By DANIEL LEBLANC
Wednesday, December 19, 2001 – Page A6

OTTAWA -- The federal government is set to adopt unjust, retroactive immigration rules to get rid of its backlog of 500,000 applications quickly, an immigration lawyer said yesterday.

Ben Trister of the Canadian Bar Association, and other immigration lawyers, blasted Ottawa's plan to change mid-course the way it will handle tens of thousands of applications from would-be immigrants.

They charge that the proposed regulations, which would raise the bar for immigrating to Canada starting in June, should not apply to people who have already paid a $500 fee to process their applications under the old set of rules.

Under proposed regulations released on the weekend, the federal government would change the way it evaluates immigration requests. In the case of independent immigrants who do not have family in Canada, the new rules would put more emphasis on education, language skills and work experience, and less emphasis on having a specific occupation.

The government said this will improve the quality of immigrants to Canada, and dismissed worries of lawyers who are paid to help people come to the country.

"Canada needs immigrants, and these are new regulations aimed at bringing the best and the brightest in Canada," said Derik Hodgson, a spokesman for Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan.

He rejected the call to process the applications already in the system under the old rules.