IRCC finds no fault in AIDS summit visa debacle, but advocates fear possible repeat
Global News
Next month, Montreal is hosting a UN conference on biodiversity loss, stoking worries that delegates from the regions most impacted by declining species will be stuck at home.
With Canada set to host a major international summit next month, advocates are warning about a possible repeat of issues that prevented some African delegates from attending a conference in Montreal over the summer, leading to allegations that the federal immigration department’s policies are racist.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said it found no fault in its handling of visa applications for the International AIDS Society conference last July. A number of delegates from Africa were either denied visas or were still waiting for a response by the time the conference got underway.
“The whole system is designed to exclude people,” said Madhukar Pai, the Canada Research Chair in translational epidemiology and global health at McGill University in Montreal.
Next month, Montreal is hosting a United Nations conference on biodiversity loss, stoking worries that delegates from the regions most impacted by declining species will be stuck at home.
“There is something about our governmental system that is, what I call anti-Africa or anti-Black, and that worries me a lot,” said Pai.
For years, Pai has attended conferences where his African colleagues have had more difficulty getting visas than his peers from Latin America and Asia.
It’s an issue he’s seen at events hosted in the U.S., Britain and Canada, and one he was particularly concerned about this spring as Ottawa struggled to process everything from refugee applications to passport renewals.
“I don’t know whether the government has genuinely learned much from the AIDS conference fiasco,” Pai said.