Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 9th, 2008

Evidence of meeting #27 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was consultants.

On the agenda

Immigration Consultants

MPs speaking

Norman Doyle
Andrew Telegdi
Thierry St-Cyr
Ed Komarnicki
Jim Karygiannis
Robert Carrier
Nina Grewal
Wajid Khan

Also speaking

John Ryan  Chair, Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants
Rivka Augenfeld  Public Interest Director, Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants
Imran Qayyum  Vice-Chair, Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants
Philip Mooney  National President, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
Alli Amlani  President, Ontario Chapter, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
Sean Hu  Director, Registered Immigration Consultants Association of Canada
Malcolm Heins  Chief Executive Officer, Law Society of Upper Canada
Ramesh Dheer  National President, International Association of Immigration Practitioners
Julia Bass  Law Society of Upper Canada
Sergiu Vacaru  Professor, Canadian Society of Immigration Practitioners
Joel Hechter  Downtown Legal Services
Anita Balakrishna  Staff Lawyer, South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO)
Katarina Onuschak  Member of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, Co-Chair, Education Committee, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants, As an Individual
William Rallis  Director, Communication (Toronto), Canadian Society of Immigration Practitioners

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Nina Grewal Conservative Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC

Anybody else?

12:25 p.m.

Downtown Legal Services

Joel Hechter

I'd like to add one thing. I appreciate where your question is coming from, but I'm not sure it's the right question. I don't think it's necessarily about crafting the right sentence, although certainly penalties are important. I think it's about creating a regulatory scheme that has credible enforcement lodged in it. We need credible enforcement. The penalties certainly have to be worked out, but for things like fraud, we already have Criminal Code sanctions against that. What we need is a regulatory scheme with credible enforcement. The details, like what sanctions, can be brought in as well.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle

Thank you.

We really appreciate your coming before us today and giving evidence. We had to hurry up a little, but we did get in a full hour and five minutes. Thank you again. You'll be hearing recommendations coming forth from this committee, I'm sure.

The meeting is adjourned.