Bill C-35 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

This enactment amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to change the manner of regulating third parties in immigration processes. Among other things it
(a) creates a new offence by extending the prohibition against representing or advising persons for consideration — or offering to do so — to all stages in connection with a proceeding or application under that Act, including before a proceeding has been commenced or an application has been made, and provides for penalties in case of contravention;
(b) exempts from the prohibition
(i) members of a provincial law society or notaries of the Chambre des notaires du Québec, and students-at-law acting under their supervision,
(ii) any other members of a provincial law society or the Chambre des notaires du Québec, including a paralegal,
(iii) members of a body designated by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, and
(iv) entities, and persons acting on the entities’ behalf, acting in accordance with an agreement or arrangement with Her Majesty in right of Canada;
(c) extends the time for instituting certain proceedings by way of summary conviction from six months to 10 years;
(d) gives the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration the power to make transitional regulations in relation to the designation or revocation by the Minister of a body;
(e) provides for oversight by that Minister of a designated body through regulations requiring the body to provide information to allow the Minister to determine whether it governs its members in the public interest; and
(f) facilitates information sharing with regulatory bodies regarding the professional and ethical conduct of their members.

Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to add by voice on Bill C-35, the cracking down on crooked consultants act.

The only thing I would add is the word “immigration” consultants. I think that clarifies it.

It has been stated by my party that we will be supporting the bill at second reading to send it to committee. That is where we are going to be able to do a lot of fine tuning. From what I have read in some of the notes, this bill needs a lot of fine tuning. I will cover some of the areas where I think we need to address some of these concerns.

Immigration, as mentioned by many other members, is really the foundation of our country. I remember speaking at Sir Winston Churchill Collegiate in my riding many years ago. We talked about immigration. As I said to the audience, young men and women, when we look at every one of our family trees, at some point in time one of our ancestors, whether it be our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents, arrived on these friendly shores from somewhere, aside from our first nations people.

It has been a great mix. It has been the formula for making this country one of the best countries in the world to live. If anything, some years ago, for seven consecutive years, Canada was recognized as the number one country in the world. I believe that we are number two now.

Nevertheless, there have been problems. Policies, such as our immigration policy, are evolving. The member from Winnipeg Centre talked earlier about today's immigration problems. The immigration of today is different from the immigration of 20,30,50, and 60 years ago. Fifty years ago we did not have a temporary workers program, for example. We did not have such an extensive refugee program. We did not have a board, per se.

If we look at the trends of yesterday, we would look at vast numbers of family reunification, such as war brides, for example. Things have changed.

I am glad that this is coming forward. Many years ago, as I mentioned earlier, when I was elected, in 1993, I had a private member's initiative that addressed some of these issues that came from an industry that I was in, which was the executive search consulting business. I related the rules and regulations that governed that industry to the immigration consultant industry.

Let me provide some examples. In order to operate our business, we had to be licensed by the provincial government, and we had to be bonded. There were guidelines, and there were specific rules and regulations that we had to abide by. If we violated those regulations, that licence came right off the wall, preventing us from earning a living and preventing us from running our companies.

What I think needs to be done here is a clear definition, clear guidelines, and clear rules but also clear, stiff penalties. In addition to that, we need to have a mechanism to enforce those penalties. Otherwise, it all goes for naught.

I am concerned, though. This piece of legislation talks about the creation of a body that will be reporting to the minister. I do not agree with that. I think that is wrong.

The minister has nothing to say about running this body. It should be a totally independent, arm's-length body, with rules and guidelines as set out by legislation. It is not for the minister to interfere in any way, shape, or form. That is not how it works.

In the case of these immigration consultants, let me also point out that it is not just a federal piece of legislation that is going to help us resolve some of these issues. We have to work with the provinces. It affects them too. It is a two-way street.

On that issue, let me just go off track for a moment and point out that in our province of Ontario, we have a minister of citizenship and immigration. We can understand a minister of immigration, because provinces, too, have their own immigration procedures and policies.

The Liberal government allowed provinces to provide immigration facilities according to their needs. They were able to identify their specific needs and recruit as required. But what is puzzling is the fact that provinces do not give citizenship. It is my understanding that the federal government provides citizenship. I would ask the provinces to maybe look at that.

The intent of the legislation is positive, and if properly amended may still produce some good public policy. That is why we are supporting it. We see a lot of good work and a lot of goodwill around the committee table.

I remember former immigration minister Elinor Caplan; I can mention her by name because she is no longer a member. She was a good immigration minister. The member for Winnipeg Centre talked about the abuse that goes on abroad. He is right. Minister Caplan spent her time visiting our embassies and our high commissions in different parts of the world because we in Canada had observed that abuse was going on. Did we address it? We did. Did we improve the situation? We did. Did the problem go back offline again? Unfortunately it did.

Former minister Lucienne Robillard was also a good minister of immigration.

Some of these areas that we are talking about today, like enforcement and regulations and the body that was formed, all came from committee work, all came from consultation.

I remember having the minister in my office in Scarborough Centre many years ago. The local communities expressed a lot of concerns. As a result, the independent consultant body was created. It remains in existence today.

The member for York West did a great job in her time as a minister of immigration. But the numbers were growing each year, the 1% that the member for Winnipeg Centre talked about. It is great to achieve. The member was also right that there is a lot of competition going on out there today in a lot of these countries.

I remember being at the European Parliament many years ago when it was talking about its difficulty in attracting skilled labour. We had a problem here in Canada just a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, Canada, maybe not as much as other countries, had experienced some difficult times. We could not get enough people, so we had to bring them in from Mexico, the Philippines, and other countries.

I have a policy in my office. I refrain from dealing with an immigration file that is in the hands of a lawyer or a consultant, because I too, along with many of my colleagues on the Liberal side, have heard of the abuse that goes on. We have heard about this over the past couple of days in debate. Let me give the House an example.

A person wants to bring in his wife and children and all of a sudden he is approached by some so-called immigration consultant, who comes to our offices and seeks information. Unfortunately, the applicant is ignorant, and I use that word in a good sense, meaning that he does not know that he can approach a member of Parliament and seek help.

We also heard earlier today about how our offices have become inundated with a lot of these files because these individuals reach out to us. We have an obligation as their representatives to address their concerns as best we can.

My colleague from Don Valley West told us about staff being tied up on these issues. All of a sudden they have to squeeze time here and there, maybe to address a pension issue, a disability issue, a passport issue, or whatever. If we are going to take on all of these responsibilities, and we have no objection to doing so, maybe we should be looking at the budgets of members of Parliament so that we can dedicate staff to address these concerns.

Our birth rate in Canada is not that high, and it is down in many other countries as well. If we are going to grow and sustain the social safety net that Canada is so recognized for, then we need immigration. We need input.

Let me get back for a moment to this board. That is my greatest concern in this piece of legislation.

When I read in the documents that this board would be reporting to the ministry and the minister, that caused a lot of concern for me, and I am sure many of my constituents and others felt the same way. The minister has every responsibility to try to bring forth legislation, send it to committee, have the members of the committee bring in witnesses, seek input and guidance, and work to fine-tune this legislation. Surely to God, the minister has no business having this board report to him. It should be totally independent and at arm's length. Should people have to compete to be selected to run this board? No.

Let me simplify it. Anybody who wants to work as an immigration consultant, which I do not think is the exclusive business of lawyers, should have the proper training, a proper course to go by. They should make themselves aware of the legislation, seek a proper licence from the ministry and the province, because it is a business. They would charge a fee for service according to specific guidelines, and then there would be a board to make sure that these guidelines are followed, to ensure that immigration consultants do not violate the rules that the ministry and the board set down.

The moment those rules are violated, these individuals should be penalized with stiff, enforceable sentences. The worst-case scenario is to yank their licences off the wall and shut them down, period. It would be a totally independent mechanism. That is how I suggest this system should operate.

