What a great country Canada is.
Young mother, four children deported to Italy (with video)
Father battles to stay to save small business
By Hugh Adami, The OTTAWA CITIZENMarch 2, 2013
Outside the Ottawa airport terminal Vittoria Toscano gets a hug from her husband Massimo Marti.
Photograph by: Pat McGrath , Ottawa Citizen
Considering how foreign criminals have, for years, avoided deportation from Canada, what happened to Massimo Marti, Vittoria Toscano and their four young children this week can only be described as cruel.
The 29-year-old mother and the children, two Italian-born like the parents and the two youngest, born in Ottawa following the family’s move here in 2008, were kicked out of the country Friday. Their removal comes as Marti, 39, is trying to regain his status as a temporary resident with working privileges. He is co-owner of the Little Italy Bakery on Preston Street.
The tears shed at Ottawa airport by the family and their friends early Friday morning was heartbreaking.
Toscano and the children — three sons and a daughter — were expected to land in Rome on Saturday morning, then make their way to a village near Reggio, Calabria, in southern Italy. Federal Court Justice Anne Mactavish refused on Thursday to grant them an extension to allow them to remain in Canada until the three eldest children finish their school year.
Marti's status is to be determined at a hearing on March 11 before the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Should he be allowed to stay in Canada — where he eventually wants to become a citizen in order to give his family “a better future” — the earliest Toscano and the children can return here is next March.
In the meantime, three of the children, two of whom attended St. Rita Catholic School and the other Rainbow Montessori School, miss out on completing the academic year. And they will miss most of 2013-2014 if their father’s temporary visitor visa and work permit is restored, allowing his family’s return.
They will be enrolled in Italian schools in the next few days, but do not write or read Italian. Santo, 8, was in Grade 4 here, Giovanni, 6, in Grade 1, and Maria, 4, attended the Montessori school. The couple’s youngest child is Paolo, who is three.
Toscano’s temporary resident permit expired on Jan. 4. Though visitors with expired permits are given 90 days to renew their status — that is clearly stated on a letter sent to the family by Immigration — Canada Border Services Agency chose to disregard that policy. Toscano was questioned on Jan. 25 by a CBSA officer, while her husband was being held at the Innes Road Detention Centre following his arrest by the agency on Jan. 24 for working at his bakery without a permit.
“I was treated like a criminal,” he says.
Toscano, who speaks almost no English and needed the help of a friend to translate, did not understand she had 90 days to apply for a new temporary resident permit. The family’s immigration lawyer, Julie Taub, says the CBSA officer didn’t tell Toscano that though she hadn’t applied yet, she actually had until April 4 to do so. Taub says the CBSA officer only asked if she was afraid to return to Italy. Toscana replied she wasn’t. So then came the bad news: She was being deported.
Taub says she asked CBSA to defer Toscana’s removal order until the end of the school year. That was refused. Taub then requested the order be deferred until the end of March as Marti’s hearing had been postponed to March 11. Again, nothing doing.
Taub then asked the Federal Court to postpone Toscano’s removal order so the children could finish the school year. She argued CBSA errors and oversights in issuing the order were issues Mactavish should consider. As well, there would be irreparable harm to the children in not being able to complete the academic year and not seeing their father for an entire year should he win his case. But Mactavish wasn’t convinced.
Taub says it astounds her that Immigration officials were so quick to remove Marti’s family when so many foreign criminals have been able to evade deportation with repeated appeals. She provides many examples, including career criminal Sandra Gordon, who was ordered deported to Jamaica in 1976 but was still in Canada last summer, adding to her extensive fraud-and-theft rap sheet. There is also Jackie Tran, a Vietnamese gangster and major drug trafficker, who delayed his deportation for six years. Leon Mugesera, a Hutu war criminal from Rwanda, was able to remain in Canada until 2012, seven years after he was issued a deportation order by the Supreme Court of Canada.
She says there are almost 2,800 foreign criminals appealing deportation orders.
Following his family’s departure Friday, Marti returned to the Little Italy Bakery, where all he can do without spurring more CBSA trouble is hang out. Despite being co-owner, he has been ordered to refrain from any work. Marti argues that he didn’t pay himself anything for the many chores he did at the bakery prior to his arrest. The bakery was struggling, he says, so he was actually using money provided by his parents and in-laws in Italy to keep his business afloat and support his family. In essence, says Marti, he was paying the bakery to work there.
Marti says he first began to work in Canada in 2011 after acquiring a work permit from Immigration. He was a cook specializing in Calabrese cuisine at a Merivale Road restaurant. That same year, he invested $75,000 to become co-owner of the bakery, but he didn’t move to the new business until 2012.
He says he reapplied for a new work permit on three different occasions, but the applications were repeatedly returned as a result of omissions and errors. He says he received a notice last September that acknowledged his work specialty in making Calabrese bread, and, as a result, could qualify for a permit as he would not be taking a job that a Canadian could do.
Marti was also advised last January that his temporary resident status had expired and that he had 90 days to reapply. He was told he could apply for a new work permit at a U.S. border crossing. Taub says his arrest on Jan. 24 came as required documents for his work application were on their way to Ottawa from a Toronto immigration lawyer Marti had hired at the time.
Marti says he was in the bakery’s delivery truck when he was stopped by CBSA officers, handcuffed and taken away. He was also charged for employing two foreigners who didn’t have work permits. The case goes to court next week. The two illegal workers were his wife’s brothers, who had recently arrived from Italy and have since returned home, Taub says.
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