Many African immigrants encounter bureaucratic problems when arriving in Canada because their names are incorrectly entered on their official cards by government authorities, deplore community workers. The latter denounce the “cultural inconsideration” of the Canadian authorities.
Canadian identity cards, as in many other countries, use the “first and last” model. But some states, including Djibouti, in French-speaking Africa, are exceptions. Djiboutians have three first names on their passport: the first is theirs, the second is that of their father and the third belongs to their grandfather. When some get their first permanent residence card in Canada, the first name space is missing or their name is reversed. So a woman can end up with a male name, for example.
The error can cause several headaches. If a permanent resident becomes a Canadian citizen, for example, he will have to change his legal name in order to obtain a passport because of the error on the card. In other cases, an error is introduced into the second or third work permit obtained by an asylum seeker, say stakeholders. When the person presents himself at the counter of Service Canada, license in hand, to renew his social insurance number, his request is refused because of the error, explain the interveners.
The solution for Djiboutian immigrants is often to change their name with the provincial authorities, which then allows them to change their name on their permanent residence card and other official documents. But the process is expensive: an adult must pay $137 to do it, just like a child, unless the latter does it at the same time as his parent. The new permanent residence card costs $50.
Ontario’s Ministry of Public and Business Services lists only four official name changes made by Djiboutians in 2021 and 2022. But Sana Khalil, an officer with the Clinique juridique francophone d’Ottawa, which helps Djiboutians, believes that the provincial data “makes no sense” and that the number of name changes is higher. One of her colleagues at the clinic, she said, made “lots of requests”.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says it does its best to ensure the accuracy of the name on the documents it issues, but errors can occur. The agency uses the name as it appears on the machine-readable zone of the passport — the section at the bottom of the individual’s photo — to create documents such as the permanent residence card. In Canada, the citizen’s family name is listed first, but in Djibouti, it is often the person’s first name.
A single clinic
The clinic where Sana Khalil works in Ottawa says it processes dozens of files from immigrants who find errors in their official documents. The Clinique juridique francophone d’Ottawa is the only one in the federal capital to make solemn declarations, a task it does free of charge. The statutory declaration is often necessary when changing a name, such as when the person does not have a birth certificate.
Immigrants have to spend a lot of money and effort “to rectify a mistake that they themselves did not make”, says Aliciadeea Le Roc, the director of the legal clinic. She has difficulty explaining why problems arise in the creation of Canadian identity cards. “It may be a communication issue. It may be a staff turnover. It is the people in charge of the bureaucracy who make mistakes. Maybe they are poorly trained. For me, it’s cultural ignorance,” she commented in an interview.
And Djiboutians are not alone in encountering problems. Some Cameroonian women see the acronym “EPSE” included in their official Canadian documents. The word, which appears on their passport from their country of origin, represents however the abbreviated form of the term “wife”. In March, the legal clinic also had to help a family of nine Congolese children change their name after it was reversed on their permanent residence card. The parents had to pay $137 for each of them.
“We invest a lot of time to help Djiboutians get out of a miserable hole. But imagine the person who has to change the name for the whole family. We can help them, but if they don’t have the money to do so, we don’t have the means to cover these costs, argues Aliciadeea Le Roc. It’s fine to say yes to immigration, but if you don’t deal with people when they arrive, it’s a burden on the system. We are in the process of inviting people, but we are letting them down because of the bureaucracy. »
This story is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.