Modi-led BJP buoyant as India readies for Lok Sabha battle

5 April 2014

New Delhi (IANS): India will begin voting Monday in a staggered national election widely tipped to give a decisive edge to a confident BJP, led by Hindutva mascot Narendra Modi, which may however still fall short of a parliamentary majority.

It will be the world’s biggest democratic exercise, involving a staggering 814 million voters – of which about 120-150 million will be first-time voters – across the length and breadth of the seventh largest country, who will cast their votes in 930,000 polling booths to choose from hundreds of candidates – nominations are still being filed — and dozens of political parties, big and small.

Although fingers are still crossed on whether the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will secure a majority in the 545-member Lok Sabha, the House of People in the Indian parliament, most agree that it has outpaced a bruised Congress and its shrunken United Progressive Alliance (UPA) that ruled India for ten years since 2004.

Ranged against both these groupings are a string of regional parties with devoted pockets of support such as the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party (Uttar Pradesh), Biju Janata Dal (Orissa), the AIADMK (Tamil Nadu) and the Trinamool Congress (West Bengal) which could play a key role in the event of another hung parliament.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is supremely confident of returning to power that it lost a decade ago. “We are very sure that the BJP on its own will win up to 250 seats,” spokesperson Prakash Javadekar told IANS. “Along with our allies in NDA, the tally is sure to touch 290 or so.”

The Congress is harping on the theme that doomsayers will be proved wrong again – as it happened during the last two Lok Sabha elections.

“We are not prophets or astrologers. All I can say is that the UPA will surprise everyone as it did both in 2004 and 2009,” spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi of the Congress told IANS. “With our known allies and a few others, we will easily form the government.”

Most pollsters and political pundits don’t agree with Singhvi. But they also say that the BJP and its allies are unlikely to get past the half way mark of 272 seats and dismiss the widely talked about “Modi wave” as a largely urban phenomenon promoted by sections of the electronic media.

Political analyst Pradip Dutta admitted that the BJP “obviously has a much larger lead over the Congress” but added that the BJP might not win 272 seats on its own.

“I don’t see a Modi wave, and the BJP should not take its victory for granted,” Dutta told IANS. He said that the BJP, if it finishes on top of a hung parliament, could attract more allies.

Another political analyst, Badri Narayan Tiwari, was more emphatic. “The BJP won’t get a clear majority,” Tiwari told IANS on telephone from Allahabad where he is an academic. “They will have to woo more parties if they have to form a government.”

Whatever the outcome, Lok Sabha Election 2014 is a unique battle, one reason being Modi, still the Gujarat chief minister. In less than a year since he was made chief of the BJP election campaign, leading to his later elevation as the party’s prime ministerial candidate amid some misgivings within the party, Modi has grown larger than life into a figure who is both venerated and reviled like few other politicians in India.

In some ways, the 63-year-old has turned the election into a show largely revolving around him, hoisting his aggressive persona on a party which for decades believed in collective leadership, and making subtle attempts to shed his Hindu hardliner image without giving up Hindutva, or Hindu nationalist, politics.

This, analyst Tiwari said, was the BJP’s strength – and weakness.

With a proven track record of governance in Gujarat, Modi has without doubt connected with a large mass of middle class Indians, frustrated by a stuttering economy and lack of jobs, denouncing the Congress and other political foes, often using language his own colleagues may not be comfortable with.

However, he remains a divisive figure for many, having presided over the Gujarat anti-Muslim riots of 2002 for which he has never offered any apology.

On Monday, five of the 14 Lok Sabha constituencies in Assam and one of the two in Tripura, both in the northeast of India, will see polling. It will be followed by Delhi and some heartland states on April 10. Seven more rounds of voting will follow until May 12. The millions of votes will be counted May 16 to reveal the mind of the Indian electorate about who will govern India for the next five years.

Cellphone radiation may lead to poorer sex life – BUT why VOICE Editor has never had a cellphone!

4 April 2014

New York (IANS): Do you eat, sleep and drink your mobile phone, literally? Limit your WhatsApp or Facebook urge as men using cell phones for over four hours a day are at a greater risk of impotency than those who use it for less than two hours, an alarming research has indicated.

Two new studies in Austria and Egypt have linked daily cell phone use to erectile dysfunction (ED).

The researchers believe the damage could be caused by the electromagnetic radiation emitted by handsets or the heat they generate.

For the study, the researchers recruited 20 men with erectile dysfunction and another group of 10 healthy men with no complaints of ED.