When the member for Bourassa was the minister of immigration, he moved into that area and made a quantum leap forward. Almost every minister under a Liberal government, let me point out very proudly, moved this file forward in a positive manner. Never have I seen a perfect piece of legislation. We do the best we can today, and if something unfolds three or five years down the road, then we have to make adjustments. That is exactly what was happening under a Liberal administration.

When the cuts were made, I agreed with the member for Winnipeg Centre that trimming needed to be done, but I pointed out then, and I will point out again today, that the system was working better. Somehow it was working better.

What I found unacceptable, and I am sure my colleagues on the Liberal side would agree, is this: when a constituent said that he or she was having a family wedding, or that a family member had passed away, or that he or she had not seen a brother, a sister, or parents for a long time, and the constituent wanted to sponsor these people to come over for a holiday, the way these applications were being put in abroad and assessed was problematic.

Let me provide a scenario. Somebody from country A goes into one of our offices. The person is as nervous as can be, forgets maybe to add one word, and all of a sudden that person is denied. I believe the Immigration Act has to change to address the way our offices work abroad. Do the offices want to give members of Parliament a little more? Fine, they can set guidelines. Maybe they should take it totally away from us, but that is taking a service away that MPs get voted in to perform, namely, to serve their constituents.

I encourage the minister to look at how we can work with our offices abroad. I am sure the minister's intent in addressing this horrible situation is to address the abuse that has gone on throughout the years. I personally have heard horror stories and I will provide an example.

An Albanian mother and daughter some years ago approached me from St. Irene's, the church that my dad built, and my dad told me I had to help this family. They were not even in my riding, but they came to see me. The story I heard raised what little hair I had left.

This mother and daughter were working three jobs, day and night, cleaning, doing anything they could. They were using a lot of their earnings to pay a person who was like a paralegal, nothing wrong with the profession, but she portrayed herself as an immigration consultant. Meanwhile for four or five years it dragged on until, by God's will and some good fortune, they came to my office and we addressed their concern. It really was a simple issue. It was a matter of communication, getting paper documentation for them. Today, several years down the road, they are a happy family. They are working for themselves. They are contributing to our system and glad to say they are Canadian citizens. There are many other examples that I could talk about.

The Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants is a good idea. It is a body that could be empowered with more tools to oversee the enforcement of the legislation. That is as a result of input from a Liberal government. Was it the right thing? Maybe it was the right thing at the time. Maybe today, four or five years down the road, it needs to be changed. Circumstances have changed.

However, I do not believe a competition has to be put out, that a board has to be established that reports to the minister. Members and the audience will say I have said this twice, but I am saying it again because I see great danger in reporting to the minister. In essence, the minister would have absolute say, period. The minister could do anything he wanted. We know he can do anything he wants as a minister, but surely this is not transparent. The board should be able to work totally independently.

There was a comment made that lawyers should be looking after these immigration files, as they know better and there is technical data, and so on. With the greatest respect to the profession, I do not think that is the only way to go. An individual could approach a lawyer if he wished to, but if an immigration consultant is properly trained, then he or she should be able to do the work properly. If proper guidelines are set, then we as members of Parliament might feel much more comfortable in dealing with these people.

I know I speak on behalf of my colleagues on the Liberal side. We hesitate to deal with these so-called immigration consultants, primarily because of the horror stories that we have not only heard but also, in essence, experienced. It is not a matter of $100 or $500. It is thousands of dollars. It is shameful. It is unacceptable when these people come here wanting to start a new life and get taken for a ride. It is unacceptable when an individual in another country who wishes to immigrate to Canada walks into one of our offices and is not even given an interview. That is another area the minister has to look at. Sometimes a person cannot even get in the door of one of our offices or embassies and the application is turned down.

There are offices in our embassy in one specific country where the moment the applicant comes out the door the so-called consultant says the person will be given one-stop shopping, guaranteed. The person is promised a ticket and a visa for a fee. That is unacceptable. Those are some of the areas the minister also has to address.

In closing, on behalf of the Liberal Party and our critic, we will support sending the bill to committee. That is where a lot of good work will be done, where good input will be provided. We will bring in witnesses and seek their guidance, and at the end of the day we will come up with a piece of legislation that will help our country continue to grow and grow properly.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join the debate on Bill C-35 on behalf of my constituents in the riding of Winnipeg Centre. As a representative from that inner-city core area riding, I can say that the issue of immigration is top of mind and foremost on the minds of many of my constituents, as many are new Canadians or recent immigrants to this country and many still need settlement services and other immigration services whether they are sponsoring family members or seeking a visitor's visa for a family member to come to this country for a wedding, et cetera.

I want to begin on a comment by my colleague from Don Valley West who quite accurately pointed out, and I will paraphrase him, that the rise in the immigration consultant industry is directly proportionate to the deterioration of our immigration system and the services that people used to be able to get free of charge from their government. They are now increasingly frustrated with backlogs, bureaucracy and incomprehensible delays to the point where they more often than not, and more and more frequently, wind up at their MP's office seeking some kind of relief from what seems to be an incomprehensible immigration system. So I agree with my Liberal colleague that the reason we are wrestling with this matter today and the reason we have had such a burgeoning new industry of unscrupulous immigration consultants is because desperate people are taking desperate measures trying to get access to basic services that used to be quite accessible in this country.

We should begin our study of the bill with the knowledge that there has been a catastrophic failure in the immigration system, backlogs of years and years at a time. For a country that was built on immigration and seeks and relies on immigration for any growth whatsoever, we should take note that we were at zero population growth years ago. Without immigration we would be shrinking. I sat on the immigration committee when we did a study that projected where Canada would be without immigration. Within 50 years without immigration, if we just continued at our zero population growth, we would be 18 million people. In that same period of time, the city of Minneapolis would be 18 million people because its country is growing. So the whole population of Canada would be equal to the city of Minneapolis in the year 2050 without immigration. I share that only to illustrate the point of how vitally important it is.

In the province of Manitoba we have taken great measures to attract more immigration. I am happy to report that we are now up to 12,000 to 14,000 new immigrants per year in a province of 1,000,000 people. Almost all of them come to my riding first because my riding is the inner-city core area of Winnipeg where there is affordable housing, not great housing, frankly. There is a great problem with insufficient housing for these new arrivals, but it is where they start out. So an awful lot of them come to my office with their immigration problems.

I have declared publicly that my office is an immigration consultant-free zone. They are not allowed over the threshold of my office. I will not have them. I will not breathe the same air as them. I will not let my constituents be robbed by them. They will not get in my office. That is how fed up we are with them. I have stories, Mr. Speaker, that would curl your hair about some of the rip-offs associated with this.

I have had examples where an applicant seeking a simple visa was charged $3,000 on the promise that he would get a letter from the member of Parliament to assist his visa. This is what we learned after the fact. The guy was selling access to my office, and this is why I declared an absolute moratorium, a no-go zone. They are not welcome and not allowed in. But people are desperate. They are frustrated and vulnerable. There are all kinds of barriers, first of all, in terms of language or unfamiliarity with the culture, or inaccessibility to the bureaucracy.

In some places the exploitation takes place by members of their own communities who have those language skills and the misinformation begins there. However, the need for control and regulation is so blatantly paramount and obvious that I welcome Bill C-35 and its attempt to deal with crooked immigration consultants. I do not think that is the formal name of the bill, but the way we have it in our speaking notes is Bill C-35, an act to deal with crooked immigration consultants. I do not think that is overstating things at all. When the Minister of Immigration introduced the bill, he used words like loathsome, bottom feeders, reprehensible. I share those views and then some.

