Slim majority of Canadians found reduced immigration levels still too high: government polling
Article content
The survey, which was done last November, followed the federal government's announcement that it would reduce the number of permanent residents by nearly 100,000 in 2025. The target was set at 395,000, down from 485,000 in 2024.
The survey found that 54 per cent of Canadians said they 'felt there are too many immigrants coming to Canada.' Another 34 per cent said they felt the number was fine, according to the report.
'When informed that Canada plans to admit 395,000 immigrants as permanent residents in 2025, 52 per cent said that it is too many, 37 per cent that this is about the right number and five per cent that this is too few,' it read.
'When informed that 395,000 immigrants is roughly 20 per cent fewer than Canada planned to admit in 2024, 44 per cent feel this is too many, 39 per cent that this number is about right and 13 per cent that it is too few.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Toronto Sun
39 minutes ago
- Toronto Sun
Canada's worst terrorist attack: Air India families still feel anguish and frustration 40 years later
On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 was ripped out of the sky by a Canadian-made bomb. Most of the 329 people killed were Canadians. Forty years after their shattering loss, their families feel forgotten and ignored. Flowers placed at a site where an event honouring the memory of those who lost their lives on June 23, 1985 in Canada's worst terrorist attack. Photo by Nick Procaylo / PNG Majar Sidhu recalls how excited his sister, Sukhwinder, was to travel to India in June 1985 so her 10-year-old daughter, Parminder, and son, Kuldip, age nine, could meet their paternal grandparents. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account The young widow, who lived with her brother and family in South Vancouver, decided at the last minute to change their tickets to an earlier Air India flight out of Toronto. Another relative took Sukhwinder and the kids to Vancouver Airport on June 22, 1985, as Sidhu had to work. They stopped at the nearby Sikh gurdwara on Ross Street to pray for a safe trip. And then they were on their way. Irish sailors unload bodies on June 29, 1985, at a navy base in Cork, after Air India Flight 182 crashed off the coast of Ireland on June 23. Photo by ANDRE DURAND / AFP via Getty Images Little Kuldip, born after his dad was killed in a car crash near Williams Lake, wanted to be a police officer. Grainy snapshots with white edges show him playing dress-up and carrying a toy gun. His big sister was 'very sweet,' Sidhu said. Just like her mother. Renée Saklikar was also at the Vancouver airport that day, with her mother, father and sister. They were seeing off her beloved aunt and uncle, Zeb and Umar Jethwa, both brilliant surgeons in Gujarat who had made their first trip to Canada. The Jethwas had left their young son, Irfan, at home in India and were eager to get back to him after a lovely visit to the Lower Mainland. A treasured photo taken at the airport shows both of them smiling back at the Saklikars as they headed to the boarding area. In Toronto, Jayashree Thampi was unable to leave on Air India Flight 182 with her husband, Kanaka Lakshmanan, and seven-year-old daughter, Preethi, as she didn't have enough vacation time at her bank job. She planned to join them a couple of weeks later. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Air India pilot Narendra Hanse's widow Sheila and son Anil Hanse. Photo by GLENN BAGLO / VANCOUVER SUN I actually met all the crew. Anil Hanse Lakshmanan, an engineer, had moved to Canada in 1976 with his wife. Canadian-born Preethi loved music and Indian classical dance. Then strangers, Anil Hanse and Sanjay Lazar almost joined relatives on their ill-fated journeys 40 years ago this month. Hanse, then 23, had landed a job as a deep-sea diver in the North Sea, but had been home visiting his parents in Mumbai. His dad, Narendra Singh Hanse, a veteran Air India pilot, suggested his son take advantage of the free family flights to accompany him on a short trip to Canada before returning on Flight 182 to London. The younger Hanse did fly with his dad on the first leg of the Toronto-bound flight — from Mumbai to Delhi. Then he decided he should head to Scotland from Delhi so he could go to work. 'I actually met all the crew. I sat in the cockpit there with Captain (Satwinder) Bhinder and Dad,' Anil Hanse said in a recent interview. 'I sat on the bus with all the cabin crew, with the cockpit crew, and then spent a day with Dad at the hotel in Delhi.' As they parted, they agreed to talk the following Sunday — June 23. For Lazar, then just 17, it was his bad final exam marks that kept him from travelling from India to Canada with his father, Sampath Lazar, his pregnant stepmother, Sylvia, and his three-year-old sister, Sandeeta. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. After he failed his finals, everyone agreed he should stay home to deal with the fallout and his parents — longtime Air India employees — would carry on with their toddler. His father was keen to visit cousins in Toronto for the first time in 25 years. A drifting piece of wreckage, carrying the Air India logo, is seen floating in the water near Cork, Ireland, on June 24, 1985, following the Air India Boeing 747 crash off the Irish coast a day earlier, killing all 329 people on board. Photo by CAULKIN AND REDMAN / ASSOCIATED PRESS Air India 182, good morning. Capt. Satwinder Bhinder Sampath Lazar was the flight supervisor on Flight 182 when it left Toronto for London's Heathrow Airport at 9:02 p.m. on June 22 — an hour and 20 minutes late. After a brief stop in Montreal to pick up more passengers, there were 329 people aboard the Boeing 747 dubbed 'Kanishka.' Most of the passengers — 268 of the 329 — were Canadian citizens. Also on board: A B.C.-made suitcase bomb that had been checked in at Vancouver airport and tagged for Air India flight 182 despite the purported passengers not having confirmed tickets. Less than an hour before the flight was scheduled to land at Heathrow, Shannon Air Traffic Control radioed the cockpit. It was 7:08 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on June 23, 1985. Bhinder responded to Irish controller Michael Quinn. 'Air India 182, good morning,' the captain said cheerfully, his voice recorded on a scratchy tape that would be played 19 years later in a B.C. courtroom. Bhinder gave the plane's location, and Quinn provided the designated route into London. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Minutes later, the flight disappeared from radar. The bomb had exploded. Everyone on board was dead. Pieces of the white fuselage with red Air India markings floated off the Irish coast. The Air India bombing took the lives of Majar Sidhu's sister, Sukhwinder, his niece, Parminder, 10, and nephew, Kuldip, 9. Photo by Arlen Redekop / PNG Majar Sidhu at home looking at photos of his family in Vancouver on June 11, 2025. Photo by Arlen Redekop / PNG On the other side of the world, at Tokyo's Narita Airport, another suitcase bomb from Vancouver had exploded 54 minutes earlier, killing baggage handlers Hideo Assano, 23, and Hindeharu Koda, 24. It had been tagged for another Air India flight, but detonated before reaching its target. The aftermath Back in Vancouver, Majar Sidhu was at work at a plywood plant when his brother-in-law and a friend showed up. They told him he needed to go home, that his wife was sick. He left with them. Other family members had already arrived at the large house on Prince Albert Street and East 59th Avenue — across from Moberly Elementary where his niece and nephew had just finished the school year. 'So many people heard the news early in the morning,' Sidhu said. Devastated at the unimaginable loss, Sidhu had no time to grieve. Like so many family members around the world, he headed to Ireland, where a makeshift morgue had been set up in the Cork hospital's gym. Among the 131 bodies recovered from the crash site in the first month, he searched for his sister and the children. He found Sukhwinder and Parminder. But not Kuldip. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Renée Saklikar lost her aunt and uncle in the Air India bombing. Photo by Kim Bolan/Postmedia / PNG It's just the terror of hearing your mom scream, a scream I've never heard before and probably never heard her do again. Renée Saklikar 'We took the bodies to India at that time. Her father-in-law wanted them there.' Renée Saklikar will never forget hearing her mother's scream when the call came into their New Westminster home. 'Going back to that moment, what I remember — it's just the terror of hearing your mom scream, a scream I've never heard before and probably never heard her do again,' Saklikar said in a recent interview. 'She was such a strong, stoic woman, and I know it broke her in 1,000 ways, and somehow she continued on like all the other families.' Her dad, Vasant Saklikar, a United Church minister, met up with his brother-in-law Yusef Patel and wife Nila for the trip to Ireland. 'My dear, beloved father — quiet, unassuming, strong, so strong. He was such a Canadian. You know, there's this wonderful saying right now, 'Modest doesn't mean weak.' That was my dad. And he flew in an instant to Toronto. 'Very few bodies were recovered, but my aunt's body was, and they had to take her to India,' said Saklikar, a poet and a lawyer who has written a book of poetry called Children of Air India. Jayashree Thampi was at home in Toronto when a friend in Montreal called her that fateful Sunday. 