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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration in meeting number 26, Monday, October 18, 2010.
The orders of the day are twofold. For the first ten minutes there is a motion from Mr. Trudeau, and, pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, September 23, 2010, Bill , an act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
Mr. Trudeau, you have the floor. I believe you've already made your motion.
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Mr. Chair, you know that quite a few months ago we had this issue in front of us when I moved a motion asking for the restoration of gay rights and gay history in the citizenship guide at the next printing. I want to thank the committee for supporting the recommendations.
It then went to Parliament. We had a three-hour debate in the House of Commons on this. I was assured at that time that if I truly wanted to see this restoration in the next printing and if we wanted unanimous consent, which is what we had.... If you note the vote, it went on division, that we would leave the matter of what occurred in the past, whether it was an oversight or whether it was the minister or his staff who instructed people to pull this out.
At this point I'm more interested in seeing the wording restored. At that time I said I would support going forward. If that was the case it would not create division in the House of Commons. I was assured gay rights and gay history would be in the new edition. I'm going to honour that agreement, because we had a debate and at that time I was pushing my Conservative colleagues to say if we are continually divided on this matter it doesn't set a good example. What are new citizens supposed to do with a divided House of Commons? I was pleased that the vote was on division and it passed and that the new edition will have gay rights in there.
Through ATI requests from various journalists, I don't think it was an oversight. EGALE interpreted it as an oversight within the gay and lesbian community. Others said that it was a deliberate attempt to delete part of the history. Whichever way it is, it seems to me the ATI request from CP, I believe, shows there was some kind of intervention from the political staff. I'm not sure that we need to push this issue further, because if the minister ends up not giving us the information in ten days this will probably end up in the House of Commons, where we're going to have another debate on it, which I'm not sure is helpful.
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Well, this is the process that was approved by the steering committee and approved by this committee, so you're out of order.
If we have another subcommittee meeting, we can discuss these things, but it's inappropriate to discuss them at this time.
So we have two groups before us. First, we have the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants. The chair of the board of directors is Mr. Nigel Thomson, and Patrice Brunet is a member of the board. Good afternoon to the two of you.
Finally, we have Mr. Imran Qayyum, who is with the Canadian Migration Institute.
I believe Mr. Thomson is going to represent the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants. You have up to seven minutes, sir. Thank you for coming.
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Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Bonjour. Good afternoon. It's a great pleasure to be here, given the challenges we had in getting here.
The Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants welcomes this opportunity to appear before this committee on Bill .
CSIC appreciates the action the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is taking to shore up Canada's immigration system. We are particularly pleased that the government is taking action on ghost agents, the most important attribute of Bill and the key failing of the existing legislation. CSIC has actively advocated with government for several years to close the loophole that has allowed ghost agents to operate.
Under the immigration and refugee protection regulations, CSIC is designated as the body that regulates immigration consultants, who, for a fee, represent, advise, or consult with a person who is the subject of a proceeding or application before the minister, an officer, or the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.
CSIC welcomes the introduction of this bill, but there are a few shortcomings that need to be addressed.
First and foremost, the duty of any regulatory body is the protection of consumers. CSIC's primary focus continues to be the protection of vulnerable immigrants coming to Canada, those who will eventually become productive citizens. Before CSIC, there was no one to protect consumers of immigration consulting services.
Since 2004, CSIC has shut out 800 agents because they could not meet CSIC`s rigorous standards. We have disciplined 225 consultants for misconduct. We currently have 400 open investigations of complaints and 13 matters before CSIC's independent hearings panel. Further, we regularly conduct multilingual national consumer awareness campaigns. CSIC has been doing its job to protect future Canadians and has been successfully carrying out our mandate of educating, accrediting, and regulating our members.
With this in mind, Bill is a good start, but more needs to be done.
The proposed provisions look to close the loophole that currently permits ghost agents to prey upon uninformed consumers. We fully support this provision. CSIC has always advocated penalties for those who illegitimately hold themselves out as being qualified to offer immigration services.
The Canada Border Services Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have the mandate to investigate, prosecute, and ultimately bring to justice those individuals who look to thwart the immigration system. We are concerned that they will not have the resources to do so.
No funding provisions have been made to carry out the enforcement mandate, nor has any funding been earmarked for the prosecution of ghost agents. Without the proper funding and other resources, the hands of CBSA will be tied and ghost agents will continue to plague the immigration system.
Finally, CSIC embraces the provision in the bill that calls for the regulator to be more accountable to government.
CSIC has concerns about the powers that Bill gives to the . For the first time, under the new section 91, the minister alone will have the power to choose who will regulate immigration consultants. The proposed legislation will give her or him the power at any given time in history to change the regulator with a simple notice in the Canada Gazette. This creates the potential to unduly politicize the regulator, contrary to the public interest when the regulator must be seen as neutral.