There was no difference between either group regarding age, weight, height, smoking, total testosterone or exposure to other known sources of radiation.

Scientists found that men who had erectile dysfunction carried switched-on cell phones for an average of 4.4 hours daily, whereas the men without erectile dysfunction averaged 1.8 hours.

“Men who use mobile phones could be risking their fertility,” said the researchers in a report published in the latest newsletter of Environmental Health Trust (EHT).

A non-profit organisation, EHT focuses on raising awareness on the negative impacts of unsafe cell phone use and performing cutting-edge research on cell phone radiation.
However, neither study found sperm count was affected.

“Our study showed the total time of exposure to the cell phone is much more important than the relatively short duration of intense exposure during phone calls,” the researchers noted.

Since the preliminary study was small-scale, the researchers concluded that the results indicated a need for larger-scaled studies.

EDITOR RATTAN MALL ADDS:

Why I have NEVER kept a cellphone!

I am (perhaps) the ONLY journalist on earth who does NOT keep a cellphone and steadfastly refuses to do so – even though my bosses over the years have offered to pay for one!

In fact – are you ready for this? – I have NEVER owned a cellphone!

I know the Guinness World Records is trying to include my name – but I have threatened to sue them (just kidding!)

I just HATE the idea of being on what I call a “dog leash” all the time. It’s like responding to a dog whistle! And being a journalist, I would be “threatened” with an endless barrage of really unnecessary calls – and I’d hate that on the weekends when I want to just unwind.

So if there’s anything really important, folks can email me or call me at the office during workdays – close friends can do so on my personal email or call my home landline and leave a message (I’m hardly ever at home, being single and restless!)

And I get back to people when I want to.

A couple of years ago, Tina Dacin, a Queen’s School of Business professor, said: “[Wireless] isn’t going to take over landlines anytime soon.” She said there wasn’t enough trust across the board in technology.

Landlines are more reliable, have greater call security, do not have the dubious health associations of cellphones, and are still the safest option in an emergency, she noted.

WHAT bugs me the most is the thoughtless, uncultured way that people keep texting while walking, without the slightest regard for others. You have to avoid bumping into them on the sidewalks, in the malls and shops, and even on SkyTrain platforms!

I must confess that I have to quite often fight the urge to knock down their “idol” or “god” and stomp on it!

That old warm spirit of greeting people and interacting in public seems to have died out.

And let’s not mention all those BONEHEADS who still speed down the street while chatting away on their cellphone even though they know it’s illegal and dangerous. I have almost been knocked down downtown on several occasions.

UNFORTUNATELY, technology that we were told would make life simpler and easier and happier for us all has in fact done just the OPPOSITE!

The technological advances have just spawned ruthless competition that does not give a damn for the good old values of decency, compromise and caring. It’s always ‘ME FIRST’ – and to hell with everyone else.

It’s always grab, grab and grab!

I know there are those who try and give back to society – but compared with all the dog-eat-dog businessmen and the greedy, corrupt politicians they control, their efforts are really the proverbial drop in the ocean.

So try and keep your life balanced. Just remember, as Shakespeare put it, time and tide wait for no man. This time is not going to come back – and you’ll regret not having lived your life the way you really should have. (You youth, don’t waste your life on booze and drugs and gangs!)

And when you finally die (we all have to!), you have to leave EVERYTHING behind – yes, that includes your precious cellphone or iPhone or whatever!

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart,” as the Bible puts it.

Have a great weekend folks – I will be in Seattle – WITHOUT a cellphone!

South Asians in Surrey want SkyTrain service to start earlier on weekends

4 April 2014

SOUTH Asians in Surrey just can’t understand why Translink authorities cannot operate SkyTrain services earlier on Saturday and Sunday as many work downtown Vancouver and elsewhere on weekends and many others have to head home from security and other night-time jobs from Vancouver.

The first SkyTrain leaves King George station at 5:08 a.m. Monday to Friday, but on Saturday the first one starts an hour later at 6:08 a.m. and on Sunday it departs two hours later at 7:08 a.m.

From Waterfront station, the first SkyTrain leaves at 5:35 a.m. Monday to Friday, but on Saturday it starts only at 6:50 a.m. and on Sunday it leaves as late as 7:50 a.m.

Some South Asians phoned me this week to point out that the authorities are being hypocritical when they urge people to leave their vehicles home and use the SkyTrain. If they are forced to use their vehicles on the weekends because of the late SkyTrain service, what prevents them from using them on weekdays as well?

