Officials in Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s office were scrambling Thursday after Canadian Press reporter Jennifer Ditchburn broke the news of how the reaffirmation ceremony televised on the Sun News Network last fall went awry.
As cameras rolled, 10 “new Canadians” held flags and smiled as the TV hosts talked about they had “finally” received their citizenship.
In fact, six of them were bureaucrats, hustled down to act as last-minute stand-ins to fill out the crowd, according to department documents obtained by Canadian Press.
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.
Instead of covering citizenship ceremonies already planned in the Greater Toronto Area, a special “reaffirmation event” was organized for Sun News, much to the frustration of department staff who had trouble drumming up people to take part.
“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.
After having no luck with real new Canadians, organizers turned to their fellow colleagues.
“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, according to the package obtained by the newswire service.
Kenney’s office confirmed Thursday that it had asked the department to organize the event and was assured they would have about a dozen people taking part.
But days before the event, the department expressed concerns about getting enough people, prompting Kenney’s office to cancel the event, said a senior official, who asked to remain anonymous.
“(The) Sun emailed the department saying we can’t get enough people. The minister’s office says we’re cancelling. The department emailed them back saying, ‘no, the event’s not cancelled. We now have enough people,’” the official told the Star.
Kenney’s office says it too was reassured that enough people had been found to restate their citizenship oath. That’s the last they heard of it and thought it had gone well until this week’s surprise revelations.
“No idea. Zero idea that they were grabbing people from (Citizenship and Immigration),” the official said.
Instead, the plan had been to solicit new Canadians who had taken part at a citizenship ceremony in mid-town Toronto just before the Sun News event.
“They were literally supposed to go there and grab people and bring them over,” the official said.
But just a few people showed up, sending the local organizer scrambling.
“The person who made the mistake is actually a really hard-working person . . . she just scrambled last second and got caught,” the official said.
In a statement, the department said it hopes to do more televised ceremonies but conceded things went wrong with this event.
“On the morning of the event, the civil servants made some decisions without informing us,” Kenney spokesperson Candice Malcolm said in an email.
“We didn’t know about this. The hosts of Sun News Network didn’t know about this,” she said.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Bruce Campion-Smith
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