'He wouldn't say what it was. He just kept telling me to call my other friend from Toronto to come and stay with me,' she recalled in a recent interview. 'And I was asking: 'What are you talking about? Why?'' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Before long, the buzzer went off in her apartment. Friends were arriving. They turned on the television. The crash was all over the news. 'It was like a fog. It's very difficult to go back to remember what I was thinking at the moment. I was numb. It was not registering in my head what I was seeing.' Natasha Madon, whose father was killed on Air India flight 182 when it exploded over Ireland in 1985, attends a memorial at Ceperley Park in Vancouver's Stanley Park in 2007. Photo by Arlen Redekop / PROVINCE Her sister from Detroit soon arrived and was 'inconsolable, but I couldn't cry. My sister kept telling me to cry. 'It's good for you,'' Thampi said. The sisters made their way to Cork. Thampi said her boss at the Bank of Montreal told her to take all the time she needed. 'People in Ireland have unbelievable kindness. And you know, that gives you hope in humanity,' Thampi told Postmedia. She recalled arriving later than other families and missing a boat trip to the crash site. 'People wanted to visit to throw flowers.' The boat skipper agreed to take a second group to the spot. But Thampi had no flowers. The man driving them to the boat stopped at a house and went to talk to a woman inside. 'She invited us in, and she cut loads of flowers for us,' recalled Thampi. 'I was so touched. I was so emotional.' Anil Hanse was in Aberdeen, staying with fellow divers at a guest house when he first heard there was an issue with an Air India flight. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Irish sailors unload debris from the flight on June 29, 1985, at a navy base in Cork. Photo by ANDRE DURAND / AFP via Getty Images An American diver who constantly listened to the BBC told Hanse that 'an Air India plane's gone down.' Panicked, he got on the phone to Air India 'and they would not say a word.' The plane's delayed, they told him. 'I said, 'Look, can you tell me, is this plane in the air or is it down?' It's missing. That's what they said to me. It's missing.' He headed for London to camp out at the Air India offices there. Others — shocked and panicked — were arriving, too. 'That's where the tailspin started,' said Hanse, who now lives in Melbourne, Australia. Air India put up relatives of the crew members at a hotel near Heathrow Airport. Hanse met Sanjay Lazar there and the two travelled to Cork together. They had to fill out forms about what their loved ones looked like, what they might have been wearing, any distinctive features. 'They wouldn't let us look at bodies — just at pictures,' Hanse said. His father, just two years from retirement, was never found. 'The man loved to fly. And he loved Air India.' Lazar was escorted from Mumbai to London by his little sister's godfather. He had told the teen that his father had called for them — a lie to protect Lazar from the truth just a little longer. By the time he was settled in the Heathrow hotel, he realized, 'It was no longer a missing aircraft. It was obviously a bomb or a crashed aircraft.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. In the middle of the night, there was a bomb scare at the hotel, he said in a recent interview while visiting Canada. Irish soldiers carry one of the victims of the Air India disaster. Photo by Redman / The Associated Press How can you do this? Bomb an aircraft? Sanjay Lazar 'There were hundreds of people in the car park and the bomb squad and the cops came,' he said. 'The shock hit me when I was out there without a shirt. It was freezing … it then struck me that these guys are devious murderers. Whoever is doing this is really crazy. How can you do this? Bomb an aircraft?' His three weeks in Cork were devastating for Lazar, who was orphaned in the bombing. At one point, he believed he had found his baby sister — a little body with the same coloured clothing and jewelry. He prepared to take her home. But right before he was due to leave, another family also claimed the child. The shape of pearls found on the child's jewelry was slightly different from those that Sandeeta had worn. It was not his sister. He was about to return to India when the Irish Garda called and said they had found his pregnant stepmother. It would later come out that her cause of death — as it was for several others recovered from the sea — was drowning. Forty years after their shattering loss, all of the families interviewed told Postmedia the same thing: No one from the Canadian government or the RCMP reached out to them for years. They felt forgotten and ignored. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Within days of the two bombings, the RCMP believed both were part of a terrorist plot hatched in British Columbia by a small group linked to the Babbar Khalsa Sikh separatist group. They had been preaching revenge against the Indian government for months after its June 1984 attack on Punjab's Sri Harmandir Sahib — the Golden Temple — Sikhism's holiest shrine. Hundreds of pilgrims inside the complex were killed. Canada's fledging spy agency, CSIS, had been watching and surreptitiously recording the suspects, led by Babbar Khalsa founder and Burnaby resident Talwinder Singh Parmar. Air India suspects Talwinder Singh Parmar (centre) with Ajaib Bagri (left) at a press conference in 1987. Parmar was killed by police in Punjab in 1992, while Bagri was later charged and acquitted in the bombing Photo by Wayne Leidenfrost / PROVINCE Some agents even followed Parmar and a mystery man dubbed Mr. X over to Vancouver Island on June 4, 1985, where they met Duncan electrician Inderjit Singh Reyat and went off into the woods to test a bomb. The agents later said they heard the bang, but thought the trio had fired a gun. No action was taken at the time. While there was virtually no forensic evidence linked to the explosion that brought down Air India Flight 182, the Narita bombing left a trail that would lead investigators back to Duncan and Reyat. He was eventually charged with manslaughter and convicted in 1991 for his role in the Narita terrorist bombing. He was sentenced to 10 years. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. By then, Parmar was living underground in Punjab, where police captured him in October 1992, torturing him to confess and later killing him. They falsely claimed that he merely died in an encounter with police. The trail for other suspects went cold. The investigation into Canada's worst-ever mass murder had completely stalled. But not for long. RCMP Assistant Commissioner Gary Bass chats with victim's family members in Bantry town square in Cork, Ireland, in 2005. Vancouver Sun Within days of Parmar's death in 1992, RCMP officer Gary Bass was transferred to British Columbia to head up the major crimes section. A senior investigator originally from the Maritimes, Bass would become a key figure in setting a new direction for the Air India probe. In 1995, he set up a review team of senior investigators with 'a set of fresh eyes' who could look at what had been done and see if there were new avenues that could be explored. They offered a $1-million reward. More officers were added to the task force. And the new team reached out to long-ignored family members. 'The challenges were nearly insurmountable in terms of just the scope of what we were trying to do after 10 years,' Bass, who retired as a deputy commissioner, said in a recent interview. 'One of the big things, I think, was introducing ourselves to the families and trying to overcome the frustrations they had of having no contact and many years of not knowing what was going on.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Ripudaman Singh Malik (right) leaves B.C. Supreme Court with supporters after he was found not guilty in the 1985 bombing of Air India flight 182, in Vancouver in 2005. Photo by RICHARD LAM / The Canadian Press The other big challenge was 'just organizing the file,' he said. 'Hundreds of thousands of photos and videos had to be digitized.' And the team had to get ready for massive disclosure — a 1991 Supreme Court of Canada ruling called 'Stinchcombe' changed disclosure rules, meaning prosecutors had to turn over all potentially relevant evidence, whether or not they planned to use it at trial. They also worked hard on securing witnesses and setting up wiretap operations in the late '90s. There was a sense — publicly — that the case was active again. But there were also frustrations, particularly over evidence that no longer existed. It was public knowledge that hundreds of hours of wiretaps CSIS had made of calls between Parmar and other suspects had been erased, leaving only logs with basic information about what was said. Bass wrote a scathing memo to CSIS in February 1996, attacking the erasures, calling the lost wiretaps of 'highly probative value' and saying charges could have been laid years earlier if the tapes had been saved. But his team pushed forward. In October 2000, Parmar associates Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik were charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy. Reyat was also charged again — this time in the actual Air India bombing. He later entered a guilty plea — but only to manslaughter — and got another five years in jail. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Relatives of the victims said they finally believed they might get some long-overdue justice. But on March 16, 2005, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Bruce Josephson said the Crown's case fell 'markedly short' and acquitted both men to their supporters' cheers. Family members of the dead wept in the courtroom. Bass still strongly believes that 'we had a good case.' 