A Citizenship and Immigration Canada centre in Sydney, N.S., is hiring up to 160 new staff five months after it eliminated 147 jobs.

CIC said it has come up with funding for 160 positions at the Sydney Case Processing Centre until March 2011.

It cut the 147 jobs in March when funding ran out. That sparked a demonstration in downtown Sydney.

It was not clear if the new jobs would be offered to the former employees.

Union officials and government critics welcomed the jobs, but said they should be permanent positions.

The Cape Breton centre handles thousands of applications each week for citizenship and permanent resident cards.

Temporary positions

Karen Shadd, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, made the announcement this week.

"CIC has reallocated funding to hire up to 160 new employees for the citizenship operations, the permanent resident card centre and the centralized intake office at CPC Sydney," she said.

Union leaders said they would continue to push to have the jobs made permanent.

Sydney-Victoria MP Mark Eyking, a long-time critic of the CIC's hiring policy, agreed.

He said the uncertainty over employment could lead to other problems including the loss of skilled immigrant workers to other countries.

"So there is a bigger picture than just processing immigrants. There is a problem of attracting professionals to our country if we continuously do not have a good system in place to process the immigration forms," he said.