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True to his new title, the recently appointed Liberal critic for Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism wasted no time denouncing his newly-amalgamated file.

Etobicoke Centre MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj, who was named to the Liberal shadow cabinet last Friday, said that while he's thrilled to take on such an important and worthwhile position, he disagrees with the government's decision to combine multiculturalism with citizenship and immigration.

"It was an irrational and insensitive decision. It's not just new Canadians that are part of Canada's multicultural mosaic; many cultural groups have been around for many, many years," he told The Guardian in an interview just hours after the Conservative government unveiled an economy-heavy Throne Speech.

"Take Ukrainian-Canadians: they settled the west in the late 1890s and now all of a sudden we're not seeing them in the same light? I'm unnerved by that."

Immigrants, Wrzesnewskyj added, are critical to Canada's future, especially now in a time when the country's death rate is greater than its birth rate.

"It is our human resources that are our nation's greatest asset. It is our ever changing multicultural mosaic which will provide Canada with our global competitiveness and dynamism in the 21st century," he said.

Wrzesnewskyj, who endured harsh (and potentially libelous) criticism during the election campaign for his alleged lack of participation in committees, vowed to work on remedying some of the more dysfunctional attributes of the Ministry - namely its discretionary leeway. Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism is one of the few ministries where the minister has the final say, he said, leaving too much elbow room for politically-motivated decision-making.

"As critic, I want to bring focus to the issues," he said. "We need to fix the system. There's tremendous work to be done."

Wrzesnewskyj said his experience on immigration issues in Etobicoke Centre has prepared him well for such a task.

One such file is the well-publicized, yet still outstanding, case of the Tabaj family. Wrzesnewskyj played an integral role in fending off am imminent deportation order last fall that would have put the lives of the Albanian family of five in jeopardy.

Back in 2000, Arjan Tabaj was the victim of an assassination attempt in Albania that killed his best friend and brother-in-law and cost him his left leg (he now wears a prosthetic limb) and the use of his left arm. Those responsible for the automatic weapon attack on the pro-democracy van he was riding in that day, the Albanian ambassador has confirmed, are still at large and therefore still a threat to Arjan, his wife Anilda, daughter Maria, 9, and Canadian-born twin boys Kristian and Vincenco, 3.

The Tabaj's immigration case is a complicated one because the family abandoned a previous refugee claim filed in 1998- the first time they fled to Canada. They returned to Albania in 2000, feeling it was finally safe to do so, only to have Arjan's life threatened by the assassins. When they came back to Canada shortly thereafter using fake passports, they were told they couldn't stay. And they, along with Wrzesnewskyj, have been fighting for that right ever since.

"The Albanian ambassador has corroborated that their lives would be in jeopardy if sent back, so I don't understand why (the Ministry) is sitting on it," Wrzesnewskyj said. "They'd be in tremendous danger if deported, and that's a long time to be sitting in limbo."

"People's lives are absolutely dependant on Citizenship and Immigration to get it right, and we frustrate whole groups of immigrants when we don't get it right," he added.