Translink media spokesperson Jiana Ling told me: “Well, the thing is SkyTrain is a machine and like any other machine you need to do maintenance work. So it needs to close down and especially during the weekend it’s closed down for longer periods of time because that gives us an opportunity to do more maintenance work.

“From Mondays to Fridays it’s opened earlier because of the daily commute that majority of people do (who) work from Monday to Friday. If there is a large amount of maintenance work that needs to be done that takes a few hours, we will save that for the weekend, and that’s why it’s opened a little bit later on the weekends to give our crew more time to do any maintenance work that is required to maintain the system in a state of good repair.”

When I asked her if anybody could something about running the service earlier on weekends, she replied: “We’ve looked at it many times and the main thing is that there needs to be allocated maintenance time for the crew to work on it. If we don’t keep it in a state of good repair, the system won’t run as efficiently as it does today. So it’s very important that we give time for the crews to do track work to run the whole line. Instead of closing down the system when it’s busy, we do it in a time when we can least inconvenience those customers.”

But commuters note that starting the service earlier on Saturday and Sunday involves a total of only three hours. So couldn’t TransLink hire more maintenance people and get work done in a shorter period of time?
Indeed, TransLink bosses need to rectify this situation.

BY RATTAN MALL

AND BY THE WAY … WITH RATTAN!

4 April 2014

YET ANOTHER GURMANT GREWAL CONTROVERSY: Former Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal always seems to be chasing controversy or perhaps controversy is always pursuing him. This week it was about articles that appeared in some Punjabi language newspapers in the state of Punjab that quoted him as claiming that he was the Conservative candidate in the new riding of Cloverdale-Langley City riding and that he had come to offer thanks at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Surrey businessman Paul Brar, who is also vying for the nomination, was very upset and phoned me. I explained to him that Grewal could have been misquoted. When I called Grewal’s house, I was told he was still in India and would be returning on the weekend. Another contender, former Liberal MLA Dave Hayer, told me that it didn’t matter what anyone claimed because the fact is that no one has won the nomination.

Although there are three South Asian contenders, South Asians comprise only 10 per cent of the riding’s population. East Asians form another 10 per cent and the rest are all white guys. There are two white contenders with impressive backgrounds: Mike Garisto, a life insurance salesman who spent 35 years as a union representative for the Brotherhood of Maintenance Way Employees, and former Langley city councillor Dean Drysdale, a successful businessman who runs his own consulting firm in the area of corporate finance. Drysdale is currently teaching as a Professor of Business Management at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and he has also taught at UBC and the Marine Corps University.

But now there are rumours that Prime Minister Stephen Harper may want to avoid any embarrassing situation in this riding and parachute in Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts who’s been having a tough time after 25 homicides in 2013 and with no relief from crime in sight.

If that happens, remember you read it here first!

SURREY RCMP IGNORE SOUTH ASIAN VICTIM OF BRUTAL ASSAULT: I guess if you are a BROWN guy, Surrey RCMP and City of Surrey bosses do not think you amount to much. The son of GURCHARAN SINGH GILL, 72, who was brutally assaulted by a young man in Surreys’ Newton Athletic Park on March 13, told me on Thursday that no one from Surrey RCMP had bothered to contact the family and they didn’t know what was going on about the investigation into the attack. He seemed genuinely upset about it – and he has every right to be so.

Shame on Surrey Police Chief Bill Fordy and Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts!

Gill’s son told me that the father was recovering, but he didn’t know what could happen in the long term.

Surrey Councillor Barinder Rasode had told me last week: “The horrendous nature of the crime against a senior who was walking in a public place at one o’clock in the afternoon – there is just no word for it – again, in a public facility. We have to be doing more – and more quickly.”

Or should that be ‘DOING LESS – AND MORE SLOWLY’ as far as the RCMP and the mayor are concerned?

MISSISSAUGA FUNERAL HOME MAY DIE!: I know many don’t like to joke about death, but the fact is that that’s what may happen to another Mississauga funeral home in Ontario for alleged shoddy business practices. The Toronto Star reported that the Lee Funeral Home might lose its licence over accusations of unpaid debts to suppliers and the city. But the new owner, Roy Benipersaud, “is accusing the provincial regulator of “maliciously” trying to run him out of business at the same time as it’s trying to shut down Benisasia Funeral Home, which is run by Benipersaud’s brother and sister-in-law,” reports the newspaper. The Board of Funeral Services says that’s just a coincidence and that each case will “stand on its own merit.”

Let’s see if the funeral homes will survive!