The regulator's independence from the minister is of paramount importance. CSIC is concerned that under the proposed legislation, the minister will have too much power over the regulator and over those who are representing vulnerable immigrants. Our members must be free to provide the best advice to their clients without fear of ministerial influence threatening their ability to act independently as authorized representatives. Furthermore, CSIC objects to the fact that the will have more control over immigration consultants than the minister does over other authorized representatives, including lawyers.
CSIC supports the provision to allow the Governor in Council to specify what information the regulatory body should provide to government, but this information needs to be provided to a department other than Citizenship and Immigration. CSIC recommends that the information be provided to the Minister of Justice. This would ensure the independence of the regulator while remaining accountable to the government in the interests of consumer protection.
Canada's immigration system, its consultant regulator, and consumers of immigration consulting services deserve more stability than this bill currently offers.
I want to assure the honourable members of the committee and all Canadians that CSIC will continue to fulfill its mandate to protect consumers through accreditation, education, and discipline of our more than 1,800 members. CSIC is doing its job. Let's build upon experience and expertise.
Thank you very much.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon. The Canadian Migration Institute is honoured to be here today to share our views on Bill .
CMI is the voice of the immigration consulting profession. Since our inception in 2007, we have grown to more than 1,800 fellows, who can be found across Canada and overseas. With representatives from the immigration consulting, legal, and notary professions, CMI is larger than any other similar organization in North America.
Our mandate is to educate, accredit, and advocate on immigration law and policy. We have several chapters throughout Canada that provide regional support through accredited educational programs as well as advocacy on provincial issues.
CMI strongly supports Bill 's provisions, which will close legal loopholes that have enabled ghost agents to thrive. For too long, these unlicensed, disreputable individuals have exploited these loopholes to take advantage of prospective Canadians.
However, we do have serious concerns. While the new penalties in the bill give law enforcement agencies such as the CBSA and the RCMP the legal tools to put ghost agents out of business, there is no additional funding provided in the bill to enable these agencies to do this, meaning that consumers will still not get the protection they deserve.
Further, we remain unconvinced that this regulatory review to select a designated body is really necessary. Members of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, most of whom are also fellows of CMI, have invested over $37 million since 2004 to build CSIC's sophisticated regulatory functions. These include rigorous membership standards, a thorough complaints and discipline process, and an intricate IT infrastructure. It would be foolhardy to throw away this investment, especially because we know for a fact that our fellows are satisfied with CSIC as it is today.
Just two months ago we commissioned a survey to determine how our CSIC member fellows feel about their regulator. The results clearly indicated that fellows think CSIC is an effective regulator.
These fellows are on the ground, dealing with CSIC on a day-to-day basis and closely following its activities. That puts them in a unique position to evaluate its suitability as regulator. They realize that CSIC is well governed, a fact that has been confirmed by independent reviews done by recognized leaders in governance. They realize that CSIC has been working diligently to combat ghost agents within the constraints of its limited authority. They see that CSIC does so by reaching out to warn consumers and engages in the tracking of ghost agent activity, and they appreciate that CSIC has held its members accountable through its rigorous complaints and discipline process.
While there is no denying that some CSIC members are dissatisfied, this extremely vocal minority does not speak for our fellows. In fact, this regulatory review has cast a wide shadow over the immigration consulting profession. It is endangering the livelihood of fellows who work hard to provide high-quality service to prospective Canadians. By questioning the competence of their regulator, the government cannot avoid endangering the public's confidence in immigration consulting professionals and the overall immigration system.
I urge the government to carefully consider these points. It has taken many years to build CSIC into what it is today, and consumers should not have to wait while the process of building a regulator begins anew. Further, without concrete funding for enforcement, the effectiveness of the government's crackdown on ghost agents cannot be guaranteed.
Merci beaucoup.
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Absolutely, Mr. Trudeau.
To back up a bit so that we're clear, CMI provides voluntary education for immigration consultants, and actually to lawyers as well, who take our courses. Because of the changes in immigration law and policy, just because you become a CSIC member today doesn't mean you're competent to continue representing clients, so CMI provides, as one of our mandates, voluntary education in the form of courses and seminars that immigration consultants and lawyers can take to better themselves, become more competent, and ensure they're up to date with changes. In fact, not only do we do immigration courses, but we're recently partnered with Canada Revenue Agency to do a course that specifically deals with the HST and immigration practitioners.
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I'm glad you asked that.
As you know, Quebec is the only province in Canada to have its own immigration legislation.
