mature said:
I am not a lawyer and I did not attend the CBA Conference so I do not know if the issue was raised by a participant. I thought it would be self evident that lawyers working with PR/Perspective citizens would grasp the opportunity to raise the issue either to the Minister or to CIC officials. After all lawyers make a living out of people who are in agony concerning the actual effective date of that law. Also media people could also take advantsage of the occassion.
I can not be 100% sure but it seems I was wrong. Apparently this is not something of interest to the average Canadian including the average client of an immigration lawyer.
My guess is someone asked the question. If the Minister gave a definitive response, that would be news. My impression is that Chris Alexander is not capable of giving a direct, definitive response, if he wanted to, and regarding this question he probably does not want to reveal any more than they revealed in June 2014.
Not every word the Minister utters at a conference like this is news. Moreover, immigration and citizenship lawyers are mostly immigration lawyers. The amount of citizenship work they do compared to immigration work is probably a rather small percentage. And with the Express Entry program surging ahead, I am sure that most lawyers there were far more interested in that program alone, let alone other aspects of immigration law, than the changes to the
Citizenship Act which are not at all news . . . as noted before, these changes became law last June 19th.
Of course for those who may or may not get to apply this summer, or may have to wait another year, the actual date the revised grant citizenship requirements take effect is a big, big deal.
But there is still no news. Did not happen May 8th, we know that. But we do not know for sure it will not be May 15th, June 9th, July 1st, July 17th, or . . .
we do not know what we do not know . . . despite all the speculation otherwise.
By the way, for what it's worth, to be clear, I am
NOT a Canadian lawyer. A jurist in education, training, and trade indeed, but not a Canadian lawyer. A not-so-good guy, perhaps, but not a Canadian lawyer.
Cold? Yeah, that probably describes me, but not a Canadian lawyer.
And that crystal ball I was looking into, turns out it was a novelty gift, an old Magic Eight Ball, if anyone here remembers those toys, plenty of fun for kids and fooling, not much for forecasting things like when the Governor in Council will act. Which leaves things back at we don't know what we don't know.