Canadian Immigration -NewWorldGuides
According to media reports across the country, failure rates of up to 30% since March can be attributed to new, tougher questions introduced to curb the cheating.
A modified test introduced on October 14, 2010 is trying to cut the increased failure rate to 20%, a move hoped to unclog the system.
The only would-be citizens required to take the test are those between the ages of 18 - 54, giving older immigrants no real reason to worry about fitting in to Canadian society or Western norms or in fact even know what a democracy is.
The old test was quite easy, only requiring applicants to pass with a 60% grade with 20 multiple-choice questions within 30 minutes. Compare that to now requiring applicants to complete with a 75% grade to pass.
Typically, an NDP MP (Olivia Chow, an immigrant herself) criticized the government saying "Dramatic increases in both wait times and failure rates for Canadian citizenship tests (are) costing tremendous disappointment for immigrants who passionately want to become citizens," suggesting the new rules create a bottleneck in the system and going on to say the rules set new immigrants up to fail citizenship tests.
Canada has recently and over the past 20 years faced many voices of criticism due to sub-standard or no background checks, allowing people with terrorist links to enter and country and receive citizenship without having the slightest clue on life in the Western World.
The new tests could lower the overall rate of foreigners becoming Canadian citizens in a country with the highest per-capita immigration rate in the world.