IMMIGRATION BUREAUCRACY’S STUPIDITY OR WHATEVER: Ravi Kumar Vellingiri immigrated to Canada from India in 2007 as an engineer and married Shahana Chathoth the following year in India. Chathoth and her five-year-old son, Cawin, came here in 2012, but the whole family went back to India when the mom had complications with her pregnancy and didn’t have provincial health coverage (OHIP), the Toronto Star reported.

The dad applied to sponsor the new baby right after his birth, but he didn’t know that according to the rules, he could do so only from Canada.

So the application was rejected in January. The family then applied for a visitor’s visa for the newborn, but that was denied because they had to satisfy the visa officer that they are in Canada only temporarily.

After their story appeared in the Toronto Star last month, the mom received a call from Canada’s visa post in Delhi to file a new application for a visitor visa for the newborn. And now the family has a visa for him.

But as an immigration lawyer pointed out to the newspaper, “the system has a great deal of discretion and the discretion is exercised in an arbitrary fashion.”

Anyway, at least this case had a happy ending.

WAS ORGANIZED CRIME BEHIND SUSPECTED SURREY FARMHOUSE ARSON? Landlord Amarjit Kang told the media that when he told the renters of his farmhouse who were growing medicinal marijuana hat they had to pay rent, they reportedly told them they had the backing of an organized crime group. The farmhouse went up in flames after they moved out. He told the Vancouver Sun newspaper that his farm was worth $4 million.

The Sun found that the property title is registered to Baljit Kaur Hundal. It was transferred to him in January 2010 from Kang Mushroom Farm Ltd., which bought it in 2007.

Well, let’s see what the investigation will reveal.

DID SANDIP DUHRE GET SOUTH ASIANS KILLED BY JAMIE BACON? The ongoing Surrey Six Trial in B.C. Supreme Court heard this week from the Crown’s star witness – who can only be identified as “Y” and who was a gang enforcer – that he was surprised when Red Scorpion gangster Jamie Bacon confessed that he had killed two men in east Vancouver back in May 2004 for Sandip Duhre.

Phil Hothi and Herman Dhillon were shot at the house of Chinese-Canadian drug dealer Tommy Ho Sing Chan, who was himself shot dead at downtown Vancouver’s Richard’s on Richards nightclub in 2006. Vancouver Police told the media at the time that the two South Asians were known to them.

Duhre himself was shot dead in January 2012 at the Bar One restaurant in downtown Vancouver Sheraton Wall Centre in the 1000-block of Burrard Street.

India puts second navigation satellite into orbit

4 April 2014

Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh), (IANS): India Friday moved a step closer to setting up its own satellite navigation system when in a copy-book style it successfully placed into orbit a satellite using its own rocket.

With the successful launch of the second of the planned seven satellites under the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), India moved nearer to a select group of nations that have such a space-based system.

President Pranab Mukherjee said the launch was “an important landmark in our space programme and demonstrates, yet again, India’s capabilities in space launch technology”.

“The nation will immensely benefit from the applications of IRNSS which include terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation, disaster management, vehicle tracking and fleet management,” he said.

The Indian rocket carrying the satellite blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, around 80 km north of Chennai.

Exactly at 5.14 p.m., the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-C24 (PSLV-C24) – standing 44.4 metres tall and weighing about 320 tonnes – blasted off from the first launch pad here at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC).

The expendable rocket riding atop fierce orange flames tore into the evening sky with its luggage, the 1,432 kg IRNSS-1B (Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System-1B) satellite, in a perfect launch.

For the onlookers, the rocket looked like an inverted flare/torch with a long handle as it ascended towards the heavens. ISRO scientists and the media team assembled at the rocket port here proudly applauded the spectacle.

Space scientists at ISRO new rocket mission control room were glued to their computer screens watching the rocket escape the earth’s gravitational pull.

About 20 minutes into the flight, the PSLV-C24 spat out IRNSS-1B at an altitude of around 500 km above the earth.

Immediately on the successful ejection, scientists at the mission control centre were visibly relieved and started applauding happily.

“The PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) in its 25th successive successful flight precisely injected India’s second regional navigaton satellite…This proves again that India’s PSLV has a place of pride,” ISRO chairman K.Radhakrishnan said post launch.

“By 2014 we will launch two more navigational satellites – IRNSS-1C and IRNSS-1D. Three more navigational satellites will be launched early 2015. By middle of 2015, India will have all the navigational satellite system.”

He said the ISRO team will be coming to its spaceport again in June to launch the country’s heavier rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle – Mark III (GSLV-Mk III).

