CANADA CONSULATES STRIKE ENDED AND NOW STAFF ARE PREPARING TO CLEAR THE BACKLOG WHICH MAY TAKE MONTHS TOGETHER WHICH RESULTED IN STUDENTS GOING TO SOME ANOTHER COUNTRIES AND PERMANENT RESIDENCY WHICH EARLY TAKE 70 DAYS TO PROCESS NOT SURE SINCE PENDING 28TH SEPTEMBER 2013 “I don’t think either side caved. I think that the minister and his negotiating staff decided it was time to seek a compromised solution, and compromises were made on both sides,” Tim Edwards, president of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, said in an interview Friday. “I don’t have any insight into Minister Clement’s thinking, but they did establish a trend there. They demonstrated they were – in a very small number of cases – willing to go beyond [standard] patterned settlements, and it seems the same logic applies to us.” “This last round is probably one of the strangest, in that they came to the table with, ‘That’s it, that’s all, go away, we don’t need to listen to you about anything else,’” Mr. Grabowsky added. The union then began minor job action, including buying a billboard in Mr. Clement’s home riding. “We’d been slowly getting their attention, and I don’t know what the magic thing was, but they called us to get us back to the table,” he said. The public service strike has left a backlog of work. New permanent residency applications are taking 70 days to process, twice as long as when the strike began in April. Mr. Edwards suspects some students and visitors were put off by visa delays caused by the strike, and avoided Canada altogether. “There is a significant backlog to clear, and that will take months,” he said. “But our members will contribute heavily to that effort, and we’re looking forward to getting back to work.”
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 02:21:01 +0000
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