'We felt tremendous disappointment for the families and for everyone who had worked so hard on the investigation,' he said of the acquittals. He also still believes the right suspects were charged and that the witnesses who agreed to testify told the truth, including the so-called star witness — a former daycare supervisor who worked with Malik at a Surrey independent school. She testified that he had confessed his role in the bombing to her. She was forced into witness protection after a series of pretrial threats. By the spring of 2006, then-prime minister Stephen Harper called a judicial inquiry into the terrorist attack and failed prosecution. It was headed by retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice John Major. Jacques Shore was one of the lawyers representing the Air India Victims Families Association. At the time of the bombings, Shore was a young lawyer who had just started as the director of research and security for the Security Intelligence Review Committee, then the external oversight body for CSIS. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I just had this sense that something very, very, very bad had happened,' Shore recalled in a recent interview. Pieces of the fuselage of Air India Flight 182 were on display in a warehouse in Vancouver in 2004 at a secret location, as RCMP began reconstructing the plane in January 2003 for the Air India trial. Photo by Arlen Redekop / Postmedia 'In the ensuing days, I did have some documents in front of me that obviously made it very clear that something had gone wrong, and what had gone wrong was, effectively, an intelligence failure.' He wanted to follow up at the time but was told to pull back because of the criminal investigation. After 21 years, he was finally able to ask some hard questions on behalf of the families. There were revelations of missed warnings and systemic errors. A June 1, 1985, Air India Telex had warned of a possible bomb plot against the airline in Canada. A bomb-detection dog was on duty in Montreal when the plane landed but was not called in to check the flight. Former CSIS official Jack Hooper testified that erasing the Parmar tapes was the agency's policy: 'Who cares, quite frankly, if we destroyed the tapes?' Shore said the inquiry showed 'there were tremendous gaps in the intelligence-gathering at that time.' It was also critical, he said, that Major allowed victims' families to come and testify about their loved ones and what they had lost. 'That was one of the most sensitive steps ever taken by a Royal Commission of Inquiry, to recognize that we had to first remember who the victims were of this heinous terrorist crime,' he said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. On June 17, 2010, Major made 64 recommendations to ensure the 'cascading series of errors' that led to the bombings and plagued the investigation would never be repeated. Justice John Major in 2006 opens the Air India Inquiry into the bombing of Air India flight 182. THE OTTAWA CITIZEN 'The level of error, incompetence, and inattention which took place before the flight was sadly mirrored in many ways, for many years, in how authorities, governments, and institutions dealt with the aftermath of the murder of so many innocents: in the investigation, the legal proceedings, and in providing information, support and comfort to the families,' he said. In the years since, some of the recommendations have been implemented, Shore said. Others have collected dust. 'It is always the government that basically makes the choice … as to the way in which a commission's report is implemented,' Shore said. Right after the inquiry, he believed the will was there to make changes that 'would be weaved into almost everything that we do within the field of criminal justice and security intelligence work.' 'Unfortunately, as the years have gone on, there have not been enough of the — if I may say — torchbearers to insist that that's the case.' June 2025 Even after 40 years, June is the hardest month, Majar Sidhu says. Memories of his murdered sister, niece and nephew are constant. The lack of justice for their deaths is a gnawing pain. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. There are tears in his eyes as he flips through a photo album of the kids playing in the yard, posing at Christmas, enjoying their birthday parties. His own children, who were younger than their cousins, barely remember them. A man at the annual Air India memorial service at the Memorial wall in Stanley Park, Vancouver, in 2018. Photo by Gerry Kahrmann / Postmedia Like other Air India families, he feels Canada has also forgotten them. Few beyond those directly impacted show up at the memorial his family organizes in Stanley Park every June 23. The Air India terrorist attack is not taught in schools. 