Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Canada
\nOttawa, February 16, 2011 \u2014 The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism issued the following statement today as the Canadian men\u2019s cricket team gets ready for the Cricket World Cup, and as hundreds of thousands of Canadians get ready to cheer their favourite team.<\/p>\n
\u201cCricket is a game with a long history here in Canada. Many Canadians may not know this, but cricket was designated Canada\u2019s first national sport thanks to Sir John A. Macdonald. And the game was played on Canadian soil as early as 1785 in Montreal.
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\n\u201cI want to wish Canada\u2019s men\u2019s cricket team the best of luck as it gets set to compete at the tenth Cricket World Cup starting this weekend in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. This is Canada\u2019s third Cricket World Cup appearance in a row.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur boys are in tough with games against some of the best teams in the world. I know captain Ashish Bagai and his team will put on a spirited display that will do Canada proud as the team competes over the next few weeks. Here\u2019s hoping Canada\u2019s googlies break in the right direction, our bowlers bowl many wickets and our batsmen hit a whole lot of fours and sixes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI strongly believe that Canada\u2019s long historical connection to the game will continue in the future. In 2010, Canada welcomed more than 280,000 new immigrants, the highest number since 1957, and the second highest since 1913. I\u2019m hoping the Canadian Tendulkar is among them.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of those immigrants came from great cricket-playing nations, including 30,246 from India, 5, 205 from the countries that make up the West Indies, 4,985 from Pakistan, 4,363 from Bangladesh, 4,181 from Sri Lanka, 1,349 from South Africa. We even welcomed 9,501 immigrants from the United Kingdom, including England and Scotland, 1,132 Australians, and 563 New Zealanders.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of these new immigrants will, I suspect, form the backbone of Canada\u2019s future cricket glory, either as fans or as players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m optimistic that Canada\u2019s participation in the Cricket World Cup will promote greater interest in cricket in Canada, so that we can one day assume our rightful place among the great cricket-playing nations in the world. In the meantime, our government will continue to welcome other countries\u2019 cricket teams to tournaments on cricket grounds across Canada, and Citizenship and Immigration Canada will continue to facilitate the entry of cricket players into Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood luck to Canada\u2019s team. We are all cheering you on, just as we are cheering for cricket\u2019s success in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Canada Ottawa, February 16, 2011 \u2014 The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism issued the following statement today as the Canadian men\u2019s cricket team gets ready for the Cricket World Cup, and as hundreds of thousands of Canadians get ready to cheer their favourite team. \u201cCricket is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1265,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions\/1265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}