EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday May 31, 1995

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[English]

The Chairman: My name is Gar Knutson. I'm the chair of the committee. I want to welcome our guests from the Organization of Professional Immigration Consultants.

I don't know whether you've appeared in front of a parliamentary committee before. The norm is that you make a presentation for 10 to 20 minutes and then we go around the table, ask questions, and develop some sort of dialogue.

I think it might be helpful for you to know that we're really just getting started on this issue. Mendel Green appeared in front of us and somewhat anecdotally described that there was a serious problem that needs to be addressed either by this government or provincial governments, or the two working in conjunction with each other.

I know the minister is anxious for us to come up with some sort of recommendations to help solve the problem of phony consultants, so we're most interested in hearing your views.

On that, I will turn it over to you.

Mr. Paul Billings (President, Organization of Professional Immigration Consultants Inc.): Before I start, Mr. Chairperson, I'd like to introduce the gentlemen who are accompanying me today.

Mr. Frank Marrocco is the legal counsel for the Organization of Professional Immigration Consultants; Henry Goslett is the vice-president of OPIC; and Nigel Thomson represents OPIC from B.C.

I will be giving the brief today, and I and members of OPIC will be answering the questions that are directed to us by the subcommittee.

Mr. Chairperson and members of the subcommittee, from the perspective of the Organization of Professional Immigration Consultants, the establishment of a subcommittee is an important and very welcomed development. OPIC strongly supports the goal of effective regulation of professional immigration consultants. The formation and efforts of OPIC has been, we believe, the most constructive and focused response to this issue by any stakeholder to date.

OPIC is a private non-profit organization that was founded in September 1991 by a group of ex-immigration officials and foreign service officers, who recognized that the immigration consulting industry was in need of having some order imposed. We recognized that the efforts and commitment of various levels of government and interested organizations to regulate immigration consultants had been largely, and continues to be, ineffectual. The aim of OPIC was to promote, consistent with the public interest, the progress and development of the immigration consulting profession.

Although it should be recognized that the majority of immigration consultants are competent, scrupulous, and provide valuable services to the public, it remains that the practice of immigration consulting is a wholly unregulated activity. Anyone can call themselves an immigration consultant. This has resulted in instances of unscrupulous or incompetent practice that has been injurious to individual clients and to the reputation of the government and the immigration consulting profession.

Effective regulation of immigration consultants is needed to protect the public interest. OPIC strongly supports this goal. However, efforts to regulate immigration consultants should be focused on protecting the public from incompetent and unscrupulous practices, not limiting the public's legitimate right of access to competent, professional immigration consulting services.

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After reviewing the various options and lack of any real progress to date, OPIC is of the view that the federal government should avail itself of the authority under paragraph 114(1)(v) of the Immigration Act to enact regulations prescribing licensing authorities who will carry the costs and burden of licensing and regulating immigration consultants. The prescribed licensing authorities should be self-regulating professional bodies. The federal government will have the ability to review and deny recognition of any prescribed licensing organization that fails to meet the standards imposed.

Standards for recognition should require the organization to maintain basic requirements for admission and membership, a code of professional conduct, educational and professional development programs, an errors and omissions insurance plan, and a credible and transparent mechanism for hearing complaints and for disciplining members.

It is recognized that there are potential constitutional and other implications of this approach, but these appear to be manageable. It is the most cost-effective and promising option currently and realistically available.

From our point of view, we would like to define the issue with respect to unregulated practice.

To the layperson, immigration requirements, forms, policies, and procedures are complex and not well understood. Information available from government sources is largely inadequate and often inaccessible. In many cases, a qualified consultant is a more appropriate service provider than a lawyer who may or may not have specific practical experience or expertise in immigration matters. Immigration consultants can and do provide viable services to what has proven to be a very accepting marketplace.

As a result, the business of immigration consulting has grown significantly over the past two decades and has, for the most part, gained acceptance by the general public. However, while immigration consultants are bound by laws relating to contract, tort, consumer protection legislation, the Criminal Code, and the Immigration Act itself, it remains a completely unregulated professional activity.

In practical terms this means that anyone, notwithstanding their background, training, or competence, is capable of holding themselves out to the public as an immigration consultant. There is no governing regulatory authority or professional body to oversee their activities. This has resulted in instances of incompetent, improper, unscrupulous practices by consultants, which have been injurious to individual clients, to the reputation of Canada and its immigration programs, and to the reputation of the immigration consulting professional in general.

The public and the immigration consulting profession urgently require and would welcome a credible regulatory regime. However, any effort to regulate immigration consultants should be directed primarily at the protection of the public from unscrupulous or incompetent practitioners, not at limiting the public's legitimate right of access to competent, professional, immigration consulting services.

To put the issue in perspective, it should be acknowledged, as was done in the 1990 Report of the Task Force on Paralegals for the Attorney General of Ontario - that was the Ianni report - that the majority of immigration consultants are competent, scrupulous, and provide valuable services to the public.

It should further be noted from a public policy point of view that members of the immigration consulting profession are currently the primary recruiters of high quality applicants for immigration to Canada. This was stated most recently by the assistant deputy minister at a recent address to OPIC members in Toronto.

At a time when the number of applicants for immigration to Canada is declining and selection standards are becoming more restrictive, the immigration department is by necessity looking more at effective partnering with professional immigration consultants to enhance the recruitment of quality applicants and to improve the efficiencies and processing of applications both in Canada and abroad.

OPIC is currently involved in regular and ongoing consultations with senior immigration officials in Ottawa, in the Ontario region, and in British Columbia. Many OPIC members are former government officials themselves, who are able to offer valuable insight and advice to the government on a range of processing and policy issues. OPIC recently negotiated a service standards agreement with the international service group, which puts the organization on an equal footing with the immigration bar with respect to service standards and access.

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Notwithstanding the many positive contributions that have and can be made by professional consultants, it remains that, without effective regulation, members of the public will continue to be at risk without a practical means of recourse for incompetent, illegal, or unscrupulous practices.

It is generally accepted that the following basic elements would have to be included in any credible, professional regulatory regime: basic requirements for admission and membership; a code of professional conduct; educational and professional development programs; an errors and omissions insurance program; and a credible process for hearing complaints and disciplining members.

We'd like to outline some options as to how we feel the industry can be controlled.

The first option we will cover will be the provincial regulation of immigration consultants. The regulation of professions and trades is a matter that is within the exclusive constitutional jurisdiction of the province. There's a long history of attempts by various provinces to grapple with the issue of regulating paralegals, including immigration consultants. Solutions ranging from direct government regulation to administration by provincial law societies have been considered and largely abandoned because of expense, complexity, or other pressing priorities.

The second option is administration by provincial law societies. Although studied extensively, provincial law societies have rejected the idea of taking responsibility for administering the conduct of paralegals. In general, it can be said that the various provincial law societies and bar associations have taken aggressive positions, invariably in the name of public interest, that would essentially bar paralegals from practising unless employed by a law firm.

OPIC notes with interest that the inherent conflict of interest the legal profession has on this issue has been rarely admitted, raised, or identified. Rather than preventing public access to competent, professional immigration consultants, which does not seem to be in the public interest but certainly in the interest of the legal profession, a more constructive approach would be to support efforts to find an effective way to regulate professional immigration consultants.

It is red herring to argue that professional immigration consultants, because of lack of legal training, are incompetent to provide immigration consulting services. Every day, non-lawyers, such as accountants, trust officers, and investment bankers, competently give advice to clients touching on legal issues.

If it were true that non-lawyers could not effectively represent clients in immigration matters, it would follow that adjudicators, case-presenting officers, members of the appeal and refugee division, visa officers, etc., the majority of whom are non-lawyers, would also be incompetent to carry out their functions, but this is not the case.

In fact, it is clear that the real issues are training and experience in regulatory mechanisms for professional certification and discipline. A competent, professional immigration consultant should recognize when the services of a lawyer or other professional are required in a particular case, and then should make the necessary referral.

The third option is federal regulation of immigration consultants. The federal government has also studied this issue extensively. I believe it first started in 1981, 14 years ago, but without any practical result given that the constitutional jurisdiction lies squarely with the provinces. Attempts to engage the provinces to regulate immigration consultants have invariably failed over the issue of funding or priorities. Neither the province nor the federal government appears willing to spend new money or resources to regulate immigration consultants.

The fourth option is a federal licensing scheme. We understand that the federal government has been reviewing the controversial Australian federal licensing model. We have spoken with government officials on this matter and have really no specific comments to make on that model, other than to reiterate the government's own findings that it would likely be exceedingly complex, costly, and may involve infringements on provincial jurisdictions.

The fifth option we're considering is the federal authority under the Immigration Act for prescribing self-regulating professional organizations. The Immigration Act recognizes the role of immigration consultants in certain instances. Section 31 of the Immigration Act, the right-to-counsel section, requires that persons subject to an inquiry be informed of the right to retain the services of a barrister or solicitor or other counsel. Other counsel has, in practice, included professional immigration consultants.

The section specifically envisions representation by other counsel at the hearing itself and that the person concerned be responsible for any fee charged by such counsel. Similarly, subsection 69(1) of the Immigration Act recognizes that persons may be represented at their own expense by other counsel before the refugee division.

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Paragraph 114(1)(v) of the Immigration Act gives authority to the Governor in Council to make regulations requiring the licensing of immigration consultants from a prescribed authority before being entitled to represent clients for a fee before an adjudicator, the refugee division, or the appeal division. This means that the federal government could recognize certain prescribed organizations that would have the self-regulated authority to grant licensing to immigration consultants.

This section has never been used. It is unclear whether such prescribing of an authority would amount to the regulation of a profession and infringe on an area of otherwise exclusive provincial jurisdiction. This seems unlikely, though, since the prescribed authority itself would be the regulating body that would grant the licence, not the federal government. It is also unclear whether a self-regulated organization could be a prescribed authority, although there does not seem to be any prohibition or bar against this.

Notwithstanding the issue of the constitutional validity of the Governor in Council enacting regulations pursuant to paragraph 114(1)(v), subsection 108(2) of the act permits the minister, with the approval of the Governor in Council, to enter into agreements with any province or group of provinces for the purpose of facilitating the implementation of immigration policies and programs. In the event there is a legitimate challenge to the constitutional validity of any federal initiative to prescribe licensing authorities, it seems clear that this could be overcome by federal-provincial agreements in this area. Further study may reveal that some amendments to paragraph 114(1)(v) would be required.

However, it should be emphasized that there does not seem to be any major or insurmountable technical impediment to establishing criteria for prescribing a self-regulating organization that would have the authority to license immigration consultants.

