Ukraine does not correspond to the criteria that Canada advances to the countries applying for a visa-free regime.
This was stated by the Minister of immigration, citizenship and refugee Canada, John McCallum, responding to a petition regarding the introduction of a visa-free regime for short trips of Ukrainian citizens to Canada.
“While Ukraine has not reached the criteria Canada uses to assess the suitability for exemption from visas. As a result, the Ministry has no plans in the near future to revise the visa requirements for Ukraine,” said McCallum.
According to him, the visa policy of Canada is based on the facts and in no way connected to political or trade agreements”. However, he stressed that Canada regularly monitors a variety of indicators of all countries, assessing the possibility of changing their visa status.
“If the preliminary findings are positive, the Ministry may launch a formal detailed review. Despite the importance of relations between Canada and Ukraine, officials are closely monitoring migration trends and other indicators of the country”, – said the Minister.
However, he believes that Canada provides a very high level of service to visa applicants in Ukraine, so visa will not be an obstacle to obtaining the benefits of the free trade agreement between the countries.
“With this level of visa services, the Ministry expects that the Ukrainian travelers will be able to benefit fully from the free trade agreement between Canada and Ukraine,” said McCallum.
He added that the efforts of Ukraine depends on the country according to the canadian criteria for the abolition of visas.
“Although the Ministry would cooperate with Ukraine on migration issues, that Ukraine is responsible for the achievement of certain of Canada’s conditions for lifting the visa. Meanwhile, the Ministry promises to do everything possible to continue to improve the quality of visa services to thousands of Ukrainians, who visit and do business in Canada annually,” concluded the official.
Private e-petition to abolish visas for short-term (up to 90 days) trips of citizens of Ukraine to Canada filed in Federal Parliament, the canadian of Ukrainian origin Mykola Kravets. In the allotted time, she has collected nearly five times more signatures than the minimum required for submission to the consideration and received support from 120 MPs and senators of the Federal Parliament representing all four major political parties, including leader of the official opposition Rona Ambrose.
It should be noted also that during the election campaign the Liberal party, which has a majority in the current convocation of the Parliament of Canada, in case of victory promised “to work to achieve this goal,” the abolition of visas for Ukrainians. This question even had to be submitted to the party Congress, however, until the final session never came.
