Judy Sgro, the embattled Immigration Minister, defended her department yesterday, saying Immigration had for years sought to end the program allowing exotic dancers to enter Canada on temporary work visas, but the efforts were thwarted by Human Resources.
The blanket authorization for foreign exotic dancers was cancelled this week, in an apparent attempt by the Liberal government to end the controversy surrounding "strippergate."
Human Resources Minister Joe Volpe got credit for the move, telling reporters it is clear not all Canadians support the program, and that there was no justification for it.
Ms. Sgro said yesterday she has been unfairly criticized for supporting the program when, in fact, her department has been trying to cancel it since 1999, against the wishes of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.
"The department has letters arguing for a long time that this change had to happen. They wanted to get away from blanket authorization for this," she said. "My department is much more concerned about exploitation, where HRSDC is about [the]job market."
Ms. Sgro has also come under fire for granting a temporary resident permit to Alina Balaican, a Romanian stripper and campaign volunteer who came to Canada under the program. Ms. Sgro said it was the right thing to do, and the criticisms have been unwarranted. But that's the rough-and-tumble of political life, she said: "Politics is a rough business."
In a wide-ranging and candid interview yesterday in Toronto, the minister said she used to joke with her staff that Immigration would be the last portfolio she would want.
Now she has bullet-proof glass in her Toronto constituency office and armed security guards to ward off the noisy protesters who gather outside every day.
She has survived three weeks of relentless opposition questioning in the House of Commons over the political scandal. "Would I have preferred to have been doing urban affairs or seniors at the beginning? Sure, this is a tough portfolio. . . . But I did the right thing."
Ms. Sgro still awaits the decision of the Ethics Commissioner, who is investigating whether she breached conflict-of-interest guidelines when she granted Ms. Balaican, 27, the permit.
The minister maintains she made the decision on a humanitarian basis after an immigration consultant failed to file Ms. Balaican's papers in time. Without it, the woman would have had to leave the country while the sponsorship application filed by her Canadian husband was being processed.
Ms. Sgro said she never met the woman, and didn't know she was a campaign volunteer: "I did the right thing for someone I don't even know. Had it been pointed out to me this woman was playing an active part in my campaign, the optics wouldn't have been good so I probably would have had to deny it [the application]"
She believes the controversy would not have generated as many headlines if Ms. Balaican were a carpenter, instead of a stripper.
The opposition says she should resign for showing blatant political favouritism, and continued to question her judgment in the House yesterday. "With immigration staff who do business in strip clubs, an Immigration Minister who misleads Canadians and with this minister now being reduced to public ridicule on billboards, will the Prime Minister finally do the right thing, restore integrity to this ministry and fire the minister?" Conservative MP Helena Guergis asked.
Out on the streets of Ottawa, a saucy billboard appeared on the side of a truck, showing an ad seeking exotic dancers for a strip club in the airport area of Toronto, with a blonde woman dressed only in long gloves in the background, and a message telling applicants to contact Ms. Sgro and Mr. Volpe.
Strip club owners are furious that the blanket authorization for foreign-born exotic dancers to enter Canada on temporary work visas has been cancelled.
They say the move was a political one, and not due to a change in labour market conditions that suddenly made Canadians available to work as strippers.
Ihor Wons, Ms. Sgro's acting chief of staff and a confidant since her days at Toronto City Hall, went on a stress leave this week for his role in the controversy. He met with both Ms. Balaican, as well as with a Toronto strip club owner who was having trouble obtaining visas for 18 Dominican exotic dancers.
"I would have preferred he hadn't had that meeting for many reasons . . . we have an ethics commissioner . . . I'm not prejudging anything," Ms. Sgro said.
The minister said she spends an inordinate amount of time on requests for ministerial permits that come from MPs representing their constituents.
She intervenes in 800 of the 12,000 permits granted in a year -- mainly in cases of relatives of Canadians whose requests for visitor's visas have been rejected.
The opposition has demanded she release a riding-by-riding list of the residency permits granted over the past year to determine whether Ms. Sgro issued other special ministerial permits to reward Liberal supporters.
Ms. Sgro says the data are not collected by riding. The issue of ministerial permits is fraught with controversy because it is discretionary. MPs of all stripes line up to ask for these permits: Conservative MP Peter McKay -- one of the minister's most vocal critics -- asked for her intervention on behalf of the nephew of a defeated Tory candidate.
The minister hopes to put the stripper scandal behind her and turn her attention to the many problems in the immigration system.
Among the measures she supports are a "just-in-time" delivery system that would reduce wait times for prospective immigrants by capping the number of applicants.