I note that the authority to make the regulations pursuant to paragraph 114(1)(v) does not extend to immigration consultants who provide advice and assistance to persons making an immigration or other application to an overseas visa office, or an inland office for that matter. Only persons appearing as counsel before an adjudicator, the refugee division, or the appeal division are specifically covered. An amendment to paragraph 114(1)(v) may be required to specifically cover the prescribing of organizations that would license individuals engaged in these activities.

Although the question of extending regulatory jurisdiction over consultants who practise outside of Canada is a real one, a practical solution would be to ensure that the person on the record as counsel, or in any such application, would also be a licensed member in good standing of a prescribed organization, or, naturally, a member in good standing of a provincial law society.

This would require unregulated overseas and domestic consultants who wish to make representations to a visa or immigration office to retain a qualified lawyer or licensed immigration consultant to do so on their behalf. This would not prevent unlicensed individuals from counselling clients and assisting with the preparation of forms, but would prevent them from acting as counsel of record and having the standing to make submissions or representations before a visa or immigration office.

How would this work in practice? A practical way of looking at how prescribing certain licensing organizations under paragraph 114(1)(v) would work is as follows. As a matter of professional responsibility that would be subject to discipline, the licensed immigration consultant would owe a duty to the client and to the decision-maker to meet certain standards of conduct and competence.

Complaints about the conduct or competence of a particular licensed consultant could be addressed to the disciplinary committee of the prescribed organization that granted the licence. Complaints could originate from clients, organizations, members of the public, or government officials.

The effectiveness of the prescribed organization in ensuring its members are competent and practising scrupulously would be subject to review by the prescribing authority, which is the federal government, on an ongoing basis.

All costs and administration necessary to regulate member immigration consultants would be borne by the prescribed licensing organization, not by the government. A self-regulating organization that is not adequately regulating its members as required will be taken off the list of prescribed licensing organizations, thus preventing access of its members to immigration offices and hearings.

Although a number of issues would still need to be clarified, OPIC generally supports the latter, option five, as the most constructive, cost-effective, and easy-to-implement solution for the regulation of professional immigration consultants.

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By way of background and for members of the subcommittee who don't know much about OPIC, as I indicated previously, OPIC was incorporated as a non-profit organization in August 1991. It was founded by ex-immigration officials. Our mandate was to create an organization that would promote in a way that is consistent with the public interest the development of the immigration consulting industry in Canada.

OPIC has a professional code of ethics, rules of professional conduct, a comprehensive educational program, a membership committee with procedures for screening new applicants for membership, a standards and ethics committee with procedures for hearing complaints and disciplining members, and an industry government liaison program.

Our membership is over 100 worldwide. We have various levels of people in the organization: lawyers, ex-immigration officials, and people who acquired consulting skills either by working in a law firm or by actually doing immigration work.

Currently, OPIC is studying proposals for a compulsory errors and omissions insurance plan.

We appear before the committee today to answer any questions you may have with respect to our views on the regulation of immigration consultants.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thanks very much.

I will go with ten-minute rounds. Each party will ask questions for ten minutes, and then we will have five-minute rounds between the opposition and the government.

To start is Mr. Nunez.

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez (Bourassa): I found your brief very interesting and I would like to ask a few questions concerning the complaints system in your organization.

How many complaints have your received? How have they been handled? Have there been penalties, and which ones? Are you all ex-employees of the IRB or of the Department of Immigration? Is there no conflict of interest when a public servant leaves the service and wishes to practice in this profession? I asked several questions and I would like you to answer them.

[English]

Mr. Billings: By way of introduction, I served with the immigration department for 15 years. I have been a consultant in private practice for six years. To my right is Mr. Goslett, who I believe was also with the immigration department for 15 years and has been practising for -

Mr. Henry Goslett (Vice-President, Organization of Professional Immigration Consultants Inc.): Since 1987.

Mr. Nigel Thomson (Member, Representative from Western Canada, Organization of Professional Immigration Consultants Inc.): I was with the department in the international service for 18 years and have been in private practice now for four years.

Mr. Frank Marrocco, Q.C. (Director and Legal Counsel, Organization of Professional Immigration Consultants Inc.): I'm a lawyer. I've never been a member of the public service. I've always been a member of the private bar in the province of Ontario, and I've practised immigration law since around 1980. I'm a co-author, along with Mr. Goslett, of the annotated Immigration Act.

Mr. Nunez: But did you start practising immediately after leaving your job?

Mr. Thomson: Mr. Nunez, that's an excellent point.

I think the question of the employment of former civil servants is an interesting one, and the conflict of interest issue always comes up in many aspects of private sector operations.

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When I left the government, I was subject to a one-year cooling-off period. During that one-year period I did not practise as an immigration consultant. Because of the level I was at in the civil service when I left, I was subject to the rules that had been established for the civil service by the Public Service Commission.

I don't think it's for our organization to establish rules for the public service. I think that's for the Public Service Commission. Once an individual has met the rules of the Public Service Commission and is free to work in the private sector, I think the person's responsibility to the government has been met.

Mr. Marrocco: I'd just like to add one thing. Mr. Goslett and I work together, and we began to work together when he left the commission.

Mr. Nunez: Immediately?

Mr. Marrocco: Yes. There was no rule against that, so he began to practise as a consultant. I was in effect practising as an immigration lawyer. He joined me and we practised together.

Mr. Nunez: What is your advantage to being a member of OPIC? You are a lawyer; you have your own bar association.

Mr. Marrocco: It seemed to me that OPIC was an excellent idea, because there are so many consultants practising and there was no order in this situation. It wasn't sufficient to say they should all be represented by a lawyer, because in my experience there is an access question. I saw that people were able to access consultants, especially from their own communities, more easily.

So the problem was how to standardize this. How do you determine whether someone is really competent to be a consultant or not? I became intrigued by the idea of being part of an organization that would try to do that. I thought it was a more effective way of delivering the service.

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez: Could you explain to us how the complaints process works? How many complaints have you received and what have been the penalties for the cases that you described to us?

[English]

Mr. Billings: Mr. Goslett is the chairman of the standards and ethics committee; he's the one in charge of any complaints. I'd ask him to address that question.

Mr. Goslett: Mr. Nunez, our complaint mechanism is advertised in the material we provide to the public. It's in the folder you have that has the large OPIC label on the front.

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez: Does that folder contain your ethics code?

[English]

Mr. Goslett: Yes, you do. It's in that same folder.

The folder that's identified with the OPIC label on the front is what is typically given to anyone who is interested in joining the organization or anyone who wants information. We've included a brochure that members keep in their offices for people who want a quicker reference. It's the small brochure. We've also included an OPIC profile in the back of that same folder.

Basically our complaint mechanism is such that anyone interested in making a complaint can phone either us or any OPIC member or put their complaint in writing. We will usually get back to the person who has made the complaint and ask for it in writing. The committee will review the complaint and provide a copy of it to the consultant against whom the complaint has been made. We'll ask for a response from that consultant and an answer to the allegations.

Depending on the circumstances, we'll carry it to the next step and investigate the complaint thoroughly, interviewing both the complainant and the consultant. We'll ask for the consultant to produce his file and we'll basically have a hearing, so to speak, on the issue.

There are three members of the standards and ethics committee. The chairman is the vice-president - myself. We'll decide on an appropriate sanction and we'll impose that sanction. Our sanctions have a fairly broad range. In some cases, depending on the circumstances, for example, we may ask that the consultant, after reviewing the nature of the complaint and the file, return the fee or maybe a portion of the fee, depending on what we felt -

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Mr. Nunez: How many complaints did you receive last year, for example?

Mr. Goslett: As a matter of fact, we've received only one complaint against a member. You must realize, of course, that not everybody practising in the area is a member. We do have approximately 100 members now. We're a national organization. We have a group of consultants on the west coast, as represented by Mr. Thomson here.

Mr. Nunez: What did you do with this one complaint?

Mr. Goslett: In this case, we found that the consultant in question had not done as thorough a job as he should have done. We ordered him to return a portion of the fee. I think we ordered him to return approximately two-thirds of the fee, as a matter of fact. In this particular case, he resigned.

It's an issue that we're -

Mr. Nunez: Did he then resign from his duties?

Mr. Goslett: He resigned from the organization.

Mr. Nunez: He didn't reimburse the client?

Mr. Goslett: No, he didn't. Afterwards, it became quite apparent to us that he regretted that. He tried to rejoin the organization, and he's still not a member. As far as we know, he still refuses to return the client's money as per the request of the ruling of the committee.

The whole mechanism of complaints and discipline is an area that we are fine-tuning. You must realize that, although we incorporated in 1991 - four years ago - we're learning a lot and we're growing quickly. We're trying to fine-tune our procedures and our policies to the extent we can. There's a committee that was struck earlier this year to look into making our complaint mechanism even better. But for the most part, our members are good at what they do. They're scrupulous, honest, hard-working practitioners, and they don't generate complaints.

I must say I did have a phone call just the other day from someone who was upset about their treatment by a consultant. But they wouldn't give me the person's name, and they didn't believe he was a member of OPIC. They didn't understand, I think, that we have jurisdiction over only our members.

Mr. Nunez: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have to go, because I have to speak in the House.

Mr. Hanger (Calgary Northeast): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I guess I have mixed viewpoints on consultants and lawyers, some with whom I've had personal contact that doesn't exactly leave a positive taste in my mouth in the area of immigration. Maybe you can relate to the same types of things - I don't know.

Given the fact that there are consultants and lawyers out there who have clearly ripped people off and who have come into my office complaining and charging exorbitant fees and the like.... And with the bar association, there is already a regulatory process involved to allegedly deal with some of those things, but it never seems to go much beyond a complaint or a short investigation before it's terminated.

Well, I'm wondering first if I could get some clarification, because I'm not too familiar with the process of seeking some sort of official recognition under the Immigration Act, I guess, for an organization - a professional body - to strike an association or self-regulating body recognized by the government. Are there any other examples of such a professional body, and what legislation or act would they come under?

Mr. Marrocco: I know that the Ontario government regulated some forms of business consultants by means of an act of the legislature several years ago. They were some form of business administrators. They were regulated by an act of the Ontario government, and they now are a self-regulating body.

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Mr. Hanger: What about a federal statute, though? You're looking at something placed in the Immigration Act, a federal statute, for some recognition. Is there any example of such a provision in another act? I don't know of any myself.

Mr. Marrocco: We wrestled with that problem and I can't think offhand of an example. I wouldn't want to say, though, that there isn't one. We couldn't think of one, but we did think you could start with the basic premise that the immigration department can determine with whom it will deal, apart from an individual who wants to immigrate.

One has to assume that they have to deal with everyone who in some form or other says they want to come to Canada, but in terms of a representative or a consultant, they can determine with whom they will deal.

