Dept: The production of Manifest 2083 by Copenhagen s Cafe Teatret will open in Copenhagen in about seven months, and is an attempt to investigate the political mindset of this man, explains Christian Lollike , the artistic director of the theatre company, according to The Star. At first everybody thought it was a terror attack by radical Muslim extremists, then we realized it was a young Norwegian man. The questions manifested immediately: Why did he do it? How could this happen? An avant-garde Danish director and playwright has triggered ire and condemnation in some parts of Europe with his decision to mount a theatrical production about the manifesto written by Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who killed 77 people in Utoya and Oslo last summer. I was, of course, deeply shocked by the tragedy, Lollike wrote in an email to the Star. And it has left a scar inside me, which has compelled me to try to understand what happened. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

Immigration Department Dept: That sums up a phony citizenship ceremony staged for Sun News Network last October that featured immigration department officials posing as new Canadians at an event organized at the behest of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney s office, according to The Star. They make six bureaucrats actually pose as fake new citizens . . . That is in my opinion an appalling and unacceptable use of our civil service, NDP MP Don Davies said Thursday and oTTAWA Flags, fakes and in the end, finger-pointing. Red-faced immigration officials were blaming a Toronto bureaucrat for the debacle but opposition politicians insist Kenney s staff must have been in on the ruse to placate the network. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

Retirement Ages Dept: But they weren t, according to The Star. Several western countries Germany, Norway, the United States have already raised their retirement ages. So there was nothing radical or groundbreaking about the reform Stephen Harper announced at a meeting of international decision-makers in Europe last week and most Canadians would be willing to discuss the retirement age, if they were asked. The country s basic pension program, Old Age Security, was launched 60 years ago when the average worker s lifespan was 68.5 years. Today it s 81.4 years. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

Sun News Dept: OTTAWA Six federal bureaucrats were drafted to pose as new Canadians for a citizenship reaffirmation ceremony broadcast on the Sun News network, an event requested by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney s office. The bureaucrats smiled and held Canadian flags as the TV hosts referred to a group of 10 people as new Canadians that had finally received their citizenship. Documents released under Access to Information legislation show that just a few weeks before Canada s Citizenship Week last October, Kenney s staff directed departmental officials to add a last-minute citizenship ceremony at the network to their list of scheduled events. Bureaucrats scrambled to work out the logistics, suggesting to the minister s office that Sun News could cover one of the 13 scheduled ceremonies in Ontario four of them in Toronto , including one at the Air Canada Centre. One senior bureaucrat at the registrar of Canadian citizenship expressed concern to Kenney s office that Sun News seemed to want to feature only the oath, which might short-change new Canadians from the full ceremony experience. We have to keep in mind that the ceremony should first and foremost be a special sic for the new citizen, most of whom will want family and friends sic attend this very special day in their lives, the bureaucrat wrote. When a bureaucrat sent Sun News a list of possible citizenship ceremonies to cover in Ontario , a network employee suggested another scenario. Let s do it. We can fake the Oath, reads an email from a sunmedia.ca email address, the name blacked out of the document. Kenney s office wound up asking the department to organize a simple reaffirmation ceremony instead, a legitimate event where citizens can restate their citizenship oath. Local department staff in Toronto then set out to find 10 new Canadians who would want to restate their oath at the Sun News studios on Oct. 18, calling people who had dealt with the department in the past. The goal was to find people who had recently taken the real oath. I have also just confirmed ... that all the clients that are calling back are declining the request as they have to attend work and are not able to take the time off to participate in this reaffirmation ceremony, wrote one civil servant. Four days before the ceremony, a bureaucrat in downtown Toronto again pleaded whether Sun News could instead go to an already planned event. Please advise if the alternative would be acceptable since we do not have the resources to call over 3,000 clients to hopefully get 10 clients for this proposed event. In the end, only three of the 10 people the department had lined up to appear at the Sun s studios actually showed up. But the show went on featuring at least six federal bureaucrats. Three of those who took the oath wore identical T-shirts with a citizenship logo on it. In the end, we had three new citizens attend I anticipated that it would be a low turn-out after doing follow-up calls yesterday, so I asked six CIC Citizenship and Immigration employees to come to the ceremony so that we d have the right numbers, wrote one senior communications adviser. Eight adults and two children took the oath in the broadcast it s unclear whether there was an additional new Canadian or an additional bureaucrat that rounded out the numbers. Ten new Canadians are taking their oath right now, here at our Sun News studio here in Toronto , Sun News host Alex Pierson said before Judge Aris Babikian began the ceremony. Co-host Pat Bolland said they were among 4,700 people who actually enjoy the special honour of becoming Canadians during citizenship week. Babikian mentioned more than once that the people were there to reaffirm their citizenship, but that point seemed to be lost on the Sun News Network hosts. Later, Pierson congratulated all the new Canadians here today, 10 of you here at Sun News Network, finally Canadian citizens. Wonderful to have you. A Pakistani-Canadian woman and her two children were briefly interviewed. The department tweeted about the event: 10 new Canadians are reaffirming their citizenship live at the Sun TV studio in Toronto right now. Bolland asked the group how it felt to sing the Canadian national anthem. Serge Sasseville, a spokesman for Sun News parent company Quebecor Inc., said the company did not wish to comment about the ceremony when contacted by The Canadian Press. But Pierson said she was shocked to hear for the first time about the stand-in new Canadians. Pat and I had nothing to do with putting the ceremony together, other than hosting the formalities in the last few minutes of our show, Pierson said. As I understand, the people in attendance were brought by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. A spokesman for the minister s office said it wasn t aware of the presence of the bureaucrats at the ceremony until The Canadian Press asked about the issue. The civil servants made some decisions without informing us or Sun News Network, said Kenney spokeswoman Candice Malcolm. Their decisions were well intentioned, however, we wish they had made different ones. We will make sure this does not happen again. Malcolm added: Welcoming proud new and old citizens to the Canadian family and watching them affirm or reaffirm their loyalty to the Queen and our proud traditions is moving and memorable. We hope to do more televised ceremonies. The Toronto-based bureaucrat who oversaw the event told her departmental colleagues in an email the next day that it was probably not a great idea. My overall impression of the experience is that it was a significant amount of work for a lot of people for little results, she wrote. In the future, I recommend that should the minister s office wish to do another in-studio ceremony at Sun TV that it be a full citizenship ceremony instead of a reaffirmation ceremony I think that we will be more likely to get participants that way , or better yet, that the station send a crew to one of our scheduled ceremonies. The CBC broadcast an hour-long, full-fledged citizenship ceremony for 75 new Canadians that featured a studio audience, a bagpiper, a retired Mountie in his red serge and local dignitaries. That event, which was broadcast live a day after the Sun s reaffirmation ceremony, had been planned with the department since the summer. Kenney has emphasized the solemnity of the act of citizenship, recently moving to force Muslim women who wear burkas or niqabs to reveal their faces. Finally we are ensuring that the citizenship oath itself is properly respected by all of those who take it so that they in taking a solemn commitment, being a witness publicly to the rest of their fellow citizens, demonstrate who they are and their commitment to Canada , Kenney said last December. One staff member from Kenney s office who appeared in the email chain about the event requested their name be blacked out before release under the Access to Information Act. div (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