I travelled with a former minister of immigration to Hong Kong and Beijing and to some of the foreign missions, the Canadian foreign embassies that deal with great volumes of immigration. Part of the problem with the illegal or crooked immigration consultants is abroad where hopefuls line up at those foreign missions.

I talked about the problem with access, the waiting lists and the backlog. There are people who sleep night after night in front of our immigration offices at foreign missions just to get in the door to get the paperwork necessary to apply for some access to our country. The need and the demand far outstrips our legitimate ability to cope with it.

I am not saying that coming to Canada is a right, that everyone should have instant access to come here. I am saying our intake process is so flawed and in some way, sometimes, and I am not saying this to cast aspersions on the staff of our foreign missions, the intake process at that end is corrupted and is vulnerable to foreign consultants operating in those countries. We know it for a fact. We have seen the billboards in the Philippines, “We can get you into Canada”. Even the Government of Canada trademark logo is abused. It is advertised in this way, “For a nominal fee, we can get you into Canada”, and the Government of Canada's logo is at the bottom of the billboard. It is not put there by the Government of Canada. The phone number is some immigration consultant who will probably sell a person a pile of documents that other people can access free of charge, online or by coming down to the Canadian Embassy or High Commission.

That is the extent of the problem. It cannot be underestimated, but it does compromise and, I think in a way, calls into question the legitimacy of our immigration system if a significant proportion of applicants get access to the documents or get access to visitors visas or whatever, using what I believe is a corrupt process, and that is the fraudulent measures which many of these immigration consultants employ.

I note there is a bunch of recommendations from the immigration committee when it studied this issue. I have to point out that there are great gaps in between what was recommended by the all parliamentary committee and the measures the government has chosen to put into Bill C-35. I am sure some of those shortcomings will be addressed when the bill gets to committee. I am sure the opposition parties at least will make note that recommendation 4, for instance, of the report is not found in Bill C-35. I am not pointing this out as criticism, even. I look forward to perhaps amending the bill so it does satisfy some of the legitimate concerns that were raised by all parties at the committee process.

MPs offices have become de facto immigration offices. Every speaker that has stood has talked about the full time staffers that they have in their offices who do nothing but deal with immigration problems. We have immigration clinics on Mondays and Wednesdays when the office is just full of people.

The waves of immigration coming to my part of Canada now are coming from parts of the world where language is a problem and cultural barriers are a huge problem. Most of the new arrivals now are coming from Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, war-torn countries that are not stable. They are not used to dealing with a normal bureaucracy and they do not have, frankly, the skills, the training or the tools.

Part of what needs to be addressed, in the context of trying to stamp out crooked immigration consultants, is to deal with the root cause of the problem, which is people without the requisite skills getting access to the bureaucracy and a bureaucracy that is unnecessarily complex and in some sense virtually broken.

A lot more could be spent on settlement services and helping new arrivals cope with the bureaucracy through guidance, through language training and through better access to advocates. I know the Refugee Council of Canada is swamped with work. It simply cannot give adequate representation of advocacy for all the people who come in.

On that subject, let me point out that we are very concerned about the way the new arrivals on the boat full of Tamil refugees are being treated. The government seems to be sniffing around and contemplating the idea that people who arrive as a group should be treated differently somehow from people who arrive as individuals. I put it to my colleagues from the Conservative Party, it is a slippery slope to apply the rights of the refugee and immigration act differently to people just because they arrived en masse. Each should be treated as if they set foot on Canadian shores as individuals. That is not exactly in keeping will Bill C-35, but it is along the same lines.

The shortcomings of the immigration system are also clearly illustrated in western Canada. We consider Winnipeg to be part of western Canada, notwithstanding the CFL has us lumped in the eastern conference. We are bitter about this, but I will not dwell on it here today.

However, labour brokers are second only to the immigration consultants, and some of them do both. These labour brokers, who are undermining the entire construction industry of western Canada, are often labour consultants, as well, who charge a fee and then get temporary foreign workers.

This is where the current government of the day is at fault. These temporary foreign worker permits are given away like free baubles with a purchase of gas to where crooked labour brokers, who are immigration consultants at the same time. They go to genuine contractors and tell them that they do not have to pay $30 an hour for a labourer because they have 30 guys on temporary foreign worker permits. They tell them to lay off all their Canadian workers and they will put temporary foreign workers on the job, which will save them a fortune because the workers will not give them any trouble. If they do, they will be kicked out of the country.

This is epidemic across western Canada and it is undermining the entire construction industry. We have non-union contractors complaining en masse. I meet with those contractors and they complain to me that they are being destabilized.

I would welcome the opportunity to share the facts I have with the parliamentary secretary because he would be shocked at what is happening all across western Canada with these labour brokers.

We just built the Winnipeg international airport. Where did the tradesmen came from? Lebanon. The last job they had was in Latvia. The whole kit and caboodle of them were packed up by the same labour broker who got temporary foreign worker permits to bring them to Winnipeg to build the new Winnipeg international airport, while 100 unemployed carpenters were shaking the fence, trying to get in because they were unemployed. People would not believe what is going on out there. The parliamentary secretary could use a tour through some of those problem areas, too.

We have to crack down on a lot of these aspects of a broken immigration system. It may have been a good idea to fill legitimate job shortages with temporary foreign workers three and four years ago, when there was a surplus of work. We are in the middle of a recession and we are still bringing in 50,000 temporary foreign workers who take legitimate jobs away from Canadians, and these are not immigrants. These are foreign nationals who leave the country with those pay cheques. How does that benefit anybody? It is madness and it goes hand in glove with the immigration consultants who are milking the system by charging vulnerable people exorbitant amounts of money for services that should be readily available to them through a well functioning bureaucracy.

Not all people helping immigrants are charlatans. We should start from that basic premise as well. There are legitimate consultants and immigration lawyers who are serving a valuable function within the system, but they too will tell us that the system is not what it used to be.

We have never achieved our immigration goals of 1% of the population per year. The closest we ever came was in the Brian Mulroney years, when we let in 220,000 or 230,000. We are close to that level today. There is a myth that in the grand old days of the Liberal government, more people were let in. In actual fact, in many of the Trudeau years, 90,000 or 100,000 a year was the norm. I do not know where this myth came from, that it was the Liberals who threw open the doors to Canada. In the Mulroney years, more were let in, and we have only just come to that level once or twice in recent years. We are still nowhere near the 1% per year that has been set as a realistic target of we can absorb and what we need. That would be about 300,000 per year.

We are the lucky ones when people choose to come to our country. There is competition around the world for immigrants and for economic migrants, et cetera. We are out there actively trying to attract people to come to Canada. That is the stated policy, but our actions seem to contradict our own stated policy because we throw up hurdles and barriers to the point where people are frustrated and stymied. People who are qualified and would make legitimate immigrants look at their options around the world. They look at what it takes to move to Canada, to Australia and to the United States. Not all of them choose Canada because it is difficult to move here.

I recently helped a nurse specialist move here from Australia. She was trained in New Zealand. We need these advanced practice nurses in our country. It took 18 months, and that was after the job offer. We really do have problems to the point where it is no wonder people will look to anyone who can provide them with assistance to try to get through the quagmire of the bureaucracy of our immigration system.

I remember when we were at the Canadian embassy in China. We were in Fuzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. They showed us some of the clever forgeries on immigration documents. They can reproduce almost anything and these forged documents are often what are selling for a premium price in terms of getting access to Canada.

I do not think we catch them all. There is more work we could do to enforce the system. I am not suggesting making it more difficult, because it is difficult enough as it is. However, there are checks and balances that we are leaving unchecked and unbalanced in terms of legitimate, honest people trying to get in and also the fraudulent examples that are being coached and guided by these expensive immigration consultants operating at home and abroad.