If you accept that proposition, then what's your criteria for determining with whom you will deal? That's what we tried to flesh out, and we could see where there might be more than one organization. Access to a visa office and to the immigration department is an important part of the service you provide, and it seemed to us that the federal government has the ability to control that. That's how we saw the process going forward from there.

Mr. Hanger: Really what in effect it would do is limit just anyone from having access; it would limit certain people from having access.

Mr. Marrocco: That's right. It would eliminate anyone from just saying they are an immigration consultant and are going to deal with the federal government, an embassy, a consulate, or an inland government office on someone's behalf as counsel, because unless that person was a member of a recognized organization, they would not have access. We assume, therefore, that over time that would become readily apparent to the communities that might engage consultants.

Mr. Goslett: The federal government could set the criteria for the organizations that they were going to recognize. We've sort of set those out on page 2, that there would have to be a basic requirement for admission and membership, a code of professional conduct, an ongoing education and professional development program, some sort of errors and omissions insurance regime, and a credible process for hearing complaints and disciplining members. The federal government could set the criteria; then the organizations that they wanted to recognize would have to meet those criteria.

Mr. Hanger: I guess I'm wondering about the whole aspect. You fellows are in business for yourselves, which is the bottom line. There are all kinds of professional organizations out there that are self-regulating, granted, and you are saying that it should be self-regulated to a certain degree, but again, only with the sanction of the federal government. I'm wondering whether that isn't carrying it a step beyond.

Mr. Marrocco: That's why we tried to go through the different options. It's really hard for the federal government to get into the licensing business for constitutional reasons. It's not a straightforward matter for the federal government.

We wouldn't have any problem with trying to qualify, but we recognize that's not really a very valuable option for legal reasons. So if you can't do that, then recognize different professional organizations and let them carry the cost of implementing your requirements for recognition.

The Chairman: Just to make an example, it would be the same way as the Law Society of Upper Canada, which is the Ontario Bar, is self-regulating, but it's recognized in law. I don't if there's a Law Society of Upper Canada act, but there's some piece of legislation that gives them authority to do what they do.

Mr. Marrocco: What happened, Mr. Knutson, with the law society was that in 1797, or whatever it is, the Ontario legislature passed the Law Society of Upper Canada Act and that's how it got self-regulating status. Of course, it's easy because it's a provincial law society and it's the province that passed the law, so we're in a little different framework. That's why we thought that if you regulated recognition, you could set the standards for recognition, which would apply across the country.

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It wouldn't incur a lot of cost, because it would be our responsibility to try to implement it and to meet the requirements. The threat hanging over our heads is delisting, the same way that a stock company that's publicly traded is delisted if it doesn't meet the requirements of the stock exchange. That would be very bad for our members, because suddenly then none of them could get access any more. That's the way we tried to come at it.

It's very important to make the distinction between the bar association and the Law Society. The disciplinary body is the Law Society; the bar association is a lobby group. The bar association cannot impose any kind of professional standards; only the Law Society does that. The bar association's function is totally different, and I'm a member of the bar association. Its function is to represent me, lobby, and make sure that I am protected. It does not discipline me. It has no authority to discipline me; the Law Society disciplines me.

In effect, we would be trying to provide more of a Law Society type of function than a lobby type of function. We'd be better able to address that, because we could expel someone from our membership with the resulting loss of access, if you thought setting up that kind of regime made sense.

Mr. Hanger: With respect to building it into the Immigration Act itself, I don't know all the legal ramifications of that type of thing, but it sounds like rather a protective point of view on the part of those making the application. If a different act were regulated, even like the Law Society of Upper Canada, I could see it working in one sense, but to stick it in the Immigration Act, I don't see the value of it.

Mr. Marrocco: It would be permanent. I guess the advantage it has is that it's a permanent statement. You could do it by contract between the commission and the individual organization. They could enter into a memorandum of understanding. If you make it part of the regulatory regime, then the government once and for all says that people who provide immigration consulting services will be regulated in this way.

The Chairman: At this point, I don't know if my comments are helpful.

If you look at, say, minor hockey, it's a self-regulating body. They have their own rules and their own constitution, but it's not recognized anywhere in law. I don't think there's a law that says that these people have the authority to run minor hockey in this country and run the arenas.

When the proverbial whatever hits the fan when there's a dispute and you have one group that says they represent a nine-year-old hockey player and you have another group that says something else, and they have this big huge clash and people get pissed off, they say that there ought to be a law so they can look to the law to solve the problem.

Mr. Hanger: They've got a discipline agency, too, within that settles disputes.

The Chairman: You get minor hockey leagues that fight with each other over players, and whatever, and there's no supreme law.

Mr. Billings: The Immigration Act does envision some sort of licensing of people who do appear before tribunals. That's already in the Immigration Act. By extension, all we're saying is to look at another mechanism within the act to regulate the consultants who are providing the services to the department.

There can be OPIC and there can be various other agencies or a group of organizations, but they still have to meet a minimum standard or code of conduct that the government wants to impose on their service partners. That's what we're proposing.

Mr. Hanger: Would you permit a disbarred lawyer in your professional body?

Mr. Marrocco: I had some role to play in drafting the disciplinary procedures and I wouldn't want to speak in advance, but I doubt it. I don't think we could say today that we could prejudge any particular application, but I don't think we see ourselves as a haven for people who -

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Mr. Goslett: Certainly not. As a matter of fact, in our membership process a person has to complete an application form, provide us with references and then go through quite an intensive interview with the membership committee. The committee then makes recommendations to the board of directors and goes over the entire application and everything they've learned about the applicant. The board actually has to vote on whether or not to admit that person to membership.

As Mr. Marrocco said, at this point I don't think we can prejudge any application, but I find it highly unlikely that the committee would say, ``We have this lawyer who's just been disbarred for unethical or illegal conduct. Because he has no way to earn a living now, he wants to join us.'' It's very unlikely.

Mr. Hanger: There are agents out there working under such circumstances.

Mr. Marrocco: That's exactly right. That's exactly what happens. Even if they're not immigration lawyers to start with, they get disbarred and go into the consulting business. That poses a problem.

That's why this sort of thing may make some sense. There are a lot of competent people who are not lawyers who can provide immigration consulting advice. We have a hundred members. There are a lot of people out there who have acquired a lot of knowledge in this area. So if you say you'll deal only with lawyers....

As a member of the legal profession, I hope the bar association is successful in that effort, but as a practical matter, it's not in the public interest, because I suspect those services will be provided at a higher cost.

Secondly, any lawyer can take an immigration case. If someone is a real estate lawyer and there's no real estate around, they have nothing else to do and they're trying to pay the rent, they can take an immigration case.

You will not protect people from that if you serve the whole area up to the legal profession and say they're the only game in town.

Mr. Loney (Edmonton North): How can you regulate the operations of an immigration consultant outside of Canada?

Mr. Billings: One of the things we would look to in working with the federal government is access to information from the visa office in case representation, which allows for a competent representation of any client.

By extension, if you recognize a group as a regulatory body and their members have access to the visa office and the immigration office, then you have control over those people. If someone doesn't belong to that organization, they don't have access to the visa office or the immigration office and can't provide a competent or promotable service to their clients, they cease to be part of the equation.

There will still be people who will hold themselves out to be able to access these offices, but we believe it will diminish over time. We also think that over time the amount of fraud and incompetent, unscrupulous behaviour overseas will decrease. Obviously the federal government cannot control the behaviour of these people overseas, but what they can control is the right of access to the Canadian government officials overseas. By doing so, you will take away their marketability.

Mr. Dromisky (Thunder Bay - Atikokan): I was very impressed with your presentation; a tremendous amount of thought went into it.

I realize you're just in the initial stages of development - you might say in the early infancy stages - as an organization. It's going to take a long time before most of your tenets or positions will be crystal clear. At the present time there's a lot of room for doubt and question because of that early stage of development you're in.

The whole question of accountability is up in the air. Where do we start? Just because you were a lawyer or worked for the government, does that qualify you to become a consultant? We have all kinds of people working for the government. We have some who have I.Q.s two points more than a birch tree's, right up to the genius level. We just don't know. Maybe you got fired because you were incompetent, and therefore you became a consultant.

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What I'm trying to drive at is that the whole question of accountability has to be addressed. Somewhere you have to have a benchmark from which to start. The benchmark you start from has to be acceptable, credible, and honourable - one with integrity.

I'm very pleased by the kinds of things you people are doing here, because I think this is the beginning of a process that will continue to grow and provide a very effective service. But I still think we have to look at the whole question of where we start in terms of qualifications and acceptability. Do we have to ask the provinces to set up courses at a university or community college or something? I don't know.

Mr. Billings: The organization has been around for 40 years. We have a very good working relationship with the government. We are acceptable to the government and to the communities we represent.

By way of example, we have an ongoing commitment to provide an educational and professional development program to our members. We have seminars every two or three months, and we've had them for the last four years. As luck would have it, we've attached to our brief a seminar we put on in February on standards, ethics and rules of professional conduct. We didn't know this committee would be struck, but it's opportune to show you the type and quality of the educational development programs we're running.

In addition to that, the federal government officials in the promoting immigration program meet with us on an ongoing basis and have almost from the inception of our organization. They come and lecture to us, they provide information, and we meet with them to discuss policy initiatives as well as problems we're encountering from our perspective as their service partner.

In turn we participate in government educational programs. We send members out to give the other side of the table's view, and, to pat ourselves on the back, we've had nothing but excellent responses from government. We're doing this now.

We do have accountability. If we do misstep, the government won't meet with us and any sort of recognition or credibility we have is lost. We've striven right from the very beginning to ensure that the government, our service partner, understands the type of accountability we have within this organization.

That's why one of the first things we did was strike the standards and ethics committee to ensure that the rules of professional conduct are included in every package we send out to a member and that the standards and ethics are read by every member. We have a signing on our membership application: ``I have read and understand these rules.''

We meet with each individual member who wants to become a part of our organization. They're met by a two- or three-person membership committee. The membership committee has just come back from B.C. They took five days out of their work schedules and flew to B.C. to interview all new members.

This is all volunteer work. We don't get paid for this.

Every member gets interviewed. We go over their work history; we do reference checks; we meet with them personally; we ask them integrated, specific questions. The interviews are about an hour to an hour and a half, and when we leave, we know whether we want that person or not.

The membership committee will not approve a member. They will take it before the board of directors and put before the board of directors whether or not they'll accept that person for membership. There are some very spirited discussions at the board of directors meetings as to whether or not we'll accept them.

Mr. Dromisky: Have you ever rejected any?

Mr. Billings: Yes, we have.

We've also taken in members who we felt were good members but had a very low skill level in certain areas. We have instructed them in writing that they are not to practise in that area until they have their skill level up to an acceptable level.