'We want that because children should know about this tragedy. This bomb was made here,' he said at his home in South Vancouver, less than five kilometres from the airport where the suitcase bombs were checked in. And he still feels ignored by police and by politicians. 'Up to today, nobody has come to us, and nobody is telling us what's going on, or what they're doing.' Renée Saklikar says the anniversary is particularly painful now that both her parents are gone. It's also painful to see the resurgence of the Khalistan separatist movement to which the Air India killers belonged. Parmar's photo still hangs in some gurdwaras and on floats in annual Vaisakhi parades. Some pro-Khalistan protesters attended the Air India memorials in both Vancouver and Toronto last year, upsetting families and organizers. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'I don't care if you use violence to achieve your end as a state, trying to destroy people or as individuals in a cause — it's just wrong,' she said. 'How dare people who have these romanticized notions of whatever they have come to a memorial like they did.' She attended a conference at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., last month where families spoke of their ongoing trauma and their desire to better memorialize the unprecedented terrorist attack that changed their lives forever. The university has also created the Air India archive. 'What hurts so much is to see the denial and erasure by a whole generation of people,' she said. She doesn't see herself or her cousin Irfan as 'victims' despite all they've been through. 'He's so positive, generous, a strong person, and he's brought up his sons so well, and they're so strong and positive. These would be the grandchildren of my auntie and uncle, that is what keeps me going,' she said. Jayashree Thampi was also at the McMaster conference. In the early years after the bombing, she tried to move on with her life. She married Venu Thampi, who lost his wife, Vijaya, on the same flight. She became mom to six-year-old Nisha. Son Vivek was born in 1989. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The Air India Memorial at Commissioner's Park in Ottawa. Photo by David Kawai / CNS Forty years later, I feel as if we are still back where we were. Jayashree Thampi Five months after the devastating not-guilty verdict, the Thampis almost experienced another horrible loss. Vivek, then 17, was aboard an Air France flight that overshot the runway at Toronto's Pearson International Airport on Aug. 2, 2005. The plane crashed into a creek. Vivek was OK. Unlike 20 years earlier, the Thampis got help. Air France offered counselling. And, for the first time, Thampi was able to cry for her dead daughter. She has spent years since working to get memorials built for Preethi and the other Air India victims. But she also feels that Air India has been largely forgotten by Canadians. 'Forty years later, I feel as if we are still back where we were,' she said. 'There's not much of a recognition.' While June 23 has been declared a day to remember the victims of terrorism, Air India is often not specifically mentioned. More Canadians commemorate the victims of 9/11. 'It is the worst mass terrorist attack on Canadians perpetrated on Canadian soil,' Thampi said. 'It is not kept in Canadians' conscience. People don't know, and the younger generation absolutely don't know.' Living far away in Australia has not made the legacy of Air India easier for Anil Hanse. 'I'm still one angry man when it comes down to Air India,' Hanse said. 'Look, the RCMP didn't get their man on this one.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Even his adult children have been impacted, despite never meeting their grandfather. 'Forty years is a long time gone. For me, I just need to cope and not fall apart, even at this stage,' he said. 'I'm going to just reflect quietly on this day, not really get involved.' Sanjay Lazar plans to be in Ahakista, Ireland, with other families at the June 23 memorial service for those lost so long ago. But he has not given up the fight. After a successful career at Air India, he took early retirement and wrote a memoir called On Angels' Wings. He continues to speak around the world about the terrorist attack. He won't let people forget. 'This is the largest aviation bombing. You can't wish it away,' he said. 'Should we not talk about it? Should we not learn from it?' kbolan@ Kim Bolan is an award-winning Vancouver Sun journalist who has covered the Air India bombing since the day it happened. In September 2005, she published a book on the case, Loss of Faith: How the Air India Bombers Got Away With Murder.