While we are busy working to fix the system, the one thing we could do is provide more assistance in our immigration offices in our country and take some of the burden and pressure off MPs offices. It is not really our jobs as members of Parliament to run an immigration office, yet that is what many of us end up doing about two-thirds of our time. Granted, we help a lot of nice people weave their way through the quagmire.

The way the Liberals balanced the budget in the 1990s and the early 2000s was by cutting and hacking and slashing the civil service by 30%. First one trims the fat, but when the fat is already trimmed, some cuts do not heal. Some of these cuts have not healed. The government cannot cut the civil service by 30%, increase its volume of work by 30%, and then not have something fall apart and break.

What happened here was that the government left a gaping hole in service in that immigration department. That void, that vacuum, is being filled by an unscrupulous mini-industry of immigration consultants.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his input into this process and also his confirmation that in fact his party will be in support of getting the bill to committee to obviously look into some of the issues that he has identified today, but I am a little unsure about his concern, at least at this point, with respect to his point about statutory.

The way it exists now is not nearly how it is going to exist after Bill C-35 is passed in terms of the regulatory board, so I am a little unsure as to what his concern is with respect to statutory, because this will be a board that obviously reports directly to the ministry and to the minister and will be given authority to do so. It will be given authority to actually regulate the industry and its position will become permanent based on that organization applying to the ministry, and a number of organizations obviously will. The organization chosen to be the overseer will in fact become the regulatory body.

So I am not quite sure what his concern is, but I would suggest that it certainly is something the committee will be studying once we get the bill through second reading and get it to committee.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak today to Bill C-35, a bill which I prefer to call an act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, a more formal name than that which it has been given by the minister. Even though I think part of the bill is meant to be a cracking down on crooked consultants, the bill actually has more than that purpose.

I want to discuss for a few moments today some of the important concerns that I have regarding the bill.

I understand that our caucus will be supporting the bill at second reading so we will have a chance to amend it and improve it at committee. I hope we can take seriously the considerations of all members, including those members from Quebec who have some jurisdictional concerns. Other concerns have been raised regarding the resources that are required to make these particular amendments effective.

It would seem to me that the bill needs to deal with two particular problems. One is the consumer protection portion of the bill with all of the concerns that everyone in the House knows about, which are immigrants, potential immigrants and people seeking help with the department being abused by scoundrels in the business who are much less than honourable.

The danger there is not only the effect that has on potential immigrants or those with immigration questions, but also on bona fide, excellent consultants who are doing their work honourably and effectively and are being tarnished with the same brush. Therefore, there is that concern around the consumer protection issue of this.

There are also concerns around the governance issues that we have seen over the last number of years since the institution of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants. I do not think I am the only member who has been approached by individual consultants as well as members of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants in a formal way to express concerns about the procedures, transparency and governance issues by the society itself.

I am hoping that we can address that. The concern I have is the reluctance of the government to actually put in a statutory, regulatory body that has teeth, resources and effectiveness in doing this regulatory work.

I come at that from my experience as a member of a regulatory body at the provincial level and that was as a member of the Board of Funeral Services in the Ontario jurisdiction. That body was responsible for the licensing of funeral establishments as well as the licensing of professionals. It was one of the many professional boards that was a regulatory body for an independent profession.

I am hoping the government can look at ways that we can apply some of what has been learned from some of the provincial bodies to this federal body.

I have searched for other examples of professional bodies at the federal level that are regulated federally and I could not find any. Perhaps I will get some help on that because I have just started that search to see if there are any precedents. Failing that, however, I looked at the provincial precedent and it seems to me that a provincial regulatory body has several things that it needs to do. It licenses and certifies professionals and ensures their training is adequate. It maintains that training regime by having continuing education requirements and opportunities. It licenses the establishments or the businesses that may employ those licensed professionals. It provides public education for consumers to know their rights to ensure that they are actually involved in the process. It also has a rigorous complaints process as well as a disciplinary process that is effective and has some teeth to it so that consumers know they can make a complaint and have it actually acted upon by that professional body.

Those are statutory bodies. They are not merely dreamt up by the minister and accountable to the minister. They are arm's length, functional, regulatory bodies that are meant to ensure that we have consumer protection and we have professionals who are acting in the best interest of all Canadians and potential new Canadians.

My concern is that this bill will not be as arm's length because it is a creation of the minister as opposed to a statute. I think that has some concern for us in the ongoing way that this will unfold.

When we look at the issue, it seems to me that we have been hearing these concerns for a number of years. I will take as much blame as I need to from this side of the House for not having effectively established a body that was meant to regulate this profession. However, we have learned. The current board has improved somewhat but I am still concerned that it does not have an arm's length relationship with the training board, the Canadian Migration Institute, and that has implications with respect to the same people who are on the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, which is the regulatory body.

This is a small profession with somewhere between 1,800 to 6,000 professional consultants working on immigration procedures. While that may sound like a lot, it is not a large body to actually ensure that the training opportunities are there and that they are kept current. The department will need to provide some more resources to ensure that our consultants are part of the public good. That is missing in this legislation. The very training and licensing functions need to be absolutely clarified in the legislation to have an expectation, as well as the membership of this body.

I am also concerned about the way the government is proposing we establish this board. Normally a board would be established by statute with a certain number of members who are part of the profession and then some members from the public. I was a public member of the funeral board in Ontario. The majority were actually licensed members of the profession with a smaller number being interested, hopefully competent members of the public, to ensure that the public interest was broadly defined. That is also missing in this legislation.

It seems to me that the government is kind of privatizing this by issuing out a request for people to bid on becoming the regulatory body. This is unprecedented for me. I do not understand why the government would put out a request for proposals, privatizing a regulatory function, and opening it up to the most successful bidder, including one that people already have concerns about, which is the existing body. Perhaps the parliamentary secretary could answer this for me because I have concerns about understanding how that is done. It would seem to me that this should be a statutory body with a clear mandate from the Parliament of Canada, arm's length from the government, with a relationship with the department for transparency. Members of that board should be appointed by order in council. That would be my desire for this as part of a regulatory body.

The hon. members of the Bloc Québécois have offered some concerns about jurisdictional issues. That would also be a concern to me because other provinces are beginning to have more involvement in the immigration selection process and therefore we will need to be concerned about how the provinces are regulating the profession as well.

Underneath some of this concern is not only unscrupulous consultants. They are a concern and we know about them. It is not only governance on the current board and transparency and accountability to the members of the association for the betterment of consumer protection, but also a basic understanding that some of these consultants are finding work because the department is failing in its job.

Those of us who have large multicultural ridings know that half our work in our constituency offices is related to immigration procedures. Actually, we have underpaid immigration consultants working in our offices, and that is a great concern for me.

The great concern for me is that the system is broken, it is not working. We have queues of up to seven years. People are applying for citizenship and they are not getting hearings in our high commissions and our embassies around the world because our embassies and high commissions are understaffed. The department is understaffed with officials to review cases. We have backlogs with respect to security issues, which we want to have done effectively. We want immigrants coming to Canada to have been cleared for security reasons. We obviously want them to be effective in the workforce and to be part of the Canadian mosaic. That is the goal of our immigration system.

However, as long as we have procedures that are not effective, inefficient and keep people waiting a long time, we are creating a market for immigration consultants that perhaps should not be there. If there is that market, then we want it to be a regulated profession with an arm's length, effective body with the resources in it to ensure that the Canadian consumer, the potential Canadian immigrant, is well served, is effective and will be part of a Canadian society for which we can be proud.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on behalf of the Bloc Québécois to speak to Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act.

I would like to begin by saying that the Bloc Québécois will vote to send Bill C-35 to committee for further study. Our party has decided to give the bill a chance, to see if we can improve it in committee. Those watching us at home are trying to understand how the House of Commons and its committees work. We now have the opportunity to explain that the bills introduced here can always be improved in committee. After we hear from witnesses and examine the evidence they have given, we can propose amendments to the bill, which are voted on by the committee members and then reported back to the House of Commons.