So we are accountable as an organization and we are recognized as being that. We have devoted a lot of time and effort to doing that. You can tell by the package we're putting before the committee today.

Mr. Dromisky: Yes, very much. I'm very impressed.

Mr. Billings: The reason we've done this really isn't self-serving in the sense that we think we're going to obtain more clients from it. We're not.

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We believe there is a real need to protect the public. We believe there are many people out there who hold themselves out to be consultants who are not consultants and are not in this industry. They may be agents or they may be involved in fraudulent or illegal activity. They're not consultants; they're crooks.

There are other people who hold themselves out to be immigration consultants who may be no more than in the immigration enforcement stream themselves, like refugee claimants. I've run across people like that.

That is an indication to the government and to this subcommittee that this industry needs some regulation. The government has studied it. The provincial government will not take a lead role in this. They don't have the resources and they don't have the money. The federal government cannot commit the resources. There are also some constitutional issues as to whether or not they want to take a lead role in the licensing of consultants. Everyone at this table can sit and say ``There's a problem here and we need to fix it.''

We identified this problem four years ago. We met with the government officials about six months after we started and asked what they wanted from us so they could look at us as a regulatory body. They gave us certain criteria; they were led by Peter Harder at the time.

We went and met those criteria. We expanded our membership and reacted to our educational programs. We spent more time and money on this, and it's all by volunteer work. We spent a hell of a lot of time ensuring that our members were brought up to snuff to do the work. In essence we're helping every one of our members to compete against ourselves. We think it's that important that the industry needs that strong a focus.

We know there's a problem and we've come to you with a solution. We think it's a good, workable solution, and we think the best interests of the public can be served. Let's take it a step further and start to enact it.

Mr. Thomson: I have one comment about your educational point. You've suggested there should be a standard for educational entrance, perhaps university or college.

Mr. Dromisky: I just asked what you thought about it.

Mr. Thomson: The difficulty is that OPIC represents, if you like, the fund of knowledge that would provide that training. I am a member of the Continuing Legal Education Society, which offers programs to the bar in British Columbia. The members of OPIC are part of training courses given to foreign service officers in business, immigration, and other program areas.

We represent the fund of knowledge. If any education program is going to be provided, then perhaps we should be the ones who -

Mr. Dromisky: I can see you heading in that direction.

If you look at the criteria for determining whether you are a professional body or not, that's the only component missing - some type of certification. Eventually that will come about within your own structure, if you continue with this critical area of the educational programs. You will come to the point at which you will give diplomas to people who get to a certain stage of development in your educational programs. I can see that happening.

Mr. Goslett: We are certainly working in that direction. It's always been one of our primary goals to upgrade the skills of our members.

If you have time to look at this later on, after our brief there's a blue page, and behind the blue page you'll find brief résumés of the four of us, which will give you a little bit of an idea of the background of the people sitting at the table and the areas we've been involved in.

Mr. Marrocco and I do a lot of writing. Our books are used by pretty well all the practitioners in the field. When the government or private agencies want to give training programs, they often approach us.

To talk a little bit about another point you made, we've developed relationships with various groups within the immigration department. We have a relationship with headquarters, with the regional headquarters, with various provincial governments, and with the RCMP to provide them with information we get through our organization. We're much more likely to get information on unscrupulous practices before the government does. We have a conduit to get that to the right authorities.

People want to join the organization. They want to become members. As we gain recognition within the department, the department is saying ``Oh, he's an OPIC member. We can work with this person.''

We have an information dissemination program. Once a month we send out a package of information to every member, which provides him with the information and tools he needs to do the job properly. It contains information concerning changes in policy and in various rules and regulations, as well as internal memos that direct visa officers and immigration officers on how to deal with certain problems.

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These are very valuable to the public. They need to know how the system works and how it can work for them.

Mr. Dromisky: What is your membership fee?

Mr. Billings: It's $500 per year.

Mr. Dromisky: And that's a recovery of these costs.

I notice most of your members are in a very specific geographical area, according to this publication. They're nearly all in the Toronto area. Are you spreading across? Are you going to Montreal?

Mr. Billings: We have about 20% in B.C. now. We have other people worldwide, as a matter of fact.

Mr. Dromisky: But they're in the pipes, coming down now.

Mr. Billings: One of the things we do on an ongoing basis is videotape all our educational programs. We make that videotape available to all members overseas who are not available to fly in.

I would hazard a guess that at least a quarter of people make it a point to fly in for educational seminars. That's how important they are. We also have various lawyers requesting attendance at our educational seminars.

Currently there's a pilot program at Seneca College in Toronto called Immigration Law. The program has been developed with members of OPIC, and 90% of the lecturers in that program are OPIC members.

We do represent a large amount of information and knowledge in this industry.

Mr. Dromisky: Very good.

Mrs. Bakopanos (Saint-Denis): I agree with my colleague, Mr. Dromisky, that your brief is very well presented and that you raise a lot of issues of concern to this committee and even to the larger committee on immigration.

Don't take my question in the wrong light. Why should there be immigration consultants? Why shouldn't the government in fact be educating immigrants when they apply? What are their rights? What are their obligations? Why do we need to have immigration consultants?

Mr. Thomson: That's a very good question.

Mrs. Bakopanos: It's no criticism of your organization, but it's a question that's been on my mind for a very long time, as I worked in Quebec immigration for 15 years.

Mr. Marrocco: The immigration officers used to be referred to as both immigration counsellors and officers, but I think all of us here would agree - and I suspect everyone who would appear before you would agree - there's no counselling going on now.

As far as I can see, there are two reasons for that. The first reason is the government just doesn't have the resources to counsel the people who want information about immigration, whether they're people here or people outside of Canada. You may have noticed the government has gone more and more to mail-in systems precisely because they don't have the capacity to meet and talk with people and try to find the most effective way to realize their intent to immigrate to Canada.

The second reason is the knowledge level of the officers in the government is strained to some extent, because over the last several years a lot of very qualified and competent officers have, for one reason or another, taken the opportunity to leave early. A lot of times the people who take that opportunity are good people, and it's really regrettable that they've decided to leave. Those are the reasons.

Therefore, the market causes private consultants to rise up to fill the void. People want to be able to talk to somebody at some length about their problem and get somebody's attention, and they're willing to pay for it.

Mrs. Bakopanos: Then my question to you is what happens to all those who can't afford to pay? Are we not creating a system that's allowing the rich, who can afford to get the best counsel possible, whether it's a lawyer or an immigration consultant, to get in, and preventing those who don't have the means or the resources from getting in?

Mr. Marrocco: People who require legal services in a refugee context can still have access to legal aid.

Mrs. Bakopanos: To a certain extent.

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Mr. Marrocco: I agree with you. That's perhaps, over time, to a more restricted extent because legal aid's resources, at the least in the province of Ontario, are stretched to the limit.

Mrs. Bakopanos: That's everywhere. That's the point.

Mr. Marrocco: But if you take the consultants out of the equation in this environment, they will not be replaced by anything else. Consultants provide services. We are not all at the same fee level. We don't all target or do the market as a whole; we have niches.

Mrs. Bakopanos: What are your fees, for example?

Mr. Thomson: Can I add just one point that I think might be of interest to you, particularly with your background?

Many of our OPIC members provide pro bono support to community NGOs. Of two members in our British Columbia group, one is very prominent with the Polish immigrant group. I do work with both the Chinese immigrant group and several settlement organizations.

Mrs. Bakopanos: That's part of my question. Non-governmental organizations don't charge a fee, yet provide the same consultation services, at least in Quebec. I'm talking about my experience in the province of Quebec.

Mr. Thomson: I believe that's true. They can do that. It's a perfect role for them. We would not be saying, by any means, that the federal government should exclude NGOs from recognition as legitimate, non-fee-paying, non-profit organizations. That's perfectly legitimate.

One thing that was not mentioned by Mr. Marrocco, of course, is the increasing complexity of legislation. Compare 1967 to today. I could have summed up the immigration categories in probably 100 words or less then, but at this point it is an extremely difficult task.

It takes professionals to keep on top of it. If those non-governmental organizations are going to continue to be able to provide those services, they have to have access to individuals who are experts in the field. You become an expert only by spending your entire professional life doing the job. If you don't do it on a full-time basis -

Mrs. Bakopanos: That's even more of an argument for why you should have well-educated public servants who are supposed to have that information -

Mr. Thomson: Perhaps.

Mrs. Bakopanos: - and who must interpret the legislation that we adopt and provide that service.

Why do you feel that paragraph 114(1)(v) has not been used so far? It's come up before. It's there. It would be a way of solving part of the problem. I wouldn't say it would solve the whole problem, because you bring up other issues that couldn't be dealt with under this section.

Mr. Billings: Traditionally, the restricting of consultants appearing before tribunals and the refugee board.... I think there are some statistics from the Immigration and Refugee Board for the industry. The number of clients who have consultants to represent them is maybe 6% to 8%.

So it is not a very large issue, which is one of the reasons the government has not enacted it. There's really no need for it. They are not sitting out there and bogging down the system. Probably the practical reason it hasn't been enacted is that there's really no need for it. The majority of consultants doing this business are representing people who want to come to Canada within the system, either overseas or through in-Canada applications. That's where the majority of the work is.

As Mr. Marrocco said, most consultants have found their own niche. They work within certain communities. They are known and respected in those communities. The communities feel that they provide a legitimate service to them.

Mrs. Bakopanos: On page 2 of your brief, a paragraph talks about OPIC recently negotiating a service standards agreement to put the organization on an equal footing with the immigration bar. Do you want to elaborate a little bit on that? You did mention earlier that there are lawyers who are also members of your organization.

If I am not mistaken - you can correct me - you also feel that lawyers shouldn't be the only ones who should have the right to represent clients or immigrants.

Mr. Billings: Obviously. We support that wholly, I might add. What we meant by that agreement is that we've been negotiating with the international service group, which represents the the visa office abroad. It's the old External Affairs.

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We have negotiated a service standard agreement with them that commits our members to certain rules of professional conduct in dealing with their offices and they in turn commit to respond or deal with our members on a certain plane as well. We signed that in tandem at the same time as the bar association.

Mrs. Bakopanos: Please don't misunderstand what I'm going to say, but it does help when you have worked for a department for 15 years.

Mr. Billings: Yes, we don't dispute that.

Mrs. Bakopanos: You know the people involved.

Mr. Billings: My feeling has always been, why wouldn't you want to work with the people you train? We know what the government wants. Our members actively recruit the type of immigrants that Canada wants to select. We know how to prepare them, how to put them in the system, so the clients that come from professional consultants do not waste the government's time. It allows the visa offices to make the decision, what they should be doing in the first place, not proofreading applications or submissions and sending them back because they're incomplete or not professionally done.

