Citizenship and Immigration committee  I have not seen any change over the time that I've been practising.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, it's not necessarily easy for them to prove it. They need support, they need people who can assist them in gathering the evidence. They may need to obtain psychological evidence, which may be difficult if they haven't already been in counselling. All that said, the types of

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I had been trying to poll other agencies that have had these cases so far around the conditional permanent residence issue, and what their experiences have been with getting in touch with CIC. Everyone I have spoken to has had great difficulty reaching anyone at CIC. I would say,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. That's our standard advice to everyone.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'd be happy to.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have seen many cases, and we do a lot of training for other organizations on dealing with cases where there is abuse while a sponsorship is in process, and the woman either has to walk away from the sponsorship or the sponsor withdraws the sponsorship as part of the abuse. The

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Or even before the custody issues have been resolved.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think that would be excellent. I understand this does involve resources in creating that information in a wide variety of languages, but I think it would be hugely beneficial to women to have that available to them. Any chance that we can reach them better is going to be helpfu

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I haven't.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Finally, there is a need for information sessions for both sponsors and sponsors' spouses when they enter Canada to make them aware of their rights and responsibilities under Canadian law. Women who need to access the domestic violence exemption in the future need to be aware tha

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's being printed, because it's actually Heather Neufeld. There was a mistake.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  All right. And I am an immigration and refugee lawyer here in Ottawa—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  —at South Ottawa Community Legal Services. As I'm sure you probably know, in October 2012 Canada implemented a new conditional permanent residence regime for certain sponsored spouses and partners. That's for anyone whose sponsorship was submitted after October 25, 2012. The fir