We have noted that too many immigration consultants have been acting fraudulently and getting away with it. After all these years, the federal government still has not managed to effectively regulate this area. The failure of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants is irrefutable proof of that.

We believe that the committee should examine the issue to determine whether a new regulatory body is needed, one that is better monitored and can crack down harder on corrupt consultants who provide services related to federal immigration programs.

Since the regulating of professions falls under Quebec and provincial jurisdictions, the Bloc Québécois is worried that a federal act to create and establish an organization to regulate immigration consultants will interfere in Quebec's areas of jurisdiction. This is important. Every day, Bloc Québécois members, who have been elected by the people of Quebec, proudly stand up in this House to defend the interests and values of Quebeckers. An example of those values is respect for our jurisdictions. How professions are regulated is a matter of provincial jurisdiction. The Bloc Québécois will make sure that the government understands this in committee.

The Quebec government demonstrated its jurisdictional authority by passing a regulation concerning immigration consultants. This regulation will come into effect on November 4, 2010. Quebec is often at the forefront of numerous initiatives that are then borrowed by other Canadian provinces. We have always said that when Quebec is its own country—and we hope that will happen sooner rather than later—it will have good neighbours and good relationships with those neighbours. It will continue to create exemplary legislation, as it is doing now, that can be emulated by Canada.

We hope that the Government of Canada will learn from the Government of Quebec. To do this, the federal government must recognize Quebec's jurisdiction as well as that of the provinces so that it is clear that crooked immigration consultants will be replaced by a professional body. This body will then be regulated by Quebec since this falls under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces.

On June 9, 2008, the Bloc Québécois convinced the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration to pass a recommendation that Quebec immigration consultants be officially recognized under Quebec laws instead of being forced to join the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants.

The Bloc Québécois is always true to itself. Our excellent critic, the member for Jeanne-Le Ber, did a wonderful job making the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration understand that it is important that the Canadian government officially recognize Quebec's immigration consultants, who will be governed by a regulation as of November 4, 2010.

Even though Bill C-35 would better regulate consultants who deal with immigration matters that come under federal jurisdiction, the Bloc Québécois has serious concerns about the power the minister is giving himself to be able to designate a regulatory body in federal legislation. Overlapping jurisdictions never works well, needless to say.

This was particularly evident in recent months, even for over a year. The federal government decided to interfere in the securities market by establishing a national securities commission. And yet Quebec has its own securities commission as do the other provinces. The Canadian system was recognized for having weathered the recent economic crisis—a financial crisis that hit stock exchanges around the world— better than others.

Naturally, it is still rather difficult to understand that, once again, the federal government wants to replace something that works with a centralized, national body even though the effectiveness of the Canadian system has been acknowledged internationally. The passport system allowed every province, Quebec as well as the other provinces, to have their own securities commissions. This provided security during the stock exchange crisis.

Even though the Minister of Finance is practically hoarse from ranting that it is a voluntary system, he knows very well that corporations will be encouraged directly to join the Canada-wide system.

The federal government is always trying to chip away at the powers of Quebec and the provinces. That is fine if it does not bother the provinces; however, we notice that Alberta also has a great deal of difficulty with this. It seems to want to stand its ground, which seldom happens. It usually bows down to the federal government. However, in this case, Alberta seems to want to oppose the national securities commission.

Once again the Bloc Québécois will be vigilant. Above all it does not want Bill C-35, the so-called Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act, to infringe on provincial jurisdictions. In fact, as I was saying earlier, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants is a dismal failure. Clearly, Quebec and the provinces should be allowed to provide good, effective oversight of immigration consultants.

What is more, our party is of the opinion that there should be closer consideration of the committee aspect. Our concern is that Bill C-35 would require information to be communicated between members of the Barreau du Québec or the Chambre des notaires du Québec and the federal government. We have to take a closer look at this aspect of the bill in order to ensure that it does not conflict with Quebec's laws and to maintain the integrity of the Barreau du Québec and the Chambre des notaires du Québec.

As a notary by training, I can provide a little lesson in law. As hon. members know, in Quebec notaries are jurists who specialize in the contractual aspect of business and individual relationships. That is the objective. The Civil Code of Quebec is based on the Napoleonic code. That is a particularity of Quebec. I am always surprised to see colleagues who are notaries with a federalist bent, when the Chambre des notaires du Québec and the notary profession are a true reflection of this diversity, this difference between Quebec and the rest of Canada. We are the only province to have a chamber of notaries and notarial training. This training is obviously French-based. Notaries are highly respected professionals in France. Again, because the Civil Code of Quebec stems from the Napoleonic code, the notary profession is a direct link to these ancestral laws that Quebec held onto, which is not what happened in the rest of Canada. The rest of Canada has the common law, while Quebec has the civil code.

If it is decided that the Barreau du Québec and the Chambre des notaires du Québec are to report to the federal government, we must ensure that Quebec's rights and jurisdictions are respected. That is the objective. As for the Chambre des notaires du Québec, we all agree that the federal government has no knowledge of or jurisdiction in the matter.

In conclusion, the Bloc Québécois is opposed to the federal government encroaching on Quebec's jurisdiction in any way. It will ensure that Bill C-35 does not give the minister any power he is not entitled to.

We are talking about immigration consultants. One interesting way of reducing the number of crooked consultants would be to transfer part of these powers to Quebec lawyers or notaries or to lawyers in the rest of Canada who are regulated by professional codes.

If we consider what is happening the field of law, there are a few lawyers and notaries who have been caught. However, since there is a process to follow and an established structure, they were disbarred and can no longer practice. That is not the case with the federal structure, which is why the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, which was somewhat regulated, was a failure. It was not a recognized profession.

There needs to be a new way of training consultants. They should report to the Chambre des notaires du Québec, the Barreau du Québec or other provincial bars. It would be an interesting path to take.

These professions are governed by Quebec's professional code. Members of the Chambre des notaires du Québec and the Barreau du Québec are governed by Quebec's professional code. We have to make sure that any new power granted to a professional association respects Quebec's jurisdiction and that of the provinces.

I would like to go over some background to Bill C-35. On June 8, 2010, the government introduced Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. I will give an overview of the bill now.

The minister will be able to designate a governing body to regulate and oversee consultants' activities; this organization will replace the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants.

Only consultants approved by this body or members of a provincial bar or the Chambre des notaires du Québec will be allowed to charge fees for immigration advice, with some exceptions: students-at-law acting under the supervision of a member and entities and persons acting on their own behalf in accordance with an agreement with the government, such as visa application centres and other service providers.

All individuals who “knowingly represent or advise a person for consideration—or offer to do so—in connection with a proceeding or application under this Act” are guilty of a criminal offence punishable by two years in prison, a $50,000 fine or both. This offence already exists in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Consultants have to be recognized by an organization. If they knowingly advise people, they will be committing a criminal offence.

The law provides for information exchange between different levels of government. The designated organization will have to supply information set out in regulations to allow the minister to determine whether the organization governs its members in the public interest.

Regulations will govern information sharing by enabling the department to disclose professional or ethical information about members of provincial bar associations to the designated organization or to the person responsible for investigating a consultant's conduct.

We must ensure that discussions between the federal government and the members of the Barreau du Québec and the Chambre des notaires du Québec respect the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces at all times.

On August 30, 2010, the government published a call for submissions from applicants interested in becoming the regulatory body for immigration consultants.

I should point out that in this bill to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the provisions apply to persons who are the subject of proceedings or applications pertaining to immigration and refugee matters, not citizenship matters. The Citizenship Act does not provide for the same regulatory powers as the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. However, Bill C-37, introduced last spring, would provide regulations, in particular, by increasing penalties for consultants who fraudulently help individuals obtain citizenship.