Mr. Goslett: The government is about to embark on a program now, or in the very near future, to promote immigration to Canada, to try to target the groups they want to select, the highly skilled groups, people with education who are likely to integrate into the workforce quickly and make some sort of long-term contribution. Professional immigration consultants play an incredibly large role in this area, one that the public rarely sees.

Our members are all over the world, working to find those immigrants, to recruit the highly skilled, highly trained people, the kind of people who are going to be able to make the number of points to qualify for a visa, who are able to integrate into the community and into the workforce.

The government can't do that. They can advertise, they can go to cocktail parties and embassies and so on, but the real nitty-gritty work of recruiting the kind of immigrant that Canada is targeting now is done by our members.

Mr. Marrocco: I wanted to say one other thing. When you look at a non-profit organization, an NGO, I believe they are servicing a different part of the market from the market we're servicing. Letting us service the market we service more effectively wouldn't inhibit them or impair them in doing what they're doing. It would just spread the net a little wider.

Mr. Goslett: In fact, NGOs and legal counsel often call us. They call our members. When you think about it, many of our members are ex-immigration, ex-visa office. We're the same people the NGOs and the legal counsel used to call to ask for advice and guidance with respect to the preparation and presentation of cases of clients they're representing. They still phone us and they still ask us those questions. I don't charge NGOs.

Mrs. Bakopanos: I didn't want to interrupt, but Mr. Hanger may want to ask a few questions.

We go back to my initial question. There's a problem with the system and that's how I see it. As I said, please don't take this as a personal affront. We have public servants who are supposed to be counsel, to a certain extent, because when somebody goes who has absolutely no knowledge and wants to emigrate to Canada, the first person they will go to and the first people they will go to, without knowledge of your existence, will be our embassies or immigration offices.

If those public servants are not providing the service they are supposed to provide, the information and the education toward that potential immigrant, then there's a problem with the whole system. This problem has come up quite a lot in other issues that we've been dealing with in immigration. As you said in your brief, there is a lot of unscrupulous people who take advantage of such a system. It happens much too often.

I can even say that we as MPs offer a free service - at the taxpayers' cost, of course - while some other immigrant consultants charge $5,000 to $10,000 for the same type of information. I don't know whether regulating would take care of that problem.

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I support what you're saying in terms of number 5 in your brief as a way of alleviating some of the problems, but I don't think it alleviates the initial problem, which is that we are packaging a certain class of people to bring them into Canada and allowing other non-governmental agencies to deal with the other sector of immigrants.

Mr. Marrocco: I don't want to be argumentative either.

Mrs. Bakopanos: Please, go ahead.

Mr. Marrocco: I don't agree that you're providing out of your offices the same information -

Mrs. Bakopanos: I didn't say that you're providing -

Mr. Marrocco: It's different, and I've had a lot of experience in Toronto with people who work in the offices of members of Parliament and I have never hesitated to provide them with information when they've asked me for it. We really are providing different services.

The Chairman: For the record, we can call you?

Mrs. Bakopanos: We already do.

The Chairman: My people don't, but I'll tell them.

Mr. Marrocco: No, I don't have a problem with that. We've never hesitated to speak to people as a courtesy, and I don't think anybody else in the organization ever has either.

Mr. Goslett: No, we don't charge for those services. This perception of these incredible fees... professional immigration consultants don't charge those fees. They can't; the marketplace won't allow them to.

If a constituent, for example, comes to you and says, I was ripped off, I paid somebody $20,000, you can bet they didn't pay them $20,000 for the kind of immigration services that a professional consultant would supply. If they're paying $20,000 then they're paying for something else, and you can bet there's something wrong with whatever it is.

Mrs. Bakopanos: For some people $5,000 is like $5 million.

Mr. Goslett: It's still a lot of money.

Mrs. Bakopanos: It's a lot of money no matter how you look at it. I hadn't heard mention of $20,000, but I hear $5,000 regularly in my office.

Mr. Goslett: I received a call from a lady the other day who obviously can't pay anything. That piece of paper is on my desk and I've been working on it for two days. I've called her three times and I have to call her on Monday when I'm back. She won't get a bill. We're professionals and we have a responsibility to the public, to ourselves, to the program, to our organization, and we don't take advantage of people.

When you have a chance to read our material you'll see in our code of conduct that we specifically tell our members that if they don't feel they're competent, or if they aren't competent to act in a particular area, then they don't do it. There are very complex issues to deal with.

They have access to people within the organization who are experts and they will refer their client to those experts. If we don't have an expert in the organization, I would be surprised, but we'll refer them outside the organization.

Mrs. Bakopanos: My wish would be that all the immigrant consultants belong to your organization, because there is a market out there. That isn't the case at the moment.

Mr. Billings: You're talking about the need for consultants to be in this industry. It is just not realistic in this day and age, with the downsizing of offices, with the fact that immigration officers don't see people... it's all mail-in. There isn't a role for us.

If we look at the targets for the number of immigrants Canada wants, approved by Parliament, and the closure of visa offices and the reduction of staff, those officers cannot fulfil their mandate to meet those numbers and still provide counselling. It's impossible.

So there is a very prominent role that consultants must play if the government wants to attract the number of immigrants it does. If it doesn't, then it should look at reducing the numbers.

Mr. Goslett: There are backlogs throughout the system, even without counselling.

Mrs. Bakopanos: I know.

The Chairman: Before I go to Mr. Hanger, can you take me through this again? I'm not sure if we cleared this up. Your professional organization is going to evolve anyway, so what do you gain by being recognized in law? Or what does the public gain? I think you need to be...

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Mr. Hanger: You don't have to convince me. I don't want that as a kind of special consideration or protection for your organization, so that only you or members in your organization will have access to those that are applying to Canada.

Mr. Goslett: We mean any organization that qualifies. It doesn't have to be us. Our organization may meet the government criteria, but there may be half a dozen others that meet the government criteria too. We're just trying to come up with a solution.

The province doesn't want to licence us and the federal government don't have the jurisdiction, so we're trying to figure out, other than what we're doing now, what we can do to put some sort of control into the industry.

Mr. Billings: Right. The idea is access and accessibility to the people who are making the decisions, to respect the clients that they represent or any consultant represents. If you can't have access to the people who are making these decisions, if you can't make representations to influence a decision on a particular case, then you have no power and you can't promote yourself as someone who can do a credible and competent job.

What we're saying is to deal with us or deal with other people who have certain basic responsibilities that the government wants in an organization. By doing so, by extension, the public is protected.

They know the government will deal with people who belong to this organization, that they will be an educational program, that there will be a complaints mechanism, and that there will be a method of redress for their complaints if their complaints are found to be credible.

It's a win for everybody. The government deals with a professional organization. They can meet and see the other side of it. They can get input on what's going on with their programs, policies, or initiatives. We get access to the decision-makers, and the public is protected.

The Chairman: I'll just make a comment. The kind of answer I'm looking for is if we just let you folks evolve without the legal stamp of approval, it may take 20, 50, or 100 years, and then we're going to have this problem. The government comes along and says here's the legislation, here's the authority, we start to clean up the mess a lot quicker and a lot more...

Mr. Thomson: You can look at the evolution of, say, the engineering profession, which over many years was unregulated and people could call themselves an engineer. It took a great deal of time to eventually realize that there was a public need, a public safety issue, and it was regulated by a self-regulating body recognized by professionals and by governments.

That did take a long time. We are saying this legislation may short-circuit that process and indeed drive out the marginal players, the incompetents, and the fraud.

Mr. Goslett: It will isolate the crooks. We are professional immigration consultants. We're not the problem. The problem is with the people who are acting unscrupulously and illegally.

I've got just a paragraph here from a memo that Mr. Harder wrote to the ex-minister and it says:

There's no real evidence on which to conclude that non-legal counsel are any less ethical than members of the legal profession, nor the advice that they give clients is any less sound than that given by immigration lawyers.

It goes on to say:

In fact, many immigration consultants are employed by legal firms specializing...

The Chairman: Right. You don't need to bang away on that point. There's no appetite to restrict it to lawyers.

Mr. Marrocco: It's not going to economically advantage us if you do this. Maybe one or two of the people who are in our organization will have trouble, but we're more or less successful at what we are doing. We will continue to be successful.

This environment is fertile ground for us. We have had an ongoing dialogue with the commission and we've now got it in our heads that this is a good idea. We're here to try to promote the idea. It's a better way to do it.

Actually, we really won't be any richer or more specially advantaged if you go ahead and do this. I hope you don't have that view that there's some sort of agenda for us that way, because it really won't make a difference financially, I don't think, to most of the people in our organization. We'll continue to travel all over and do our thing. I mean, you really should do something about it.

Mr. Billings: We are already receiving most of these benefits now. We already deal with ISG, which is in charge of the visa offices. We already have a service standards agreement with them, so we have a lot of these things in place now unofficially by the government.

What we are saying is let's make it more official, let's enact it. As Harry says, let's take away the fringe players, the people who are out there that we all recognize are not providing the service. But we already have that now. Let's make sure we understand it.

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Mr. Hanger: I'd like to go back very briefly to the recognition in law of a particular group. How are the professional engineers examined?

Mr. Thomson: That is all provincially regulated and that evolved over many years, as did the law societies.

Mr. Hanger: So again, my question comes back to the federal statute.

The other thing Mr. Loney brought up, and I believe it's worth pursuing.... All you fellows would have advertised in your profession overseas?

Mr. Thomson: No. I do no advertising whatsoever.

Mr. Hanger: No advertising overseas?

Mr. Thomson: Word of mouth.

Mr. Hanger: Do you have representatives overseas?

Mr. Marrocco: No. I've noticed some people have started out advertising -

Mr. Hanger: Yes. I have ads in my -

Mr. Marrocco: I know one or two members of our organization did place ads when they first started, when they first went into the business, but I think most of it's....

Mr. Goslett: Some of our members advertise. I've never advertised, but I have noticed that some of our members who have advertised found that what happened was as soon as they got those first few clients, they didn't need to advertise; they didn't need to spend the money. Because they did such a good job, they got the client exactly what they wanted; their reputation is all they need to do more work than they can possibly handle. They could work seven days a week.

Mr. Hanger: This is overseas I'm talking about.

Mr. Goslett: This is overseas; this is in Canada. People who have advertised in Hong Kong, let's say, because that seems to be the hot issue...they will go there and advertise.... The two groups I can think of who are members of our organization and have done a lot of work there advertised in the very beginning and now they don't any more, and they can still barely handle the volume.

The Chairman: What's your point?