Until recently, the Government of Quebec had not enacted immigration laws to appoint authorized representatives, as the federal government had done in 2004.
However, as you no doubt know, a few weeks ago, the provincial government announced that it would appoint CSIC members as representatives.
Once this information is made public—something that should happen in the next few days—we expect a significant increase in the percentage of members from Quebec.
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Up until recently, CSIC has been investing in CMI. We have provided, without any additional cost to any of our fellows, services that include access to some of the most useful or powerful tools immigration consultants and practitioners can use today, including LexisNexis, Quicklaw, and QuickImmigrant. We have provided our fellows with access to a service called Lexbase, presented by a lawyer in B.C., Richard Kurland, who provides monthly publications and updates on trends in overseas and in-land visa posts.
In fact, when I appeared before the committee previously regarding those levels, I had used some of the information from Lexbase, and you and I had an interesting exchange on the final disposition and FD targets. In addition to that, we provide all of our CSIC member fellows a copy of the annotated Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
All of this requires considerable investment, which CSIC has made in CMI in getting it to where it is now.
As of this year, we are breaking away from CSIC. We are becoming self-sufficient and CSIC will no longer be investing anything in CMI. We are currently undergoing a renewal cycle whereby we will be charging our fellows fees come November 1.
As was indicated in the response to Mr. St-Cyr, the contribution loan amount of $500,000—there was a grant and a loan—was dependent on CSIC reaching a minimum membership number of 3,000 members, at which point the $500,000 became repayable under the contribution agreement. The contribution agreement, as you know, was an agreement signed with the Government of Canada for the establishment of CSIC, including a large number of provisions, such as setting up our bylaws, complaints and discipline, compensation funds, and so on.
So that amount is still outstanding to the government, because we have not yet reached the membership levels. Not to make this a circuitous point, but we have not reached the membership levels, obviously, because a number of ghost agents have chosen to operate without becoming members of the society and because the provisions of the law allowed that to happen.
Thank you, gentlemen, for coming here today. We really appreciate you taking the time.
My first question is for Mr. Qayyum. In your report, you say you support the provisions of Bill to “close legal loopholes that have enabled ghost agents to thrive”, that for too long, these disreputable individuals have exploited these loopholes to take advantage of people. In fact, we know that ghost agents have caused a lot of human misery. Lord knows if they pay their fair share of income tax or what else they do. Then you expressed concern a little bit later that the regulatory review has cast a shadow over the profession, endangering the livelihood of fellows who work hard to provide service.
But my conclusion, based on my past experience, is that an improved system will give the public more confidence in consultants, and that it will enhance their chances of making a living. For example, if you look at organized real estate in Ontario, people used to make jokes about real estate agents and so on, but it's really a dynamic organization, and it has grown as the credibility of the agents has grown.
I just wanted to share that thought with you. I don't know if you have any comments on that. Please go ahead.
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I do, Mr. Young. Thank you for that question.
When we talk about the regulatory review, we're talking about the review of designating a regulator for immigration consultants. The issue we've seen is that ghost consultants, as we know, thrive on misinformation. Unfortunately, the reports we're getting from our fellows overseas in some of the most vulnerable markets, such as China and India, are that ghost consultants are using the minister's various public statements against CSIC, or they're twisting them to be against CSIC, and they're sayting to their clients, “CSIC is about to be closed. CSIC is done, so you don't need a CSIC member. Have your immigration done by me. I can get you the forged documents. I can get you the fake marriage licence, whatever, whatever.”
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No. That is an extremely fair comment, Mr. Young, and I would agree with you.
Our concern about enforcement, to be honest, stems from years of advocating with government to increase the enforcement efforts, to look at the resources devoted to enforcement, and to change the law. We appreciate, however, that it is not part of a normal bill to bring forward funding provisions. That's something that's done in the budgetary process within the envelopes. We understand that would have to be brought forward by CBSA and Immigration.
We did think it was important, given our concerns over the years, to express our ongoing concern about this issue of enforcement.
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Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Young, for that question.
We offer various types of courses based on CSIC. CSIC, as the regulator, sets the educational standards. Our courses have to meet those standards at a bare minimum.
The different courses we offer include information on, for example, the Quebec immigration system, and how to file various applications. Under the Canada-Quebec accord, as you know, Quebec gets to choose its own immigrants. It has complete sovereignty on who immigrates there. We offer courses that enhance an immigration practitioner's ability to better serve their clients. We have courses on the Immigration and Refugee Board, the immigration appeals division, the immigration division--
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The exchanges we just had, including Mr. Oliphant's comments and the question I asked earlier, reflect our confusion over the difference between the protection of the system, which is a legitimate concern of the federal government, and the protection of the consumer, which is something everyone recognizes as a necessary measure, but which, constitutionally speaking, comes under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the other provinces. I think this adds to the confusion. Here we have a bill whose first clause clearly forbids the practice of a profession in order to protect the consumer, but that consideration happens to fall completely under Quebec's and provincial jurisdiction. That is why the government and its representatives do not want to clearly state that this is the bill's objective.