Libya Dept: The plan to spirit out al-Saadi Gadhafi involved piles of stolen passports, white-knuckle flights with pilots who refused to land in war-torn Libya and luxury homes bought under false names in Mexico, Assistant Attorney General Jose Cuitlahuac Salinas was led by a Canadian woman, a Danish man and two Mexican suspects who were charged this week with attempted immigrant trafficking, falsifying documents and organized crime, according to The Chronicle Herald. They weren t able to do it out because the pilots refused to carry out a secret landing, Salinas said and mEXICO CITY Prosecutors said Wednesday they broke up not one, but two Indiana Jones-style plots to extract the son of late dictator Moammar Gadhafi from Libya as his father s regime crumbled and bring him to Mexico. Salinas said the group hired pilots to fly from Mexico to Kosovo, from there to the Tunisian capital of Tunis and on to Libya in July, but that attempt failed to extract the dictator s son. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

Tunisia Dept: Belhassen Trabelsi has remained under the radar since a much-publicized arrival amid turmoil in his native Tunisia, where his family stands accused of siphoning millions of dollars from the state, according to The Chronicle Herald. According to the IRB, the reason for the hearing is the appeal of an order revoking his Canadian permanent resident status and mONTREAL A billionaire member of Tunisia s once-dominant ruling clan whose stay in Canada since last year has been shrouded in mystery is scheduled to make a public appearance soon. The Immigration and Refugee Board announced Wednesday that Trabelsi has a date before its appeal division on April 23 to fight a decision to revoke his residency and boot him out of the country. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.

Barack Obama Dept: I ve heard from Americans who accuse me of dissing the United States for writing a column about what I love and miss about Canada. Canadians who accuse me of loving America more than my native land for writing about what I adore about the United States, according to The Chronicle Herald. Funny enough, I ve never heard from anyone defending Newt Gingrich. Interesting and one of the most enjoyable, and perplexing, elements of writing a weekly column for this esteemed newspaper is the emails I receive from readers. Most of them are very kind, but some have accused me of being everything from a conservative hack to a dumb liberal REDACTED , a word that cannot be printed in a family newspaper, but let s just say I m sure it s something Ann Coulter hears a lot. Herman Cain boosters have accused me of being racist. Barack Obama haters have accused me of being in love with black men. I ve heard from Sarah Palin lovers who believe I loathe her. Michele Bachmann haters who believe I love her. Ron Paul supporters who say I don t give him enough attention. Ron Paul detractors who say I shouldn t even mention him as a serious contender. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.