SDSC director M.Y.S. Prasad told IANS: “The launch time has been fixed taking into account the orbit and inclination at which the satellite will be injected into the space.”

Soon after the satellite was put into the orbit, its solar panels were deployed.

The satellite control was taken over by the Mission Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka.

The MCF will manage the satellite’s orbit infrastructure for controlling, tracking and other facilities.

Two South Asians lucky to be alive after crash at 120 km/hour, street racing suspected

4 April 2014

TWO South Asian young men are lucky to be alive after their car crashed near Maclure and McCallum Roads while travelling at about 120 km/hour on Saturday night and police suspect that they were involved in street racing.

Abbotsford Police Constable Ian MacDonald told The VOICE on Monday: “They were doing more than double the speed limit. They were doing about 120 [km/hour] in a 50 [km/hour] zone and that’s a stretch of road with a lot of S-curves. So there is never a good stretch of road to be speeding, but that’s a particularly bad stretch.”

MacDonald said: “The two occupants were South Asian but we do not what the occupants of the other car were because the other car kept going. Neither of the two men in our incident was seriously hurt. One was trapped but he was rescued using the jaws of life. He was more pinned in the car because of the amount of the damage to the vehicle. He didn’t suffer serious injury.”

Asked if they were street racing, he said: “We are still looking into the street race component and we are certainly looking at security video as it relates to that … see if we can get a plate or identification on the other car that was racing. But we certainly are going with excessive speed at this time and we are going to be looking at every violation to the Motor Vehicle Act for sure and we will see if we get enough for street racing based on the evidence we gather.”

On Thursday, MacDonald told The VOICE they were still in the process of retrieving images from the surveillance videos in the area.

Several tickets for violations, including excessive speed, were given to the driver on Saturday itself. Police are still looking for the other vehicle in pursuit of a street racing charge.

Border security task force arrests Harminder Singh Rai of Surrey in cocaine smuggling scheme

4 April 2014

SEATTLE: Two suspects arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Office of Field Operations (OFO) made their initial appearances Thursday last week in Seattle federal court on charges they conspired to distribute more than 60 pounds of cocaine.

Harminder Singh Rai, 35, of Surrey, British Columbia, and Tuan Van Dang, 38, of San Diego, were arrested separately Wednesday following an investigation by the Blaine Border Enforcement Security Task Force (BEST Blaine).

According to court records, Rai, a known drug trafficker, was tailed by investigators after he entered the U.S. at the Blaine port of entry. Rai led HSI special agents to a Marysville motel, where he allegedly picked up a duffle bag loaded with cocaine from Dang.

Rai was stopped at the border by CBP on his return to Canada. CBP officers found 24 vacuum sealed bags containing more than 60 pounds of cocaine hidden in various locations of his vehicle. Rai was taken into custody by CBP; HSI arrested Dang near the Bellingham airport.

If convicted, both suspects face minimum mandatory sentences of 10 years in federal prison.

ICE said that the charges contained in the complaint are only allegations. A person is presumed innocent unless and until he or she is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

The HSI-led BEST is composed of full-time members from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Offices of Air and Marine, Field Operations and Border Patrol; the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office; the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Canada Border Services Agency; and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington is prosecuting the case.

Vancouver’s Bharti Art Jewellers store in Punjabi Market robbed in broad daylight

4 April 2014

ROBBERS wearing ski masks and blue jumpsuits used a truck to smash into Bharti Art Jewellers on Main Street and East 50th Avenue at 2:45 p.m. on Thursday and made off with a bag of valuables, according to witnesses in Vancouver’s Punjabi Market.

At least one of the robbers was carrying a gun as two of them dashed into the store while the third stayed in the truck. The robbers ditched the truck in a nearby alley and took off in another vehicle, leaving some jewellery scattered on the street. The owner was reportedly alone in the store and was not injured.

“I just heard a bang sound like something has fallen or like an accident sound. I quickly came out and I just saw the truck was rammed here at this jewelry store. I just quickly ran inside the pharmacy and closed the door,” pharmacist Jack Shah told Global BC.

He told the CBC: “I was so scared. I saw three people, but they had masks on. It was very hard to tell anything about them.”

“I was with my customer and I heard a bang, a big noise like a bomb,” Naresh Shukla from the Mother India grocery store told CTV.

Police say no arrests have been made and no injuries have been reported. But the brazen heist has scared the daylights out of the business owners in the Punjabi Market.