I would like to get back to the figures you provided regarding members. You said that you have some 1,700 or 1,800 members. In your presentation, you say that, since 2004, you have shut out 800 members—unless I am mistaken—that you have disciplined 225 members and that there are 400 open investigations. Clearly, I am not familiar with all the professional orders—I am a member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec—but it seems to me that your exclusion and investigation numbers are extremely high.
Doesn't the fact that you had to shut out 400 of your 1,600 members point to a problem in the selection process? You have shut out a quarter of your members since 2004.
And thank you guys for coming.
I'm sure, as MPs, that we've all heard of complaints, sad stories--horror stories--of people who have lost thousands of dollars to these disreputable consultants. Worse yet, people's files have been rejected because of poor representation.
From your experience, what kind of misconduct is undertaken by some of these disreputable consultants? I'm going to get to the ghost ones, so we'll do that as a separate section.
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Well, CSIC has an independent complaints and discipline department, with a manager who is a senior member of staff. We have six individuals within the complaints and discipline department who investigate and make reports on incidents, and who investigate and do analysis.
Once a complaint is deemed to be significant, an investigation is put in place, and a report is then generated for the complaints and discipline manager, who has several different mechanisms for rectifying the complaint. It can simply be a letter to the members, essentially chastising them for the action and requiring them to take corrective measures.
If it is a more serious matter, it can be referred to the discipline hearings panel for a full hearing. Those are the 13 hearings I referred to in my presentation that are currently going forward. These are more serious matters. The manager has determined that a letter or simple fine against the member to obtain corrective action is insufficient, and the referral to the hearings panel must be made to look at whether the member should lose the privilege to be a member of the society and an authorized representative.
We have a whole graduated scheme of enforcement of the code of professional conduct and the bylaws of the society. The complaints and discipline manager has the ability to utilize whatever mechanism she has at her disposal to address the problem the member has created. That could be everything from deciding that the complaint has no merit, all the way, as I said, to a reference to the hearings panel, which could result in the member being deprived of membership in the society.
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Mr. Uppal, in fact this harkens back to our presentation about this bill closing those legal loopholes. The penalty provisions are very simple. In 2008, when this committee considered the immigration consultants, CBSA appeared before this committee and told the committee that they tried to go after ghost consultants and the justice department told them that it was a civil matter. That's in your minutes. You can refer to them.
We believe that bringing in specific penalty provisions gives these enforcement agencies the legal tools they need to go after these people. We may not be able to get the people overseas, but we can certainly get the people in our own backyard, in Canada. We're doing a lot of this.
The other thing that CSIC has done is to spend a considerable amount to educate the consumer. CSIC took out a shark ad. You may have seen it. It showed a great white shark with a seal in its mouth. It was called the “prey campaign”. CSIC has also launched a toll-free help line for individuals who may be in detention or may require the assistance of an immigration practitioner.
CSIC is trying to educate the consumer so that the consumer will be able to make the proper decision not to go with the ghost or an unqualified individual but to go with someone who is qualified, who is authorized and who is, very importantly, accountable.
I can speak on behalf of CMI. As an immigration practitioner and someone who competes, who is out there, who has gone through the standards, who meets the standards, who renews his membership every two years, and who holds himself out to be competent, I absolutely do. The biggest frustration--I come from a Pakistani community--is that we see the ads in our local newspapers. They're not in English, they're in Urdu, but we see them. And there's not much we can do about that, because the teeth are not there. So now with Bill and the penalty provision specifically, the teeth are going to be there.
I'm going to introduce the next two groups.
We have Mr. Warren Creates, an immigration lawyer. You're a group of one. We then have the three of you from the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants: Philip Mooney, past president; Timothy Morson, policy director; and Tarek Allam, the chapter president of Quebec. Welcome to all of you.
Mr. Creates, you have up to seven minutes, sir.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I'm a specialist certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada here in Ontario. I'm a specialist in immigration, citizenship, and refugee law. I was previously in-house counsel to the federal tribunal, the Immigration and Refugee Board, which is the largest tribunal in Canada and has the exclusive jurisdiction to adjudicate refugee immigration appeals, detention reviews, and admissibility hearings.
I have a number of recommendations. I prepared a brief. Hopefully it has been distributed to you.
