Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 20th, 2010

[C/Supt Joe Oliver]

There are a large variety of ways in which these offences are reported. It could be through somebody who has been victimized themselves or through somebody who knows there has been a victim, somebody who is aware that someone has been victimized, but they may be intimidated to come forward because they might be concerned about what may happen to them if they do report the crime.

In the course of doing our police investigations, we may come across information where we identify the offence itself. If we have a wiretap investigation under way for a drug trafficking case and we happen to intercept communications that involved an immigration consultant, we could then proactively initiate an investigation as well.

There's the crime stoppers program, anonymous complaints, and acting proactively through intelligence. For instance, we target Internet sites that are involved in a whole bunch of criminal activity where we actually proactively go and try to identify trends and patterns.

There are a number of ways through which complaints come to both the RCMP and CBSA.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Go ahead.

[Peter Hill]

Media coverage is another possibility that could be followed up on, including Citizenship and Immigration Canada overseas and its visa processing. I mentioned earlier our migration integrity officers, who are stationed abroad following and tracking as best they can irregular migration patterns, working with the local authorities abroad to try to protect basically this activity from occurring. There are multiple potential avenues by which information or referrals reach us.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

How bad does it have to be before someone will report a crooked immigration consultant?

[Peter Hill]

How bad does it have to be? I think it really is specific to the circumstances. There is a great range of situations. Some are, in a sense, very bad and some are not so bad. It is very situational-specific in terms of when someone would feel compelled to come forward to make a complaint or to provide information.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Do you have a number of cases that you have dealt with or you are going to be dealing with that have come forward?

[Peter Hill]

I have just the numbers that I referred to previously. We have had 200 referrals, and of the 200 referrals we've actually opened up 55 cases. Of those cases, 17 have been closed because the allegations were determined to be unfounded. We currently have about 36 cases under way at the present time involving crooked consultants.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj has a point of order.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Yes, Mr. Chair. In consideration of the fact that we started our witness testimony 15 minutes late, I'd like the committee to consider splitting the time, so that seven minutes in this round would be cut out of the round and seven minutes in a subsequent round. That would actually give us another seven minutes, if everyone is in agreement.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

So then....

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Unless it's unanimous. If everyone's in agreement.

[Tim Uppal]

You're not saying to extend the time.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

No.

[An hon. member]

We end at 5:30; we just take seven more minutes.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

We split the two rounds equally, as opposed to one round of 45 and the other round of one hour.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Someone's got to say something here. Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Go ahead.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to go back to the question of those two convictions. The current regulations allow for a fine of a maximum of $50,000 and two years imprisonment. What were the penalties imposed?

[Peter Hill]

They weren't approaching those limits.

The one individual who was involved in misrepresentation received an 18-month conditional sentence. There were outstanding health issues that impacted on the decision of the judge. It was made clear that if these health conditions--I don't know exactly what the details are--were not present it would have been jail time.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

So because of the time limitation.... So basically in one case it was a conditional 18 months. And the second case?

[Peter Hill]

The bottom line on the second case was that the individual was requested to make a $6,000 donation to an agreed-upon charity in lieu of a fine.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

So when we look at this and we take a look at the size of this industry, does anyone have an idea of the actual dollar amount size of this immigration consulting industry? Do we have any numbers?

[Peter Hill]

I'm afraid we don't.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

We can look at there being 250,000 immigrants in the last year, and let's say there are an additional two or three applications for each successful one. Of those, if every third one gets some sort of consultation and if we average about $1,000 we're talking about a business of a quarter of a billion dollars, minimally. That's a huge business.

Do you think maximum fines of $50,000 are adequate, especially in consideration--and you've just referenced it inadvertently--that judges often see the maximum as only being applicable in the most egregious of cases? Some of these people, some of the organized groups in this, are raking in not hundreds of thousands but millions of dollars.