Bill C-35 and Bill C-37 amend different acts.

In short, Bill-35 expands the range of activities governed by the act. In current federal regulations, the government can only take action when the application is submitted or at the beginning of a proceeding. Under Bill-35, the authorized representative commits an offence if he represents or advises a person for consideration in connection with a proceeding or application under that act, or offers to do so. This addition would make it possible to regulate—and punish, if an offence occurs—all forms of representation and advice at any stage, including that provided by unauthorized consultants, who might be involved before an immigration application is submitted.

All those who solicit work, that is crooked consultants, ask for payment in return for helping people with immigration proceedings.

We have seen some abuses—and the media have certainly jumped on them. Some people have been swindled out of a lot of money, sometimes the only savings they had, when seeking permission to immigrate to Quebec and Canada. I believe we must intervene.

The Bloc Quebecois wants to point out that Quebec also has powers in the area of immigration. All we want is for Quebec and provincial jurisdictions to be respected. Earlier I gave the example of securities commissions. The government wants to centralize exclusively provincial powers into a Canada-wide federal organization. That is what is going on with securities. Yet that system is what got us through the crisis. The Prime Minister keeps telling us over and over again that Canada has come out of the crisis exceptionally well, better than any other country in the world, as we heard again today in question period. It is not necessarily thanks to the Conservatives. It was a financial crisis, primarily a stock market crisis. It was thanks to our financial system and the fact that our banks were not allowed to merge.

I was one of those who opposed the Canadian bank mergers, so that they could not turn around and acquire American banks and contaminate all of the investments made by our citizens. That is one of the reasons we were able to get through this crisis relatively well. Furthermore, the stock market system allowed each province to have its own securities commission. When we have 10 such bodies, we can monitor things better than if we have only one. However, it is difficult, because the federal government is always trying to take powers away from the provinces. We will ensure that Bill C-35 does not have this unfortunate tendency to take power from Quebec and the provinces, in this case concerning immigration, and in particular, power over crooked consultants. Quebec is ready to take charge in this important area, since we already have legislation that is about to come into force on November 4, 2010. If all other Canadian provinces were to do the same, all of our immigrants would be better protected.

The House resumed from September 21 consideration of the motion that Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to engage in this particular debate.

I want to pay tribute, first of all, to all those members of Parliament who have already intervened. Some of them were critics of mine when I was the minister of immigration. I know that the current Minister of Immigrationwill relish the thought of having a former minister make some submissions. He will probably say that nothing has changed.

However, people have made some pretty insightful suggestions. The people who come to mind, of course, are the member for Laval—Les Îles, the member for Burnaby—Douglas, who just spoke, the member for Vaudreuil-Soulanges, who has yet to speak but who was an ardent critic of mine and of immigration, and of course, all other members of the Liberal Party who used to be the greatest critics of the system and the substance of the system, as we have gone through. I doubt that there is another topic, another department, that has more experts in this House than this one.

I am going to add my voice, humble though it may be, on this issue, simply because I agree with the member for Papineau, our critic on this matter, that the bill should go forward to committee, where it will get the appropriate scrutiny from all those people who have a wealth of experience and expertise. That will give the Canadian public a feeling of comfort that what they are getting is a bill that has really received the scrutiny of this House and Parliament.

I know that the Minister of Immigration has counted on the support of members of Parliament from the official opposition to get some of his issues through the House, and I know that he looks forward to continuing that kind of relationship. I am sure that other members on this side of the House will be only too happy to collaborate in a fashion that will produce a desired outcome.

Many of us here have a tendency to be academic or expert on some things, because that is the way we are in this House. We stand here and we pontificate on things.

I would like to give members a bit of a human element.

I have a young grandson. He is probably watching right now. If he is, I want to be able to point to him. I do not know if he is or not. That little boy, who is going to turn five tomorrow—his name is Stefano—had the good fortune of having, and still has, four grandparents who were born abroad. Each and every one of those four had the kind of difficulties we constantly debate in this House with respect to immigration. Their issues were, and continue to be for those who are like them, issues not of process but of substance. They want to know that the current government, the Government of Canada, actually seeks them out and wants them to come here.

Stefano and his brother--I think they are watching this right now; I hope they are, because I want to say happy birthday to Stefano--have the good fortune of having grandparents who had the good fortune of being able to come to this country to be part of the building of everybody's dream. That is what immigration is. It is not a process. It is about the realization of an ambition and a dream that individuals and their families have for fashioning a future not just for themselves but in co-operation with and in collaboration with a collective in another place, a place that they will turn into their home. Canada has become a home for so many people from so many other places.

I am one of them. I had the good fortune of having parents who had the wisdom to move. They wanted to move. It was a challenge for them. They had to deal with consultants. I did not know. They did not call them consultants then. It was just somebody who gave them a hand who said , “If you go to the Canadian Embassy, you might be able to go to Canada, because they want people. They want people who are going to build Canada. They want people who want to become part of a country that is going to be something more than what we have here, no matter where 'here' is.” Along the way, there were people who took advantage of their desire to have a better life for them and their kids.

We do not want people to take advantage of those who want to come and build this country. The reason we do not want that is not because we have compassion for people in need. It is not because we feel sorry for those who are victims of the unscrupulous. It is not because we think it is wrong for someone to take advantage of another. It is because we think that is inconsistent with those values that make us Canadian.

We do not want people's first experience with this country to be one where they come into contact with those who profess to be expert on how to enter this country and make those people pay dearly to come here.

We do not want our offices to turn into nothing more than processing centres for those who would sell expertise whether real or not as the one expression of Canada that they must then overcome when they come here.

I said a few moments ago that I agree with my colleagues that the bill should go forward and let the committee deal with this. I know that the minister will be happy to hear this.

However, I look at the bill and we have now had four and a half years of a government, some of whose members had become the same kind of experts that I talked about a moment ago. If there was a problem in the process, we have had this amount of time to actually deal with correcting the measures in process. This House cannot simply be one that is dedicated to process. This House has to be representative of the collective ambition of the Canadian public for its country.

For all those who were born here or who came here, we used to call them naturalized Canadians, we have evolved. We do not call them that any more. For all those who were born Canadians and those who have become Canadians, they are all part of that collective ambition that wants a place in the world in which all Canadians can feel they have a portion, a stake, a share in the country that everybody would like to emulate or be a part of.

We need to discuss in this House what that immigration plan is for Canada, how it fits in with the industrial strategy, the social strategy, the political strategy of a country that is evolving, that is developing, that is still becoming. It is not just being. It is not just there. Every day brings a new challenge. Every day brings a new goal. Every day brings a new struggle for people to identify with, to overcome and then to reap the satisfactions associated with saying that we have accomplished something for ourselves and with and for our neighbours.

The bill says that we are going to take care of those people who abuse the system by giving bad advice.

It seems to me that a former minister, the Hon. Elinor Caplan, used to be criticized a lot by her own caucus colleagues when we were on that side of the House some 12 years ago. She talked about this precise matter. She said, “We have to stop those snakeheads, those human smugglers from abusing people abroad and from abusing relatives of those people here in Canada. I am going to travel abroad. I am going to go to Beijing”. That was becoming a big source area for many of our immigrants. She said, “I am going to go to other places, like India and the Philippines, because that is where most of the people are coming from. I am going to see if I can get the co-operation of those governments in order to pursue those who are so unscrupulous that they would take advantage of their people”.

Keep in mind this is about taking advantage of people who would become part of Canada but who are not yet a part of Canada. This is about dealing with people who would try to abuse or take undue advantage of a Canadian system in order to abuse people who are outside our borders even more.

