On March 7, 2014, the Federal Court of Canada, ordered that Immigration Canada defends its refusal to process the federal investor applicants for whom all written pleadings were before the Court two weeks ago. Subsequently other litigants' files have also been perfected; and other litigants are in the process of doing so.  At this point, 122 have joined the litigation, and five more cases are ready for filing on Monday, March 10th.

Although no date has been set, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act requires it to be set no later than 90 days after the granting of leave. Thus, the hearing may be expected to be June 6th or 9th. Therefore, the case is likely to be heard before Minister Chris Alexander's plan to terminate all business-class applications is realized with passage of the Budget Bill, which is expected to be passed before Parliament adjourns for the summer the end of June.

Both parties have been called to the table to discuss how we will proceed from here.  I would expect both parties to agree to have the ruling in Baoxian Jia apply to additional federal investor applicants, who join our litigation group by a date yet to be set.

Our group are able to have their cases heard before the Budget Biill is passed because they filed their cases before Minister Alexander moved to abolish all federal business-class applicants.  Because it takes ninety days for pleadings to be complete, it is unlikely that counsel who initiated such litigation after Mr. Alexander declared his intention will have a hearing date before the Budget Bill, in which the kill provision is buried, is passed.  (In parliamentary democracies, rejection of a budget bill causes the government to fall.  Because Mr Harper has a majority in Parliament, the Budget Bill will be passed.)

There are two other investor-related proceedings.  First, on January 28th, Justice Richard Boivin dismissed the applications of seven federal investors, claiming that there was no evidence of the Minister's intention to abolish he files.  Well, there certainly is now, depriving his ruling from being determinative of the other cases. An appeal, in any event, was filed on February 27th for one of the litigants.

Second, Stéphanie RIccio, a Montréal lawyer, argued before Justice Peter Annis on February 27th on behalf of Québec-destined investors, whose files in Ankara Immigration Canada has been warehousing, not processing.  Justice Annis deferred releasing his decision until after he returns from his three-week holiday.

The Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper appointed both Justices Boivin and Annis to the Federal Court.  He also possesses the authority to elevate them to the Federal Court of Appeal.

Minister Alexander, in an interview with the South China Morning Post, claimed that Canada is still interested in attracting wealthy Chinese immigrants, inviting them to apply after CIC comes  up with a program for them.  He did not explain why he is abolishing all their files without having first devised a replacement program, revealing his complete lack of sincerity and callous disregard for immigrant applications.  Although his predecessor, Jason Kenney, instituted a Dragon's Den-like program for the wealthy, CIC's spokesman at in immigration conference admitted on 26 November 2013 that CIC had yet to receive a single application under Kenney's scheme, reinforcing the moral bankruptcy of Ministers Kenney and Alexander, who only want to boast that they cleared the backlogs, not that they attracted immigrants likely to contribute to Canada.

Kenney reduced the federal investor quota from 2,000 to 1,600 to 1,400. In 2012, according to Desjardins, CIC only processed 1,013 investor files. According todata.gc.ca, the number of businesss-class files pending on 9 July 2013 stood at 25,479

Tim Leahy