Visiting Canada – getting over the initial hurdles

4 April 2014

IN recent years millions of persons come to visit Canada. According to estimates of the Canadian Tourism Commission, in 2012 there were over 16 million overnight arrivals to Canada, of which nearly 12 million were from the United States. The second largest source of overnight arrivals was the United Kingdom, with 600,000 arrivals. Next was France with about 421,000. India was listed seventh, with 171,000 overnight arrivals. Included in the mixture are temporary residents who stay to work or attend school. While many are allowed into Canada, some are refused entry when they arrive, while many others are refused temporary resident visas they are required to have before they arrive here.

The immigration regulations set out rules on how people may apply to come to Canada, depending on what their intention is. The first distinction is a list of visa-exempt countries, whose citizens do not have to apply for a temporary resident visa before coming to Canada. The list of visa-exempt countries changes from time to time, depending upon a variety of factors, including whether or not certain foreign nationals are abusing the privilege of entering Canada by overstaying their visits. At present the visa-exempt list includes about 45 countries, primarily in Europe and including the United States, Australia and New Zealand. India was on the list until it was dropped in October, 1981, where it has remained ever since.

The temporary resident visa requirement creates an additional burden for potential visitors. Time and money has to be spent to complete application forms, gather supporting documents and to file the application. Depending on where the person applies, the process can be done within a week or can take several weeks.

Once an applicant has gathered information, completed the necessary forms and submitted them with the required processing fee, the application is reviewed by an officer who decides the application. Depending where a person applies, the process may require a personal interview. In the past decade, as government has worked to reduce its costs, more applications are decided without an interview. That means an applicant has to present all the best possible evidence to support their application in writing.

When deciding an application, a visa officer considers whether or not the applicant meets the requirements to apply and is not inadmissible. Persons may be inadmissible for a variety of reasons, including having a criminal record or serious health issues. The principle test applied to all applicants for a temporary visa is whether or not the applicant intends to remain in Canada temporarily. If an officer believes a person may want to remain in Canada indefinitely, the application will be refused.

There are a variety of factors an officer may look at. None of the factors are set out in the rules, nor will you find them in any instruction manual for officers or in the guidebooks the provided on the immigration website. Typically, an officer is concerned with any evidence that would show the applicant will return to their home country, rather than stay in Canada. Does the person have a job? What assets, including real property, do they have in the home country? Do they have immediate family members in the home country? What family members do they have in Canada? What is the reason for their visit? Do they have the means to support themselves for their expected stay?

If refused, it is usually done with a short cursory letter, with little explanation in it. Many failed applicants complain about not knowing why they were refused. The only way to get a detailed response is to apply to obtain a copy of the visa officer’s file.

Remedies against refused applications are limited. There is no formal right to have the decision reconsidered, though that may occur. The only legal remedy is to apply for judicial review in the Federal Court in Canada. That means hiring a lawyer in Canada, a costly or impractical matter for most applicants. The Federal Court’s powers of review are limited, as a judge looking at the case decides only if the decision was unreasonable based on the information provided by the applicant. If the applicant failed to provide sufficient information, an officer may not be faulted on their conclusion.

An applicant can always reapply, with more information to address the issues that concerned the visa officer. The best remedy is to be prepared to deal with the matter at the start by becoming informed about what is needed. That may involve seeking professional help with counsel experienced in these issues.

BY WILLIAM MACINTOSH
William Macintosh started practising as an immigration lawyer in 1984. You can reach him for advice or help on any immigration or citizenship matter at 778-714-8787 or by email at [email protected]

Maxmillion win for Surrey healthcare workers

4 April 2014

THE decision to throw some money into the workplace lottery pool for the March 14 Lotto Max draw paid off in spades for 17 Surrey co-workers, including a number of South Asians, the latest group in B.C. to share a $1 million Maxmillion prize.

Irene Wong, the group trustee, said she bought the ticket at a different location this time around. “I was busy running the kids around to Scouts and Girl Guides so I stopped at my neighborhood Macs instead of where I usually go,” she explained. “This is a true case of ‘right place, right time’.”

A week after the draw, Irene said she fed the ticket into the self-checker around10 times in a row before she began to scream with excitement. “I was in totally disbelief that we had actually won!”

She began calling her co-workers once she got home. Many accused her of playing a joke on them. “I had to bring the slip into work the next day to prove to them I wasn’t lying,” she laughed.

Each member of the group will receive $58,823.53. All 17 winners have different plans for their winnings. There’s talk of travel, investments and the likelihood of a few new cars in the parking lot at work.