I noted that the minister agreed with that, in essence, in response to a question from my colleague from Laval—Les Îles. He said that we have to co-operate with foreign authorities in order to pursue and prosecute those who take undue advantage of others, even if it appears to be more acceptable in other places than it does here, because, of course, we have the rule of law. It is one of the values that draws people to this place. In other places that particular value is less ingrained and so people work within different parameters.

We say we are going to get rid of unscrupulous consultants. Some of my predecessors and some of the current minister's predecessors tried the same thing. One of the measures undertaken at the time was to provide educational material to those who would have become consultants, in other words, have them work with the department and the legal societies in order to come up with a body of expertise that would be acceptable to our functionaries abroad and in Canada.

We even went so far as to give them their own regulatory authority. Do you know what that means, Mr. Speaker? I know you relish this sort of thing. What happens is governments say that they have to put together an organization, but people are mature enough, educated enough and responsible enough to make the decisions to make that organization function properly, in other words, for their members but also for the people that they would serve.

Why do we say that? We say that because there is a basic principle of law in all western societies that is called caveat emptor, buyer beware. But we try to make sure that all the vendors adhere to a particular policy, a particular set of standards that make us proud but reinforce as well all of the values that we build as a society as we invite more and more people, like Stefano's grandparents, to come to this country and to build it. That is what we do.

We established a set of laws to make sure that nobody contravenes Canadian legislation, but we give them regulatory authority so that they can govern themselves. That is what they wanted and that is what we gave them. We worked with them.

The law societies, of course, were not completely sure that they wanted to have the consultants in place. However, there is a fine line between accepting the criticism as valid from one group against the other. It must be recognized there is a competitive spirit between the two of them. What they need to do is look at that market. I think last year some 230,000 people were given their permanent residency to this country and there were tens of thousands more who had to go to those people for the expertise to develop their applications for other types of visas. One can understand there is a commercial issue here.

I listened to the debate this morning on Bill C-17. I listened to it yesterday as well. There are those who are still following the debate. I see there are some very hardy folks in the gallery and my compliments to them for trying to fashion out what it is that parliamentarians do when they talk about building laws that fashion this country and give us a Canadian identity. My compliments to them for spending at least a few minutes to hear what it is that we have to say.

Bill C-17 talked about building a new regulatory framework in order to make sure that we could fight off the terrorists that we see everywhere. As one member of the NDP from Vancouver indicated, it was in essence beginning to limit the civil liberties in order to fight off the perceived evil that is out there. The Minister of Justice said yesterday that it was not all that bad because it is the law the Liberals had when they were in government after 9/11 and which lapsed in 2007.

If one wants to accept there was a crisis that created a need for legislation, that crisis must have lapsed by 2007 because there was a sunset clause built into the bill. It is now three years later. One is tempted to ask what the crisis is. The crisis is that the government needed to give an impression that notwithstanding all the other economic and social difficulties in this country, its priority would be the creation of a psychological environment that says we are under threat and these tough guys are going to put in legislation that lapsed some three years ago.

It might offend some people who think that civil liberties should be maintained, but after the $1.2 billion boondoggle at the G20 summit and the turning of Toronto into an armed fortress for the sake of a 72 hour photo op, the Canadian public is right to be skeptical about whether this is the message to have.

Some might ask what that has to do with this bill. For those people who are still watching, they should think about what the bill says. It is no longer about the process that I talked about a moment ago. This is Bill C-35, which means there has only been 34 other bills presented since the government got elected in 2008. Imagine that. For all of that time we have been dealing with legislation that did not come from the government. Where is the government's vision of Canada? However, the title of the bill is the cracking down on crooked consultants act.

What are we doing now? We are trying to consolidate all of the issues associated with process under the direction of the Minister of Immigration .

I know that the minister's heart is in the right place when he wants to talk about reforming the entire system, but please, this sort of thing makes it absolutely difficult to take the government's initiative all that seriously. It brings all of those functionaries who are outside the bureaucracy into an ambience where they are responsible to the Minister of Immigration for the kind of livelihood they earn. What is even worse is it tells everybody they represent that the ultimate person, the ultimate individual that controls what happens with their applications is actually the Minister of Immigration.

How can we have any kind of confidence in the independence of representation when everything they do is dependent upon the Minister of Immigration? That is like going to a different set of bureaucrats. That is a little like asking CRA officials to authorize who will fill out our income tax forms, and if we want to do it ourselves, we really cannot.

We need to make the process more fine tuned. But the biggest issue here, and I hope that my colleagues will keep this in mind, is what is it that the government of the day proposes for immigration other than nipping and tucking at some of the processes and procedures that have already been nipped and tucked to death?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the debate on Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or, as the refugees from the Hallmark greeting card operation that are in the Conservative caucus call it , the cracking down on crooked consultants act. I do not know where these snappy titles come from but I think the minister is taking direct responsibility for that. It is good to know that the minister has other job opportunities waiting for him should this one not work out.

However, it is important legislation and it is something for which many people in my constituency of Burnaby—Douglas have been hoping for a long time, that government would take the issue of the service that Canadians get from immigration consultants and the service that prospective Canadians get from immigration consultants seriously. There have been very many problems with this over a long period of time, so it is good that there is finally a specific proposal on the agenda as far as that proposal goes.

The bill would amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to change the manner of regulating third parties and immigration processes. Among other things, it would create a new offence by extending the prohibition against representing or advising persons for consideration for pay or offering to do so to all stages in connection with the proceeding or application under the act, including before a proceeding has been commenced or an application has been made.

The bill also would exempt from this prohibition members of a provincial bar or the Chambre Des Notaires Du Québec and students at law acting under their supervision. It would exempt member of a body designated by the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism and it would exempt entities and persons acting on the entities behalf acting in accordance with an agreement or arrangement with Her Majesty in right of Canada.

The bill would also give the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism the power to make transitional regulations in relation to the designation of a body to regulate the process of immigration consultants, to regulate immigration consultants, which is a very important piece of this legislation.

That is more the sort of legal language. The government has proposed that all advice supplied for a fee be provided by an authorized immigration representative. This individual would have to be either a member in good standing of a provincial or territorial law association or the body governing immigration consultants.

Unpaid third parties, as the government points out, such as family members and friends, would still be allowed to act on behalf of an applicant. Furthermore, under the new rules there would be exceptions for certain groups, for example, visa application centres and other service providers, when acting in accordance with an agreement arrangement with the Government of Canada.

The legislation would also provide the minister with the power by regulation to designate a body to govern immigration consultants. Also under these amendments, the onus would be on the current body governing immigration consultants to provide key information to assist in the minister's evaluation of whether the body is governing its members in the public interest and whether consultants are providing representation and advice in a professional and ethical manner.

There is an attempt to clean up loopholes in the system and to establish a new governing body or an effective governing body for immigration consultants in Canada.

When the government announced these measures, it also announced some non-legislative measures. We have heard from the minister again about those. The government has talked about strengthening public awareness, including raising awareness of the risks of engaging a crooked consultant and updating websites in Canada and abroad to carry warning messages for potential immigrants and various service improvement. Web based tools and videos are also being developed by CIC to make it easier for applicants to independently apply to immigrate to Canada.

The minister has also pointed out and reiterated again today the effort to co-operate with foreign governments to address the issues of fraud that happen not on Canadian soil but in countries, as the minister has indicated, like China, India and the Philippines, and to engage police authorities there to crack down on fraudulent activities by consultants operating in those countries. This is a very important aspect of it and I hope the government puts the appropriate resources toward ensuring co-operation between regulatory bodies and various police agencies to ensure that this kind of crackdown can occur and can occur both here in Canada and in countries where consultants are being hired.