Mr. Hanger: I have a question or two about how these ads are run, the guarantees offered. I listen to complaints that come out of even the immigration department itself, and some of the senior immigration officials who work as overseas officers, who talk with immigrants, feel that even some of the government's own advertisements are not done in a very good, positive vein; they're misleading.

Mr. Thomson: There were some real problems with the business advertising they did.

Mr. Goslett: One of the things we've done just recently, and as a matter of fact it was mentioned at our last quarterly meeting, is we are going to form a committee - we have not yet formed the committee; we are getting volunteers - that will voluntarily review all the advertising of our members and give advice to our members.

For example, one of our Chinese members noticed an ad in a Chinese newspaper of another member. I think the ad described the member as the ex-minister or something; it was a mistranslation. He told our member, who pulled the ad immediately.

So we've offered to take any advertising and look at it from any of our members and advise them. We'll make sure that if it's in another language, we know what it says. If it's inappropriate or we feel it's unprofessional, then we're going to tell them that, and they had better not use it if it's inappropriate.

Mr. Hanger: So you're saying that even on some of this outside-the-country involvement, a professional body would be able to self-regulate the members.

Mr. Goslett: If they were members of our organization and they placed an ad in Saudi Arabia or London or Hong Kong, sure, we'd be able to say you can't do that, or don't do that.

Mr. Hanger: The guaranteed visas, the guaranteed refugee status, whatever you want on the menu, would not be an acceptable form of advertising.

Mr. Goslett: We certainly don't approve of that.

The Chairman: It's a lie.

Mr. Goslett: I've done a lot of lecturing, speaking to various groups, and one of the things I tell them is if somebody offers you a guarantee, beware. There are no guarantees in this business.

.1805

Mr. Hanger: Here's a scenario that I ran across, by accident, and it came from a consultant in my riding. Through mainland China, an agreement was struck by going to one of the universities in Beijing and a certain business college in Calgary, in western Canada, to train x number of individuals out of that university, allegedly, in Canada, in this whole area of business professional, clerical, and beyond. That's not the intent of bringing the people over who have been accepted, and the consultant himself makes the evaluation as to who will come.

The underlying reason is not really for training - other than the fact that they will sit there for a year or two years to go through the training - but to bring dollars in from mainland China, since there is this communist connection to move as much cash as they can into Canadians funds. I'm familiar with this little transaction behind the scenes through another person. How would you handle that, if you were informed? I understand this is getting to be a common occurrence, too.

Mr. Goslett: First of all, from your point of view, you're saying there's a deal with this school in Calgary that is for some other purpose, that they don't intend to come here and be legitimate students.

Mr. Hanger: Oh, yes. All of that, up front, is legitimate, but there's another underlying motive to move money from -

Mr. Goslett: So they're actually getting student authorizations on a legitimate basis. They're coming here, they're going to school here, they're complying with the terms of the Immigration Act -

Mr. Hanger: That's right.

Mr. Thomson: But they're bringing money in for -

Mr. Goslett: They're laundering money, do you mean?

Mr. Thomson: They're transferring money out of China.

Mr. Goslett: I don't think that's a concern of our organization, as long as the member had acted professionally and dealt within the Immigration Act and regulations and properly represented the clients' interests.

Mr. Hanger: But if the consultant was in your organization, even though he had arranged all of this, knowing that this other scenario was going on behind the scenes, would that be acceptable to you?

Mr. Goslett: Is that illegal, to bring the money here?

Mr. Marrocco: Is it money-related? I mean, is it money that originated from criminal activity or is it just -

Mr. Hanger: Oh, we don't know that. It could be just taking money out of the communist regime that exists there. Whether it's criminal activity or not, I don't know, but it's bringing it over here.

Mr. Marrocco: With people from Russia, I know the security intelligence service has been very interested in the flow of communist party funds from what was formerly the U.S.S.R. to Canada.

Mr. Hanger: That's right.

Mr. Marrocco: I don't know -

The Chairman: So the answer is?

Mr. Marrocco: If you knew the money came from the commission of a crime, such as drug-trafficking, theft, or fraud, and you assisted in the laundering of it, then you would have committed a criminal offence. This would be a matter, I guess, for the RCMP and the security intelligence service.

I think if you were a consultant and you knew that was happening, then you couldn't do it. Notwithstanding the fact that the student authorization is all right, you couldn't do that because it's a crime to assist people in hiding the proceeds of a crime. The crime is not the fraud or the theft; the crime is hiding the proceeds. That's what you're helping them to do and that is illegal. It would be a matter for the police.

Mr. Goslett: If we had knowledge of that, we'd turn that information over to the police.

Mr. Marrocco: We have an informal channel of communication set up for that purpose. If it were simply that you didn't know where the money came from and these people were coming over here to study and bringing a lot of money with them, that's a lot harder to deal with.

Mr. Hanger: It's not a crime to be rich.

Mr. Marrocco: Not yet.

The Chairman: Assume for the sake of argument that I'm the minister of immigration and I want to deal with a problem; I'm tired of it sitting around for 14 years, or whatever.

Let's take two scenarios: one, I can't really get the provinces enthused. Briefly, what can I do and how far can I go, if I'm prepared to be as aggressive as possible, to solve this problem? Give me a two-minute summation, somebody.

.1810

Mr. Marrocco: You would say that the government will enter into memoranda of understanding or agreements with organizations that meet certain criteria that have been enacted in the regulations, and that members of those organizations will be counselled under the act. Persons who are not members of those organizations and who are not lawyers, and so on, will not be counselled.

The Chairman: People have said that if one does that, then maybe, at best, you'd solve 20% of the problem. Do you agree with that?

Mr. Marrocco: No, I disagree with that completely. The immigrant communities are not stupid. These people will figure out very quickly that unless somebody is a member of a recognized organization - they'll know the names of those organizations - then they shouldn't deal with them. It will solve a lot larger percentage of the problem than that.

The Chairman: Would it be maybe 80% then?

Mr. Marrocco: I believe it would be significant. I don't know if I can put a percentage on it. In my view, you will do a significant thing if you do something like that.

Mr. Goslett: Don't underestimate the value of the contact that the department has with the consultant. If the department were to say to me that it wasn't dealing with me because I'm not accredited or I'm not part of a recognized organization, then I'd be out of business. So it's very important.

The Chairman: I haven't read your brief, but this is the point. It is what you can do without worrying about the constitutional issue, the BNA Act, and all of that other good stuff. Do you think you make that point well enough in here so that it will solve the majority of the problem, the lion's share, or the guts of it?

Mr. Thomson: We haven't put any percentage in or said that it would solve the majority of the problem. I don't really think it's up to us to make that judgment. I believe our opinion is that it would do that.

The Chairman: But you could make an argument, though, to that effect.

Mr. Thomson: Yes, we can make an argument.

Mr. Goslett: So much of what we hear is anecdotal.

The Chairman: Let me just invite you to send us another page or two. This will solve a lot of the problem and will be substantively useful.

Mr. Billings: We could do that. That's not a problem.

If you accept the fact that this will solve the problem, there's also a commitment by OPIC and other organizations to promote this. We will commit funds and resources to go out into the community and to NGOs to advertise and promote this and really reach the ethnic community.

We'll do that overseas as well. We have the funds and the resources to do that.

So it may solve 20% of the problem next year, but give us the time and the resources to put into this, and we'll solve 80% of the problem in a year from then.

Mr. Goslett: I think the police can play a bigger role in solving the problem, too, by laying charges, investigating the crooks, and by dealing with the people who break the law. I've been in this business a long time.

Mr. Hanger: Would part of these criteria infringe upon the right of the applicant if he wanted to go before a quasi-judicial body for a hearing?

Mr. Thomson: Do you mean to represent himself?

Mr. Hanger: He could represent himself or pick whomever he wants as an agent.

Mr. Thomson: It does get to be a difficult issue if they then pick an agent who is not a member of a recognized body.

Mr. Hanger: Isn't that the case in criminal court? You don't have to have a lawyer represent you.

Mr. Marrocco: If it's a minor offence, you may be able to have an agent appear, but if it's an indictable offence, I don't think you could be represented. The regulation has not been used, but it does envision some control over who can appear.

I think it's not in the tribunal's interest or in the interest of the individual to be represented by someone who is utterly incapable of representing him. You can say that each person is free to poison himself, if he wants to, but -

The Chairman: The idea that is floating around - just to follow on that point - is that you could regulate it, but you can't charge a fee. So if you wanted to have your parish priest come with you for your refugee claim -

Mr. Marrocco: You mean for free?

The Chairman: They'd do it for free.

.1815

Mr. Marrocco: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. We wouldn't want to restrict the right of somebody -

Mr. Hanger: They could select whomever they wanted to represent them as an agent.

Mr. Marrocco: But in circumstances in which the agent is going to be paid a fee for the service -

Mr. Hanger: No fee.

Mr. Marrocco: No fee? Fine. Why not? They should be free to do that. For some people, that may be the best they can do. We wouldn't want to see those people restricted in any way from acting.

But I think if it's a fee-paying situation, then you should either be a lawyer or a member of an accredited body.

The Chairman: With the group's permission, can we let the researcher ask some questions?

Ms Margaret Young (Committee Researcher): I have some other questions, but I'd first like to follow up on the chair's question about what, in a word, you would do. Mr. Marrocco's answer was to enact the regulations under paragraph 114(1)(v), which would allow counsel to be of the prescribed organization.

I just want to make sure we're not talking at cross-purposes. You would mean taking the existing paragraph 114(1)(v), which talks about counsel before immigration tribunals, and you would limit that to the prescribed individuals. You say that might be 20% now, and maybe 80% in the future.

The reason I want to get to this is because there's a little confusion in my mind. On page 5 of your brief, the second full paragraph says in the second sentence: ``Only people appearing as counsel before an adjudicator, the Refugee Division or the Appeal...''. But then you go on to say that it might be required to amend that section to cover individuals engaged in these activities. I presume you mean other activities that form the bulk of your work.

Mr. Thomson: That's correct.

Ms Young: That's a very long question, but could you clarify what amendment you would be looking for? Is that amendment essential to your position?

Mr. Billings: The amendment we'd be looking for, obviously, is a recognition of a regulatory body similar to ourselves that the government will deal with and will accept their members to make certain types of representations and to have the access to the visa and immigration offices.

Would we accept something other than an amendment to the legislation? Yes. We would look at a memorandum of understanding or any sort of agreement like that. I'm not sure if it was Mr. Hanger or if it was the other gentleman who said there is more force and impetus when it's in law, and that there's more of an acceptance of that by the public and by the public that you serve, if it is in law.

Obviously, we want any sort of solution to this problem. If we walk away with the fact that we'll take a memorandum between the government and ourselves, we'll accept that.

