Eager to woo waves of new Chinese students, temporary workers and travellers, Ottawa is petitioning Beijing to triple the number of cities where people can apply for Canadian visas.
Immigration Minister John McCallum is pushing to increase the number of Chinese students, temporary workers and travellers coming to Canada.
(Adrian Wyld/THE CANADIAN PRESS)
“But we want to get it even bigger,” Mr. McCallum said in an interview in Beijing on Tuesday. The Liberal government wants “the highest growth we can of tourists coming to Canada, of qualified foreign students who want to study in Canada. If that’s a doubling [in numbers], that’s great,” he said. He described Chinese officials as “actively on board” with the idea.
This comes ahead of an expected visit to China by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau starting at month’s end, before the G20 summit in Hangzhou in early September.
He also said the Liberals want to find a middle ground on foreign workers. “We went from a situation five years or so ago where everybody was allowed in and then there were various scandals, and went to the other extreme of almost nobody allowed in. And now we want to be in an intermediate position, and it’s not fully resolved,” Mr. McCallum said.
Immigration Minister John McCallum spent the past two days meeting with senior Chinese officials in Beijing where he asked to open at least five more visa application centres in Chengdu, Nanjing, Wuhan, Jinan and Shenyang.
根据加拿大旅游官方机构Destination Canada的统计,2015年访问加拿大的中国人数量破了记录,2016年头2个月的中国游客数量已经超过了英、法2国。而按照TIAC和Visa的2014年夏天假期调查(2014 Summer Travel Snapshot from TIAC and Visa)显示,在加拿大的美国游客的消费能力位居第一,中国名列第二。