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I only got notice of this on Thursday, so I did what I could to get prepared for the time we have together this afternoon.
Obvioiusly it's clear to all of us that we need robust laws, we need.... Unfortunately, we've come to a point in our history in this country where we need to criminalize the provision of immigration advice by those who are unauthorized to do so.
Twenty-five years ago I didn't think I'd be saying that, but it's obvious and clear to me now--and perhaps to everyone at this table and outside this room--that it's now required. Without it.... Obviously a second part of that is we need a very robust organization to be the watchdog for those immigration consultants who do become authorized.
I have a list of eight recommendations in my brief and I just want to touch on them in the limited time that I have, very quickly.
First of all, I take issue with the name of the legislation. This is not just a question of cracking down on crooked immigration consultants. If it were only that, we would be dealing with a far more robust piece of legislation. What we're dealing with in Bill are those who are unauthorized, and criminalizing their conduct.
So I recommend a name change, and I think this committee should look very carefully at that. Although there are headlines in the proposed name, I don't think it really accurately describes what this piece of legislation is doing.
Second, putting a five-year limitation period on the investigation, charge, and prosecution of offences that are chosen by election to be summary conviction offences I think is wrong. If we want robust legislation that's going to deter those who would be inclined to practise unauthorized practice in immigration law, it should be open-ended. Why put a five-year limitation clause on it? I just don't see the public policy behind it. If the objective of this legislation is to deter criminal conduct, then it should be forever over the heads of those who engage in it.
Third, I obviously--like all--want to see a new watchdog. It must be robust, independent, arm's length from the government. It must be professional. It must be fully staffed and resourced. The panel before us and others have commented before this committee on the ineffective nature of that watchdog organization, and a lot needs to be done to approve one that's going to be better resourced.
Fourth, I like the authority given to the cabinet to make regulations requiring the watchdog to give the minister information. That's of particular interest because it has the power beyond the minister, and that's often important to have. It was lacking in the last piece of legislation. It was lacking in the last watchdog, and privacy was I think given as the shadow, the reason why things couldn't be shared with the minister. So I like that.
I have some other comments, though, about what needs to be done to resource this properly. It's not in the legislation, it probably can't be, but our overseas and Canadian-based officers need tools to detect and monitor fraud. It's not enough just to criminalize it; there has to be an enforcement opportunity. Training is needed, sophisticated tracking, and audit software. There needs to be an investment by the Canadian government in those tools.
Sixth, I think the bill should contain a provision that requires everyone seeking status or renewed status in Canada to disclose the use of a representative. That was the recommendation—I think it's number five—in the June 2008 standing committee's review of the problems of the past, and I believe that should be in this bill now. So I think everyone seeking some kind of status in Canada who files an application must be required to disclose that they use a representative.
Seventh, there has to be an investment in public awareness. A media campaign and government website updates must be undertaken to warn the public of the risks and of the criminality of both using unregistered consultants and committing immigration fraud.
Finally, number eight, there needs to be encouragement and even in appropriate cases immunity from prosecution for those who've been duped, for those who have themselves committed fraud, and for employees of unscrupulous consultants to come forward with their evidence against bogus consultants.
Thank you very much. It's been a privilege and an honour to be invited to share my thoughts with you.
It's a pleasure to be here again before the committee and to welcome more new faces than at any other time I've had the pleasure to present. Welcome to everyone.
We also prepared a detailed brief and submitted it, but I believe it's in the process of being translated.
I'd like to make some general comments on the legislation. Then I'll turn it over to my associate to make some specific recommendations on one of the particular items in the legislation, and certainly allow as many questions as possible.
Just for the record, I'll say to everybody, “That's a great question, thank you for your question”, so we don't have to repeat that. We all went to the Bill Clinton school of political answers.
The Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants has worked for and supported the concept of the regulation of immigration consultants for 25 years. That is why CAPIC supports the intent and the main thrust of this bill. It is not only in the interest of consumers and the public to regulate immigration consultants, but in the interest of immigration consultants themselves.
Like many professionals, we hold ourselves to very high standards. We want to see these standards officially sanctioned and subjected to strong and enforceable regulation. Bill grapples with the very complex issue of ghost agents. The exploitation of vulnerable migrants by unscrupulous agents and unqualified intermediaries is a major global problem, part of a criminal industry worth billions of dollars. It causes incalculable harm to victims and their families. CAPIC has a number of recommendations concerning the enforcement, control, and prosecution of ghost agents.
Bill also addresses the major shortcomings identified by the standing committee in two separate reports in 2008 and 2009 on the way the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants was constituted in the first place. They recognized that the absence of any statute governing CSIC simply makes it impossible for the society to enforce its rules on non-members, and impossible for the minister and CIC to hold the society accountable or influence the society’s internal functioning. They also acknowledged the many legitimate complaints of CSIC members about CSIC's governance.