Mr. Marrocco: But I think your question was directed at paragraph 114(1)(v), which I think you would have to rewrite.

Ms Young: That's my question. Is that essential?

Mr. Marrocco: You would have to expand the regulatory authority so it covered all the different - this isn't very legal - places in which a consultant might show up. I guess it would be up to the minister as to how to use that regulatory authority. In other words, would that justify a memorandum of understanding? Perhaps the minister, in drafting the amendment, would go further and amend the definition of ``counsel''.

Ms Young: My question is, would you be promoting such an amendment to paragraph 114(1)(v)? I must say that the departmental officials were not enthusiastic about merely doing paragraph 114(1)(v), because they said that's just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the consultants' activities don't -

Mr. Thomson: Exactly.

Ms Young: I'm just looking for further clarification on that paragraph.

Mr. Thomson: Paragraph 114(1)(v), as it's written now, is very anomalous. It seems like it's a throwaway, really, in terms of the overall immigration processing activities carried on by the department. It would seem to be in the interests of the department to modify paragraph 114(1)(v) as well to include all of the activities, as Mr. Marrocco has suggested, even if it was just to bring the legislation into a consistent format.

.1820

Mr. Marrocco: Historically, you didn't have paragraph 114(1)(v). You just had a definition of counsel that anticipated a non-lawyer being counsel. They took a small, tentative step, gave themselves the authority to regulate, as described in paragraph 114(1)(v), and then didn't use the authority.

Personally, I think you should amend the definition of ``counsel'' to provide a consistent stream all the way through the act. Counsel is not in the regulations. If I were doing it, that's the way I would do it. But I would repeal paragraph 114(1)(v) and rewrite it.

Ms Young: The committee has appreciated your very forceful presentation of your preferred option for regulating consultants. As you can appreciate, there will be, and in fact there have been, other options presented to the committee. I'd just like to quickly run two of these options by you.

We skirted around this one from the other side of it. Option one would be to amend the Immigration Act, not to expand the definition of ``counsel'' but in fact to restrict it to ``legal counsel''. I'd like your reaction, generally, to that, and also your specific reaction as to the degree to which that would affect your day-to-day work and the work of other counsel as well.

Mr. Billings: First of all, it's unrealistic to believe you can restrict providing services to the public solely to lawyers. Traditionally in this country you don't do this. It's recognized that paralegals provide a very competent role in providing advice and guidance, not only in immigration law but also in other areas.

Secondly, because you're a lawyer it does not necessarily mean you're the font of all wisdom in dealing with immigration law. It's a very specialized practice and field. I would hazard a guess that if you're a real estate lawyer or if you're a commercial lawyer, you would have absolutely little or no knowledge of immigration law.

If you would restrict the market solely to lawyers, you would look at clients accessing legal counsel who would not be competent to provide the service and would be approached merely by the fact that they are legal counsel. I think you do a disservice to the public by taking away their ability to access people who are very competent and knowledgeable in this very specialized field.

Ms Young: What percentage of your work is before immigration tribunals?

Mr. Billings: It's none. Out of our 100 members, we might have had maybe one or two members who would account for maybe 10% or 15% of the work.

Mr. Thomson: It's 1% in British Columbia.

Mr. Billings: I don't think the problem is before tribunals. I think the people who appear before you will say the problem with respect to unscrupulous or incompetent behaviour of consultants or lawyers is not before tribunals, because those people are found out very quickly. It's putting people representing their interest overseas, where it is completely unregulated, or in Canada, holding out to put them through a system. These are all things that are not before tribunals.

So I don't think that should be the focus. The focus should be the whole other area of the immigration program and how consultants deal with that program.

Mr. Marrocco: It wouldn't affect us if you restricted it, but it would definitely affect the Immigration and Refugee Board, for example. I think, by accident, one of the articles we appended to give you some idea of the type of legal writing that goes on deals with adjournment. The board has a real problem getting cases on. In order to solve this problem, you don't do that by having more restrictive rules about adjournments. The market will do this if you can expand the number of qualified people who can take a case and present it.

If you restrict the definition, you will concentrate the work in fewer and fewer people. To the extent that non-lawyers appear there, you will cut them out. The lawyers who do go there will get more work. That will compound the board's problem with getting cases on, but it won't make it easier.

.1825

In my respectful submission, one should move in the other direction. There should be encouragement to raise the quality of representation by non-legally trained people to increase the number of representatives who appear there prepared to proceed and complete a case.

Ms Young: Okay. Here's option two: the federal government should establish a bonding system. Before a consultant could deal with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, he or she would have to pass an examination set by the department and would have to post a bond. If there were complaints, the complaints could be adjudicated by the IRB's existing system of adjudicators. What's your response to that?

Mr. Thomson: It seems like an interesting idea and one to which members of OPIC would probably have no particular objections, since I think we could all pass those examinations quite successfully. From my former civil service perspective, however, I fail to see where the resources to administer such a system are in the current department. I think it would be an impossible task.

As for the IRB administering adjudications, again I fail to see how the IRB has the resources or time to be able to enter into the administration of adjudications for immigration consultants.

Ms Young: Just as a point of information, it was suggested that the adjudicators were not overworked at the present time and that their work could quite easily expand to take care of any kind of adjudications. I was wondering if there is a potential conflict of interest in that kind of scenario.

Mr. Thomson: We have former members who are now members of the board, so there is a potential conflict of interest there. I don't know if that's the conflict of interest you meant.

Ms Young: I was speaking in terms of adjudicators establishing whether there had in fact been a violation of whatever ethics or standards were established, because the consequences could be that the bond would be forfeit. It wasn't a fully fleshed out idea, but I presented the essence of it.

Mr. Marrocco: It would certainly be a very inhibiting factor if you were in a vigorous argument before the board on a hotly contested matter and you were losing your cool because you didn't think you were getting a fair hearing. Instead of getting more aggressive about being heard, you might think in the back of your mind that you should be careful because they have another jurisdiction over you.

I would take issue with whether they would ever enforce the cancellation of the bond. We have a terrible problem with undertakings of assistance that are not enforced, where people promise that if you let them bring their relatives over here they'll take care of them for five years. They don't enforce those bonds at all.

The Chairman: That's changing.

Mr. Marrocco: It's always changing, but my point is that if you create a model in which you expect those bonds to be enforced, I wouldn't want to do it unless I was confident they would be. I would suggest to you that history suggests they don't enforce those sorts of things.

The Chairman: Fair enough.

Mr. Goslett: Who would set these standards? Who would determine what you would have to do to lose your bond, and what affect would that have? Would it just cost you the bond money? Do you still go on practising? Do you post another bond? It just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me.

Mr. Billings: If they are going to have competency tests, we should make them universal for everyone who is representing clients before Immigration, lawyers included. We would then have a universal standard.

Ms Young: I'd like to pick up on some of the themes that were developed through the meeting. The committee was grappling with a licensing body and with whether it's statutory or non-statutory. Also, from something that Mr. Dromisky pointed out, when you go down the list of attributes of a self-regulating profession, you have most of them but there is one big one missing. That's the hurdle you have to jump through - the professional or the academic credentials that are required by every other self-regulating, licensing body.

For example, you don't get to be a member of the law society before you are a graduate of a law school, before you article, etc. You don't get to be a doctor right away. The college doesn't look at you until you've graduated, you've interned, etc. So, just to tie this in with something you said, you were asked if you had ever refused members. You said, yes, you interview everyone for an hour and a half. That's fine if nothing much except the person's ability to advertise that they're a member of OPIC turns on a refusal. But what if it was their livelihood that turned on it because they wanted to be an immigration consultant and you said no? It seems to me that this is a fairly major hurdle in getting something like this off the ground. I'm not saying it's insurmountable, because these things evolve over time. But have you thought about this side of things?

.1830

Mr. Marrocco: The academic training is important. Seneca College offers a course in law enforcement or a law course that touches on customs and immigration issues. I guess that traditionally, because the provinces were the ones behind this and education was a matter within the provincial jurisdiction, it all fit together in a way. You could have an education requirement and, subsequent to that, an admission to an organization.

I'm not so sure the academic side of it is met fairly by having the person pass an exam, for example, to enter a profession and then not be subject to mandatory continuing legal education. A lot of professions, law included, do not require mandatory continuing legal education. So I don't know whether that's a better model or whether the type of model insisting that people continue to update their knowledge bases is a more effective way to train someone on an ongoing basis.

Ms Young: I have no problem with that, but this is a slightly different matter. In essence, we're talking about entry criteria into a profession, a trade, or whatever. I guess this is between the two. For example, if your organization were prescribed tomorrow and the act were to come into effect in a year or two years, you, and any other body that was going to be prescribed, would be given tremendous power, the power to say no. So there would have to be objective criteria. If the law society says no to someone who graduated from law school, they get taken to court.

Mr. Thomson: There's civil liability involved.

Ms Young: That's right.

So I'm just trying to put all of the pieces together, and what it really comes down to is this question that was raised indirectly before. All of the self-regulating professions are based in statute and they're all provincially.... They have a statutory monopoly and, as you pointed out, the education aspect of it has followed on. Like night and day, they're really intertwined. So I just can't piece the puzzle together. Perhaps it's a lack of imagination, but I can't see how this would come about. Let's say there was a statute tomorrow and you said no to somebody. What's he going to do?

Mr. Marrocco: We already recognize that by saying no, we could end up in litigation with somebody. If they felt we'd discriminated against them or treated them unfairly -

Ms Young: What would the criteria be? That's the problem. If there's no academic hurdle, as Mr. Dromisky was saying, that's the one thing that seems to be.... There's no objective academic criteria -

Mr. Thomson: Or experience.

Ms Young: Yes, although -

Mr. Billings: There's a minimum standard that we expect from all members, and we determine that at the point of the interview. So if you're talking about a minimum standard, then yes, in order to be in this organization you must meet the minimum standards as set by the membership committee.

If you're talking academic qualifications, meaning that you must have a degree or whatever, then no, we don't have that. We recognize that we work in quasi-administrative law, that people can acquire such knowledge through various manners, and that they in fact do so. There are very few universities and colleges that have an immigration law course per se, so it's accepted in the industry that people do acquire this knowledge through various ways.

We do have minimum standards. We have already refused several people for admission into OPIC because they have not met this minimum standard, and we have in fact sent them away with a letter saying that if they upgrade their standards to this, which is what we encourage them to do, they can come back to reapply.

.1835

Mr. Hanger: The fact that you could reject a person doesn't stop him or her from practising.

Mr. Billings: No it doesn't because -

Mr. Goslett: Not now.