Global News
40 minutes ago
- Global News
Canada's population barely grew in first months of 2025: StatCan
Canada saw little growth in its population in the first three months of this year, new data from Statistics Canada shows. The data, released Wednesday, showed the population increased between Jan. 1 and April 1 by just 20,107, bringing the total number of people in Canada to 41,548,787. According to Statistics Canada, it's the smallest quarterly growth since the third quarter of 2020, when the population dropped by 1,232 in the wake of border restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also marks the sixth consecutive quarter of slower population growth and comes after the federal government announced it would lower the levels of both temporary and permanent immigration. Population levels decreased in Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador, with Ontario and B.C. seeing their biggest quarterly losses since records began in the third quarter of 1951. Story continues below advertisement The six other provinces and two territories, however, saw population growth, with Alberta, Prince Edward Island, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut seeing a 0.4 per cent increase. 1:05 Poilievre is 'flailing' after his call for 'severe limits' on Canada's immigration: Marc Miller The population growth in Canada during the first quarter was driven completely by international migration, Statistics Canada says, because there were more deaths than births of Canadians. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy The agency, however, notes this is consistent with an aging population, decreasing fertility rate and higher number of deaths that 'typically occur during the winter months.' But while Statistics Canada points to international migration as a key reason for population growth, it also shows that Canada saw the largest reduction in non-permanent residents since 2020, when border restrictions were in place. This group decreased by 61,111 as of April 1 to slightly more than 2.95 million residents, accounting for 7.1 per cent of the total population. But that number is down from the peak of 7.4 per cent seen Oct. 1, 2024. Story continues below advertisement 'The decrease in the number of non-permanent residents in the country is counter to the typical seasonal pattern of an increase in the first quarter,' the report says. The majority of the drop came from the 53,669 people holding study permits, with the biggest declines seen in Ontario and B.C., which have the highest number of permit holders. The data showed that those claiming asylum or considered protected persons and related groups increased in the first quarter, reaching a record high of 470,029. It's not just non-permanent residents that have seen a reduction, with the number of new immigrants admitted the smallest it's been in a first quarter in four years. A total of 104,256 immigrants were admitted as of April 1, which Statistics Canada says reflects the lower permanent immigration target announced by the federal government for 2025. Last fall, the federal Liberals announced they were reversing course on their plan to hold immigration targets steady for 2026, and said they would reduce the number of new permanent residents from 500,000 to 395,000 in 2025. While the agency notes immigration remains high, it was still lower than recent years, with every province and territory except Newfoundland, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut admitting fewer immigrants compared with the first quarter of 2024.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
'At the brink of falling apart': Sport organizations hope new government heeds urgent call for funding
Olympic gold medallist Adam van Koeverden, the newly minted secretary of state for sport, must navigate an urgent call for funding from sport organizations and what has been described as a safe-sport crisis. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press - image credit) At the end of a successful Summer Olympics in Paris last year, David Shoemaker issued a stark warning. Canadians took home 27 medals from France after standout performances in swimming, beach volleyball and track and field, to name a few. Advertisement The Canadian Olympic Committee CEO said he believed Canada has the potential to do more, but that he worried the athletes' full potential won't be unlocked without more resources from the federal government. "I worry about performance in Milano Cortina and certainly for LA [in 2028]," Shoemaker said that day. "There hasn't been an increase in the core funding of the national sports organizations, the 62 federally-funded national sports organizations, in 19 years. They are having to do so much more with so much less, including the demands upon them to create a safe and barrier-free healthy sports system that we all want so badly." WATCH | Canada's new secretary of state for sport talks transforming Canada's sport landscape: Fast forward almost 10 months and Canadians have a new government, led by a new Prime Minister, Mark Carney. Advertisement The new person in charge of the sports portfolio is a familiar face in the Canadian sports world: Adam van Koeverden, the retired kayaker who owns four Olympic medals, including gold in the K-1 500-metre from the 2004 Summer Games in Athens. There's no minister of sport in this government. Koeverden is the secretary of state for sport, part of a two-tiered cabinet created by Carney. But much will still be expected from the former athlete. He's tasked with addressing funding demands from sport organizations. The magic number Shoemaker has cited is a $144 million increase to make up for two decades without a significant boost to core funding, now appearing as millions of dollars worth of deficits on sports organizations' books. He'll also have to navigate what's been described as a safe-sport crisis across the country. The Future of Sport in Canada Commission will report back in March, and van Koeverden, who gave his own recommendations to the panel earlier this year, will guide how the government will respond to its findings. Advertisement Perhaps even bigger than all of that is preserving what sport means to Canadians at a time when that identity is under threat like never before. It's a tone both the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee struck in a joint statement released after the new cabinet was named in May. "As we face an unprecedented crisis of national identity, this portfolio will be critical in achieving this government's urgent nation building priorities," the statement said. "Sport unites Canadians like nothing else can – bridging geography, language, and politics." Fundraising for training When it comes to nation building, Nathan Bombrys sees a role for rugby. Advertisement The Canadian women's rugby union team is ranked second in the world heading into the sport's World Cup in England, which begins in August. Bombrys, who is Rugby Canada's CEO, believes the Canadian women have a shot at winning the tournament. "If you follow the sport of rugby, it's literally planting a flag where it doesn't belong, and we have a team capable of doing that," he said. But the women's team has been fundraising just to pay for proper training. It would go toward things like holding training camps and accessing mental performance coaching. The Canadian women's rugby sevens team won silver at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press) Even if they're successful in reaching the $1-million fundraising goal, Bombrys expects Canada will have one of the lowest budgets in the entire tournament. Advertisement Performing well at that tournament, which is one of the biggest in the sporting world, would certainly fall under the nation-building category. "I'd like to see this government really appreciate the value that sport brings to the nation, to Canada, and really understand that," he said. Rugby Canada is also looking to see more corporate sponsors involved in the sport. Without more money, the future looks different. Bombrys said he's already having to make difficult decisions that affect athletes and programming. "Will we still play on the global stage? Probably," he said. "But wouldn't we like to be competitive and represent Canada well? Without that support, it's going to be harder and harder to do that." Staying afloat For Olympic athletes across Canada, funding is the number one issue, according to Philippe Marquis, a two-time Olympian in freestyle skiing who serves as the chair of the Canadian Olympic Committee's Athletes' Commission. Advertisement Marquis was happy to see van Koeverden receive the sports file, and like Shoemaker, he feels a sense of urgency. "Sport organizations are at the brink of falling apart with the lack of funding and the resources," he said. "Everyone is tight." Canadian Olympic Committee Athletes' Commission chair Philippe Marquis, pictured in 2019, says funding is the number-one issue for Olympic athletes. (Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press) The way he sees it, national sport organizations and athletes are both trying to survive. For sport organizations, like Rugby Canada, it's having the resources to properly structure and deliver sport to athletes. For athletes, it's trying to attend camps and access proper training, all while buying food and paying rent. Having or not having that money could determine whether an athlete stays in sport or walks away. Advertisement The 2024 federal budget increased the monthly living and training allowances under the Athlete Assistance Program, commonly known as carding, by about 23 per cent, retroactive to April 2024. "Was it sufficient? Not necessarily, and it has to be indexed with inflation and obviously what's going on around the world with cost of living," Marquis said. A familiar face The sports portfolio is nothing new to van Koeverden. Beyond his own career as an athlete, van Koeverden was Parliamentary secretary to ministers responsible for sport over two Parliaments. "It's been a joy and a huge privilege, but it's also been tough," van Koeverden said a few days into his new job. Advertisement "It's a lot of work and I'm embracing all of it. But sometimes it's hard when you achieve a goal because you recognize that there's just so many expectations and work that you've got to do in order to achieve the good outcomes, the reason that you get involved." Exactly what Carney would like his government to accomplish when it comes to sport isn't yet clear. The topic didn't appear in the Liberal platform, nor has there been a mandate letter released for the sport portfolio. Canadian Olympic Committee CEO David Shoemaker issued a stark warning at the end of last year's Summer Olympics: without additional funding to sport organizations, Canada's performance at the Games could falter. (Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press) Van Koeverden said he's encouraged by how frequently Carney, who was a hockey goaltender in college, talks about sport. Advertisement "I'm really, really excited because Mark Carney has clearly articulated his love and his passion for sport, physical activity and recreation in Canada," van Koeverden said. Whether Carney's government will increase funding of national sport organizations and multisport service organizations — such as the Canadian Olympic Committee, Canadian Paralympic Committee and U Sports — to the level that leaders like Shoemaker are calling for remains to be seen. But van Koeverden agreed he would advocate for an increase in core funding for national sport organizations, describing it as "critical." "Sport Canada does a great job making sure that all our national sport organizations get funding, but we've got more people in Canada now," he said. "Sports are more expensive. So are flights for national teams." Advertisement He also agreed that carding funding should be indexed with inflation, even though budgeting for that could be "a bit ambiguous." But just as important is funding the bottom of the pyramid, van Koeverden said, which helps get more people, including kids, playing sport. In his mind, funding sport at a grassroot level will help foster more Sidney Crosbys and Christine Sinclairs at the top of the pyramid. But keeping the most talented athletes on the ice, field or court, and helping them achieve their potential, is also part of the puzzle. "We continue to advocate to the federal government for an increase in funding [for national sport organizations]," Shoemaker told CBC Sports during the election campaign this past spring. "We think we're making a strong case. We think we're getting through. But only time will tell."