You recommended that a statutory body be established to replace CSIC. While CAPIC appreciates the degree of progress represented by Bill in making certain activities a violation of the Immigration Act--and we credit the department's ingenuity in bringing it forward in that manner--we recommend that the option of a statutory body be kept open for the future.
CAPIC has led the fight to resolve the issues of bad consultants and a poorly functioning regulator, and has continued to make recommendations for positive changes. Currently we are leading a group of concerned practitioners in preparing a bid to set up a new body, which we are calling “The Better Regulator.”
We have learned from the mistakes made in the past and from six years of imperfect regulation. We are doing this in an open and transparent manner, as volunteers, and we will ensure that our proposal is very clear on accountability and effectiveness.
Our detailed report makes several recommendations that we hope you will consider seriously, including specific recommendations that deal with third-party service providers. My colleague will explain those recommendations shortly, but I want to bring one more issue to the table first, and that is the issue of respect.
Hard-working, ethical consultants who ably assist tens of thousands of newcomers to come to Canada deserve the respect of the department and the government, as well as the respect of the general public. They choose every day to follow the rules, to serve the interests of their clients, and to forgo the fast buck and easy money that lures the unscrupulous. They do not need special recognition, but they do deserve the same respect accorded to all hard-working Canadians, be they auto workers, teachers, politicians, or millions of others.
Tackling the problem of ghost agents requires a better working relationship between all stakeholders. To be coherent, the policies that will flow from Bill must also recognize the role that authorized representatives play in support of legal immigration. It is self-defeating to deplore the ghost agent phenomenon on the one hand, while discouraging the use of authorized representatives on the other, as CIC does with its website messages. The role of authorized representatives must be validated, not denigrated; otherwise, what’s the point of it all?
Finally, as an additional sign of respect, and in agreement with my colleague who spoke earlier—thank you for stealing my thunder--we ask that you consider changing the title of this act. For hard-working, ethical consultants, it will be very difficult to accept the fact that for years to come they will be regulated by an act that specifically refers to everything they are not. The alliteration is appreciated, but the perceived disrespect is not.
Thank you.
I'd like to turn this over to my colleague, Mr. Morson.
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Mr. Chairman, I'd like to briefly address the issue of designated entities under the proposed subsection 91(4), and the need for a definition of what constitutes immigration advice.
CAPIC recognizes that the growing number of arrangements between visa offices and visa application centres allows for a measure of efficiency and cost savings. VACs, as they are called, are private agencies officially appointed to assist clients in filing their applications with visa offices, for a fee.
The services offered by VACs are actively promoted on visa office websites. Officially, VACs may only assist with form filling and filing of the application. The VAC agreement between VFS Global in India and the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi states that “The Service Provider...will advise the client as to any apparent shortcomings in the application”. This agreement explicitly acknowledges VFS's role in providing advice, and it explicitly recognizes that clients may need help with the process. Our question is where exactly a line is drawn between immigration form completion and advice.
The VACs are not qualified, in any way, to offer immigration advice. If a VAC completes or checks a form, does that constitute advice? Is it possible to complete a form without offering advice?
These questions are important because, besides VACs, there are many specialized sectors that are peripherally involved in the immigration business: travel agencies, education agents, human resources recruiting firms, all offer incidental immigration services. A badly completed form can unleash a whole chain of consequences that could be detrimental to an applicant, including the outright refusal of the application.
If completing an application form does not constitute advice, then by what measure can any third party be prevented from charging a fee for completing a form?
It is not clear how addresses this issue. If it does not address the issue, then one can be reasonably assured that ghost agents will exploit it.
CAPIC recommends, at a minimum, that Bill C-35 be amended to include a definition for advice, and that it require VACs to publish clear disclaimers to the effect that they are not authorized to provide immigration advice, with links to those regulatory bodies whose members are so authorized, as is the case in the U.K.
Thank you very much.
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I think the legislation does one thing, which is to give Canada the moral imperative and the moral authority to go and talk to other countries about their bad consultants, who cheat not only Canadian immigrants but also British immigrants and New Zealanders. To do effectively what the minister's been doing is to go around and say to his counterparts that we think they should enact similar legislation.
In the past and until Bill passes, individuals could come back to their own governments and say they were not doing anything wrong: they could fill in forms; they could provide advice, and there's nothing illegal about that under Canadian legislation. Now we will have the opportunity to do that.
