Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, that's right.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One of the recurring complaints I've received from members of CSIC, who have approached me in different capacities, is a complete lack of transparency of the organization. There is a failure to hold public membership meetings. They attempt to hold them on the Internet or by teleconference, which has resulted in several failures because they don't get a quorum.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The difficulty I have with the legislation as it's currently drafted is that it doesn't have sufficient requirements to deal with the problems that have arisen with the previous regulator. In other words, the previous regulator, for example, hasn't had a meeting of its members in several years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't see any major improvements. Maybe the only additional thing I see, from the point of view of the regulator itself, is that the minister will give himself the power to demand certain documents. At the present time, the minister can't ask for, has no power to acquire, anything from CSIC, which is deeply disturbing.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I saw a group of Koreans--it doesn't really matter, but they just happened to be Koreans--who showed up in my office. They'd paid a consultant who wasn't regulated something like $50,000 to submit papers. They thought he had submitted them. When we went to check, nothing had been submitted.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I'm aware of that. I think that undoubtedly is an improvement, but at the end of the day, the extent to which it's going to make a difference is going to depend on the effectiveness of the regulator, and that's where I have a lot of concerns--

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The problem with the legislation as currently drafted--and it could be fixed by amendment, I would think--is that it doesn't give the minister the power to impose any governance requirements on the regulatory body. It allows for the minister to require documents, but doesn't allow for the minister to....

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You're asking me a legal question on the jurisdiction of the federal government, and I think the Supreme Court of Canada decided that in a case called Mangat. The B.C. law society argued that the federal government had no jurisdiction to regulate consultants, and the Supreme Court of Canada concluded that it did.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The only expertise that exists is the expertise that CSIC has acquired over the course of the years that it's been the regulatory body. And I think many people would suggest that CSIC has not done an effective job.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it has to be about both, because the regulation of consultants has a dual aspect. On the one hand, you have the immigration officials, who are struggling with precisely the problems the other witness described. You have people who are unscrupulous and who don't care about presenting false documents.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. I think that a regulatory body would have been accountable and would have solved all of the issues in terms of accountability and governance. Also, any regulatory body has all of the effective powers in order to be able to effectively discipline its members, so I think that would be the best solution, without any doubt.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I'll be more than glad to answer any questions. Those are the key points I wanted to make.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, that's fine.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I certainly empathize with everything the previous speaker said; however, I think most of what she said are issues that are beyond the scope of this legislation. I agree that it's important not to penalize the victims and to go after the criminals, but having said that, we're now here considering a piece of legislation that is designed to regulate a profession.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  So you're asking if I would support the possibility that persons could be removed pending an H and C? I would say that, generally speaking, the policy is that they will be removed. There is always the possibility in exceptional cases for a person to go to court and seek a stay.