Mr. Hanger: Not under this. If it were enacted then it would. I agree with the researcher there that -

Mr. Thomson: There are models in the professions where individuals can qualify through practical experience; for example, surveyors. It's not necessary to have an academic qualification; it's necessary to be able to show practical experience and pass a series of examinations.

The Chairman: Carpenters are the same way.

Mr. Goslett: What about management consultants? There's a provincial body of professional management consultants that is now a self-regulating body, as I understand it. I think its members are licensed by the province. What would you have to do to be a management consultant? I have a degree in economics. Does that mean I can be a management consultant?

Ms Young: Does it control entry into the profession? That's the point.

Mr. Goslett: I really don't know. I remember reading parts of its act because I was interested in the fact that it had started out much like we had. Over the years the province recognized it as the governing body; the licensing body for management consultants. So I guess there must be some sort of licence involved, but I really don't know.

Mr. Hanger: Would the litigation go beyond just the professional body and be shouldered by the federal government? Where would it end?

Mr. Marrocco: You can sue anybody. I think they'd probably go after us.

Mr. Hanger: If the government recognizes this professional body and it says no and there's a lawsuit....

The Chairman: There's no precedent to suggest the federal government would be on the line.

Mr. Marrocco: I would think the admissions committee would be on the line.

The Chairman: For example, when an architect messes up, you can't say you're going to go after the university, the authorizing body and the provincial government that authorized the authorizing body to make that person an architect.

Mr. Hanger: But we're not saying that here. If I understand Margaret's point, there's no academic criteria set already. If someone applies who may even have credentials equal to what any of you have here and the body says no, then why should he or she be rejected? If the person is rejected, maybe he or she will enter into a suit. Where does it end?

Mr. Marrocco: I haven't really looked at it, but it strikes me that the litigation would be between us and them. I don't see how they could get from us to the federal government. I haven't looked into it, but I think we will definitely bear the brunt of that. That's just what will have to happen. If you're going to raise the level, there will be some heat, so we'll have to take it.

I suppose, in terms of the federal government recognizing a particular organization, it might very well direct its attention to the admission criteria. Just because the regulation empowers the minister to do it, the second step is the minister doing it. Maybe that's the place to address crystallizing the admission standards to reduce, as much as possible, any kind of unfairness to a particular individual.

That's something that would go on between the minister and the organization while the minister was trying to make up his or her mind to sign whatever piece of paper afforded recognition. Over time, different community colleges and so on may very well develop programs, if you take it step by step. If you never do this, you'll never create the demand on the other end. If you do this, maybe different community colleges will have programs.

Maybe it will be functional to say a person has to pass that course and work for so many months or a year in the industry or something like that. That would be negotiated back and forth between the minister and the organization as time went on. I don't think you could do it all at once.

.1840

Mr. Goslett: Any such course that a community college or university puts on would be dependent on demand, and there may not be that demand.

About ten years ago I was approached by Seneca College and asked if I'd be interested in teaching a course on immigration law. I agreed and the college advertised the course. I think two people applied. It decided there was no money in that and that was the end of the course. If there's no demand, there won't be academic programs.

Mr. Marrocco: I think the law schools teach courses on immigration law and those courses are reasonably well attended. I can only go by our own firm. There isn't really a lot of interest in the students each year, it seems to me, to get into that area. There's some interest, though, so I don't know.

I think if you did this and eventually worked toward some sort of academic criteria, the community colleges would probably move to fill in the gap and educate the people.

The Chairman: Give it time to evolve.

Mr. Billings: But there has to be a start. Somewhere along the line we have to put this in place.

Mr. Marrocco: There are legal protections in place for individuals in terms of human rights legislation that everybody is subject to, so you can't behave in an arbitrary, unfair way without getting yourself into an awful lot of trouble with other organizations. We wouldn't be able to just exercise our discretion in an abusive way.

Mr. Billings: We would certainly have to publicize our admission criteria into the organization and make sure it was transparent so people were aware of it. We've already struck a committee. We've engaged a lawyer in the last couple of months to take a look at our by-laws and these specific points. We are going back and making sure the admission standards and the whole way we interview people for membership into OPIC is very well-known to the people who are going to apply for this. We felt perhaps there was an area where we might have been remiss, and we've retained and instructed counsel to look at that under our by-laws.

Now we're back and we have struck a committee to go through that and beef it up, if you will. So we're aware of that, but we don't have a particular pat answer to it right now.

Mr. Thomson: Anything other than an examination or a course system would probably have to involve OPIC or a similar organization at a very essential and basic level. I think the course and examinations would have to be offered in conjunction with OPIC, which is a common scenario.

If we go back to surveyors, for example, they set their own examinations and stipulate the requirements for the courses to be followed and what each step involves. So it's a common model that we could perhaps adapt.

Ms Young: Nobody seems to know how many consultants there are in Canada. Do you have any understanding of that? I'm particularly interested in the major provinces. You're largely located in Ontario, so do you have any sense of that nationally and in Ontario?

Mr. Thomson: In British Columbia there are about 20 active and probably another 20 to 30 peripheral individuals interested in immigration. That would include accountants, real estate people, some investment promoters and so on, who are actually involved in any significant way in immigration. By significant, I mean they actually deal with cases and clients. So it's a much smaller number than you would expect.

Ms Young: In Ontario?

Mr. Thomson: I could also speak for Hong Kong and say that in Hong Kong there are approximately 8 to 10 active major consultants involved in Canadian immigration law, and probably up to about 30 or 40 very peripheral people as well, again with very questionable levels of competence.

Mr. Billings: I would say that OPIC represents the majority of consultants practising in Ontario.

As Nigel stated, there are numerous people on the periphery of immigration practice. We don't look at them as consultants; we look at them as people who dabble in it. They could be travel agents or accountants with varying levels of competency. They could even be federal government employees such as interpreters, who would provide that service as well within a community. They're not doing this business as their main livelihood, per se. They're sort of dabbling in it.

.1845

There's a whole other undercurrent of consultants out there who are not legitimate consultants. We don't even consider them to be consultants; we consider them to be fraud artists.

Mr. Hanger: What share of the business do they get?

Mr. Billings: It's not the business, per se. I think the committee has to understand that these people are involved in fraudulent and illegal activities. They smuggle people in with fraudulent passports and provide illegal counselling. In some instances they'll even provide illegal stories. Very few of these people will actually appear at an immigration hearing or in the immigration environment.

We all run across them in our industry because we see the remnants of their work, but we don't consider these people to be consultants. Their clients come to us and say ``Fix it'', but invariably these people are the authors of their own misfortune. They pay incredible sums of money to get here and do this, but it's all illegal.

Mr. Hanger: What recourse would you have if you determined through your contacts that these individuals were doing this type of activity?

Mr. Billings: What we do now is report them to the RCMP. That's who we have a liaison with. We're very active in that regard. It's illegal, they're criminals, and they deserve to be brought before the courts and punished. We're very active in that and encourage our members. I don't think there's one meeting where we don't actively promote this type of activity. We have to police this activity ourselves.

Mr. Goslett: But you have to remember that the complainants, the clients, have to be willing to press charges. They're the witnesses. They can tell a legitimate consultant all kinds of stories, but unless they're willing to give the police statements and testify in court, there's really nothing anyone can do.

Mr. Billings: And that's world-wide. I run across consultants' names. Mr. Hanger was talking about foreign publications and people holding themselves up to be immigration consultants. There's a list of people that changes in different countries, with various names and different company names, and they all seem to promote the Canadian flag beside their names and things like that. It's endless.

I know that immigration intelligence probably has a better feel for that than we do, but there are substantial numbers of people, especially in high-source areas of immigrants to Canada.

The Chairman: Do you have a Quebec equivalent?

Mr. Billings: I know there was a fellow named Daniel Mallet who had a Quebec immigration association. I'm not sure how active it is.

We spoke with officials from MIQ and provided them with all our information on OPIC. They were very interested in it because they had ongoing discussions with their consultants in Quebec and wanted to look at our standards. They were very impressed by them and wanted to use what we had put forth and drafted in their discussions with consulting organizations.

It was about two and a half years ago that we met with the Quebec officials, and to be quite honest, we've heard nothing back from that. I believe at that time Daniel Mallet was the president.

The Chairman: Do you have any informal contact with Mr. Harder?

Mr. Billings: We've met with Mr. Harder officially from time to time, but not lately. We certainly have met with many senior government officials. We meet with the director general of Ontario region on a quarterly basis. We have an ongoing liaison with the ISG group, and our views have been requested from certain branches within the Department of Immigration, such as the business immigration unit and areas like that. So we have working relationships at a fairly senior level within the department.

Mr. Marrocco: We have a representative who meets with the IRB administrative people for purposes of processing and resolving regulatory issues that come up from the board's point of view.

The Chairman: Just to sum up, you probably sense that there's an appetite to deal with the problem, and you gentlemen have certainly helped us crystallize some potential solutions.

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The minister is hungry for a solution. If it's truly the case that we can solve a lot without getting into the quagmire of federal-provincial relations - if we can just solve it ourselves - I think you will find it will move quite quickly up the departmental priority list, because the minister wants to deal with it.

If you have some informal contacts with Mr. Harder, you might be advised to use them to say ``Look, we've heard from your committee that this is one of the potential reasons nothing's been done here, and this is our view on it.'' Or, as a parallel to coming here today, if you just want to promote what you told us with him as well, it certainly wouldn't hurt the case, and it might help.

That's my two cents' worth of advice.

Art, do you have anything else?

Mr. Hanger: No, I don't. I appreciate the presentation and the dialogue here. I think it's been excellent.

The Chairman: If you sense that we've left some loose ends or if you have amendments to the act and you want to get more specific, send us a proposal saying ``Here specifically is how you can amend the act, this is what will flow from it and this is how it will solve the guts of the problem.'' If you want to send us anything additional, we'd certainly be happy to look at it.

As I said, the minister wants a nuts-and-bolts solution. He wants something real from us. We have an opportunity here. A report, if it has merit, won't just sit on a shelf. I'm convinced of that.

Mr. Billings: When do you have to give your recommendations to the minister, just so we have some sort of timeframe in which we can get back to you? We will probably send some additional information to the committee, but as I indicated before, we're all volunteers, so for us to put the quality of work that we want to put before you as a subcommittee takes us a bit of time. I just need to know when you would expect to have something from us.

The Chairman: He suggested to me that we not allow it to drag beyond the calendar year, but our hope was that we would write the report over the summer, or that the researcher would at least write a draft over the summer. Then we would come back in the fall to either amend it or approve it. We would deal with this fairly early on. As parliamentarians, we would have it finished by October.

Mr. Billings: I think we could put something together within the next two to three weeks, if that would be agreeable to the subcommittee.

The Chairman: Yes.

Thank you very much for your attendance.

The meeting is adjourned.