It also gives agencies such as ours the opportunity to take our members, who advertise in many of the same places these ghost agents advertise, and talk to the editors of those newspapers and ask them if they realize what they're doing, if they realize they can prevent these individuals from putting out their false ads.
The last thing I'll say is that we hear the sensational stories. We do. We hear about all the gross, egregious things individuals do, but those things aren't the bulk of the problem. The bulk of the problem is that individuals do a few things every once in a while, and we have to let those individuals know that the cost of doing that is prohibitive and that they can't get away with it.
I'd like to begin by saying that I share your concern over the title of the bill for the same reasons you brought up, but also because, in my opinion, the title of a bill should not be used for political marketing purposes.
Unfortunately, if my understanding is correct, the rules of the House do not allow us to change the bill's short title, but we can at least strike it. I hope that the committee members will agree with me on removing the title.
How many members does your organization have, Mr. Mooney?
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As part of those discussions, you have probably read the first recommendation of the committee's report on immigration consultants, which calls for the Quebec Government to regulate consultants practising in Quebec.
If the committee were to go with that recommendation and to introduce amendments in response to the bill, the Government of Quebec would have the opportunity to create a professional order, to appoint or create an organization of its choice, or to negotiate an agreement with the organization selected by the federal government.
I understand that my question is hypothetical, but let's assume that an organization based on and inspired by your work is designated by the federal government. Do you think it would be reasonable to believe that that organization could agree with the Government of Quebec on regulating Quebec consultants, taking into consideration the distinctive Quebec regulations, especially those pertaining to Quebec immigration legislation and knowledge of French, which is a requirement in that province?
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That was a requirement in the original contribution agreement with the federal government. They said we had to establish a fund. We have errors and omissions insurance. It costs about $220, and I think $75 of it is an administration fee. So the cost of our errors and omissions insurance is very low, because the number of complaints and the monetary rewards to individuals for errors and omissions have been very low in the past five years.
However, there are times when an individual will commit an actual criminal offence against an individual in terms of fraud. That isn't covered under errors and omissions insurance. So the federal government asked that a fund be set up designed to assist individuals in claiming for damages because of criminal acts of members of the society.
In the first two years, we have never heard of a case where a claim has been made. We have all contributed substantially to the fund, to the tune of $800 to $900 per member. The fund sits at over $1 million, I believe. The only thing we know about the fund is that there are administrative costs--it has a board of directors and staff--but there have never been any claims. We have asked repeatedly for more information on that, and it has not been forthcoming.
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The law societies operate based on errors and omissions insurance. The rates are rather high, and it's not because there are claims against immigration lawyers that result in monetary damages that are paid out to victims of that. It's mostly, realistically, fraud.
It's an insurance policy. It's expensive to operate and administer, but it's necessary because there are going to be persons who are victimized and they need to be compensated in some way.
How do you compensate someone based on a failed or negligently prepared refugee or immigration claim? It's very, very difficult in our current system to quantify that. I don't think it's ever been tried, but it may have.
With regard to returning fees, many of the complaints we heard earlier about disputes involving clients and their consultants have to do with fees. There's a legitimate case, at times, perhaps, to be made that fees should be returned, so that they're put back in the place they were before people hired the consultant who ripped them off.
I like your question. I think there's merit to it. Obviously, it's not in this piece of legislation. If this is the opportunity for the country to regulate in this area, this is the chance to do it. Rather than doing it on a piecemeal basis, it should be done comprehensively.
Thanks. This has actually been an interesting contrast in terms of presentations. It was good to have you guys sort of back to back to each other.
Mr. Mooney, I wanted to very quickly get your thoughts on the issue Ms. Chow brought up. This process we're undertaking now to choose a new regulator, or at least to go through the process to choose a new regulator.... One of the confusing parts of our last meeting, when we had the ministry staff here, was that we had almost pre-started or predated Bill through this process. But you didn't, and you aren't, considering in your application and process potentially becoming a regulator under the new legislation. You did so under the current legislation.
I think if everyone had a picture in mind of a bad consultant or someone who is out to cheat people, it would be a guy meeting someone in a dark corner of some restaurant in downtown Toronto or Vancouver or Delhi. He would have an individual who had been referred to him by someone else—a brother, a friend, a colleague—and would say, “I can help you come to Canada. I can get you there in six months. I'll fill in all your forms. The right way to do it is to do this, this, and this. You give me these documents. I'll do it all for you. Just give me $5,000.” The applicant then gives the money to that individual, goes away, doesn't hear anything for months and months and months, maybe hears that the application's been filed, gets no feedback as to where that application is, and is told over and over again for a year or two years that the lineups are long and that things are backed up. Eventually it comes out after a few years that the application was never filed. By then the applicant can't find the individual.
Well, unfortunately, everything that individual did under the current legislation was perfectly okay. It wasn't moral, it wasn't ethical, but it was legal, because the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act said who could represent, and the department, in its wisdom, when it put out its bulletin, said that representation starts after an application is filed with the government. So effectively, it did little or nothing.
I'll be honest with you. We were all so busy getting regulated and taking tests and taking our English-language tests—I'm not sure what I would have done if I had failed the test, I would have to have been a sign-language consultant—that we didn't realize until we all became regulated that the discipline, the regulation, all that stuff, only applied to us. We really thought it applied to everybody. Of course it's like reading the fine print on your contract and saying, “oh, darn”. That's when we started to work towards changing that. We were given lots of reasons why it couldn't be changed and then lots of promises that it would be.
We absolutely applaud everyone, and I say this sincerely: the committee who recommended those things and the government that acted on them.
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Sure. I'm also a member of CMI. It would be silly not to be, because they give us a lot of things for free, or they were free.
In regard to that survey, we participated in a listserv of several hundred professionals who share ideas and solve problems. Unanimously, the individuals came out, and one of the first questions they asked on that survey was whether their identity would be disclosed to the regulator, in terms of the answers to these questions, and the answer was yes.
I personally objected to some of the questions and gave very strenuous answers in opposition to the leading nature of the questions, and I was told at the end that I would be put down as non-responding. Frankly, I wouldn't say this was quite up to Gallup standards. In fact, when they disclosed the results, they inadvertently disclosed the data behind it, and I would leave that with you to say that you would not accept that as a standard in terms of accountability. Frankly, just think about it: we're all members of CMI, we get a lot of things for free, which of course we pay for in our CSIC fees. If you're not a member of CMI you don't get any of it; you have to pay for it yourself. That's why they're almost unanimous in terms of their support.
Then, all of a sudden this year we were told, by the way, it's not free any more. Surprise, surprise. After the million dollars, it's not free, and clearly, we've each paid something like $700 or $800 a year for those services. When they first came out they gave us all these free things. That was in August, September, October 2008, and then remarkably, at the end of October, about two weeks before our annual renewal, we were told that several of those things were now mandatory, that we must have them to continue to practise and to keep our licence. Of course they were all free from CMI, but we had to have them. So your choice was to join CMI or risk losing your membership or pay something like $1,000 to $1,500 in additional fees to buy the resources. And that has continued for the last few years. That's one of the reasons that our association, which was providing some of those things, simply couldn't compete.
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Thanks, and I may not take my whole time, actually.
I'm still sorting this out as a new member of the committee. I wasn't in the committee when it did its last report and its report before, and all the way back to 2004, when discussions started on this topic. But as I'm looking at this, I see a life cycle in here.
I just want to get where you see the points of the problem are. You have education, certification, licensing, continuing education, compliance, including policing, governance of the body that's doing all of that, public education, complaints, discipline, and then relations with society, government, and others. So there are all of these factors in here, and I'm seeing certain little holes in various parts of it. If you had to name where you're seeing a weakness in this legislation, where is it along that line?
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Well, the legislation isn't designed to solve all of the problems. It goes a major step along the way toward what individuals are allowed to do if they're in Canada in terms of immigration procedures and practices.
With regard to the regulation, you can have a perfectly designed system; it's how it's implemented. In the first seven or eight things you indicated, about education, accreditation, exams and standards, CSIC has done many of those. I would simply say that the difference in what we feel, as members, is that they've been done in a way not to maximize the effectiveness or the efficiency of the organization, but to maximize the revenues. So it costs us a lot of money to belong and to stay, and that has an impact on the number of members CSIC has removed. Of those members—you heard about the numbers removed—the vast majority were removed because they couldn't afford to pay the fees.
A lot of the individuals who graduate from schools are there to set up their own businesses. Immigration practitioners, on the whole, operate alone. They all come out and they're all operating on somebody else's dime, mostly. Perhaps they have a little capital saved up, and they start their businesses and find out it's not easy.
I was in the corporate world for 40 years, so getting business is the hardest thing you have to do. But when you end up in a situation where your business is developing slowly, and then you get hit with fees and more fees, ultimately you say “Maybe I'm in the wrong business, but I really like this.” We believe a whole lot of them have decided they can actually stay in this business without paying the fees.
I want to make sure that I have understood properly.
Statutory and regulatory organizations were discussed. My understanding is that a statutory organization is an organization created pursuant to the act, while a regulatory organization is set up pursuant to the regulations.
In addition, unless I am mistaken, you say that Bill provisions are a good starting point, but the ideal institution in the medium term would be an organization created pursuant to the act.
Did I understand that part properly?