It would be great if in some way we could cut down on the need for this industry, and there are a number of ways we could do that. One of them is by ensuring that we do not have the huge backlog in immigration applications that we currently face. One of the reasons we drive people to talk to a consultant is the fact that their applications take so long. When people see an application sitting for years with no action on it they begin to wonder if they have not done something wrong and begin to think they need assistance through this process. It drives them into the hands of immigration consultants, and often into the hands of an unscrupulous immigration consultant. If we were really serious about ensuring the effectiveness of our system, we would work to get rid of that backlog and to make sure that the system functioned smoothly and effectively.

We should also simplify the forms. We drive people to a consultant when we make the form difficult, when it is hard for them to understand. Maybe we need to make forms that are more appropriate in different cultural contexts and have different forms in different contexts that get us the same information, but we need to make sure that people find it easy to make the application and provide the information that is required. That is something we could do that would reduce their reliance on a third party to assist them.

Another route we could go to ensure that people feel that they have an alternative is visitor visa appeals. Often people apply to have a friend or relative visit them here in Canada and that is turned down with very little explanation. If there were an appeal system in place, people would feel less of a need to approach a third party to help them with that application for fear that they may have done something wrong, that they are missing something in the process, that there is information they should have to ensure a successful application. If they felt as well that there was recourse should they not have a successful application, it would also reduce the number of people who feel that it is absolutely necessary to engage a third party in dealing with their failed application or with an application that they perceive to be more difficult. So there are a number of things we should also be doing, as well as this legislation, and I hope some of those get the attention, and continued attention, in some cases, of the government.

We have looked at this for many years and there have been many attempts to deal with this issue of ghost consultants, of crooked consultants, of unscrupulous immigration consultants. I am glad that the government has apparently taken it seriously.

When the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration looked at the whole question of immigration consultants and studied the situation of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants it noticed a number of issues that needed to be addressed about the operation of CSIC, about that body that currently attempts to have some role in the regulation of immigration consultants in Canada. There was a long list of observations the committee made about the functioning of that and we have heard this afternoon in this debate some of those issues that were observed. It noticed that CSIC membership fees were too high and that it was prohibitive and was interfering in the effectiveness of the organization. It said that CSIC membership examinations were prepared and marked in a questionable way, so that there were questions raised about the viability of the examination process. It said that CSIC failed to develop an industry plan, something that is crucial especially in this new and developing industry, this expanding industry where so many people's hopes about their future are caught up and can easily be manipulated by unscrupulous people.

The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration also noticed that CSIC decision-making lacked transparency and was not conducted democratically. So internal functioning of the organization was a concern, as well as the fact that the CSIC board of directors was not accountable to anyone. It noted that there was no possibility for CSIC members to call a special meeting of the society. It said that compensation for and the spending of CSIC board members was extravagant, ill-advised and unaccounted for. It pointed out that CSIC board members are in conflict of interest because they created and currently serve on the board of the Canadian Migration Institute, a related for-profit corporation. So there were many concerns raised about the governance of the current organization, CSIC.

The standing committee also noted that many members of CSIC had little choice but to pay $800 each to buy an outdated educational video in order to obtain sufficient continuing professional development points to maintain their CSIC membership. Even the upgrading of skills, the ongoing professional development of the organization and how it provided that, was a concern.

It noted that CSIC does not communicate with members or provide services to members equally in French and English, which is a very serious problem for any national organization seeking to regulate an industry dealing with immigration in Canada.

The ability of members to voice concerns about CSIC was limited since the CSIC rules of professional conduct were amended to make it a professional offence to undermine CSIC and compelling members to treat CSIC with dignity and respect. Even trying to deal with problems within the organization became a problem in itself, and the ability of members to raise concerns was limited by the operation of the organization.

The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration finally noted that the CSIC website was set up in such a way that members could not send bulk email messages to all other members. The inability of CSIC members to correspond with other members of their profession was limited by the organization itself.

Clearly there are serious problems with the existing organization. I think many people will be relieved that the government is now seeking to establish a different organization and the minister has put out a request for proposals to deal with the establishment of a new regulatory organization, because there are very serious issues that need to be addressed in how such an organization would operate to best serve Canadians who are engaged with the immigration process.

We know the standing committee made recommendations out of its study of ghost immigration consultants. It made nine recommendations and we have heard some discussion of them this afternoon.

Earlier I talked about the need to simplify immigration applications, and that was one of the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration in its report on ghost consultants. The committee recommended that Citizenship and Immigration Canada review existing processes related to the most common types of immigration applications, with a view to simplifying them whenever possible.

That goes hand in hand with making sure that the application forms themselves are easily understood. Again it goes to the hope that most people could engage this process without the assistance of a third party, without the need for some kind of professional to shepherd their application through the process.

Staff in my office have seen many problems with immigration consultants over the years. Like the member for Trinity—Spadina, I spent many years as a constituency assistant before I became a member of Parliament and worked with many people on immigration problems. I was often appalled by the bad advice, bad assistance and expensive bad advice that people had received.

In checking with my office today to ask staff members what was their sense of the problem of unscrupulous immigration consultants or immigration consultants in general, they pointed out many problems that have come up in terms of their work with constituents who have immigration applications under way.

In terms of some general concerns, they noted that immigration consultants seem to hold on to information until they are paid, sometimes meaning that people miss important deadlines in the application process. My staff has experienced the situation where immigration consultants have asked for additional amounts that they had not indicated earlier, so there were new charges and expenses that had never been explained to their clients.

Staff members noted that sometimes immigration consultants give bad information, sometimes obviously bad information that anyone who was appropriately trained or had even minimal experience with the immigration system would know the answer to. My staff also pointed out that, in their experience, often immigration consultants have delayed relaying information to the embassies and sometimes back to constituents and the people applying.

Staff members noted that they have seen no consistency in the amount that people are charged for the services of an immigration consultant and that there does not seem to be any clear standard. Sometimes people have paid very large amounts of money for very simple services. They particularly note the significant charges that people have paid in a number of cases for assistance with visitor visas, which is a fairly direct and simple process.

My staff have seen a number of cases where immigration consultants have been problematic for people in my constituency and their families and friends who have been engaging with the immigration process. My staff have related some specific stories to me and I will relate them to the House to give some sense of the kind of situation that people are facing.

One of my constituents had a spouse who was a refugee claimant in Canada. The immigration consultant first charged her around $5,000 to put in a humanitarian and compassionate application and an extension application. When those applications failed, the consultant advised the spouse to fly back to the country of origin and return to Canada by air without actually having an authorization to return, which can take up to a year in any case. Since the person was advised to do this, he tried it and he was deported again from the airport, complicating his case in a very serious way. When the sponsor tried to contact the immigration consultant again, the consultant retracted his original advice, saying he had never advised that. So the situation this family ended up in is a very serious one. Once someone is deported, it is a very serious matter and something that was completely unnecessary. It is very expensive to get this kind of bad advice.

Another story that was important to my staff from their experience of working with people was another couple whose permanent resident application from South Asia was being done through a consultant. The consultant held on to important information because there was a delay in the receipt of a payment.

The applicants' medicals were expiring in three weeks and the embassy asked the consultant if they wanted medicals redone or if it should issue a three-week validity visa in the hope that the people could reach Canada within that time. Because there was a delay by a relative of the couple in making a payment to the consultant, the consultant told the embassy to issue three-week visas, which expired by the time they reached the applicants. This meant that the applicants had to start the application process over completely from the beginning. It was incredibly frustrating for that family who had gone through a rather lengthy immigration process, successfully as it turns out, only to have it messed up at the end by an immigration consultant who was less than helpful to them when push came to shove, when they really needed assistance from someone who they anticipated knew the Canadian immigration system, had some professional ethics and professional standards, was well trained and could assist them appropriately in this process, a process that is so crucial to so many families and to our communities and our society.

There is a lot that we could be doing, and I am pleased that we are debating this bill today. I am glad that it is going to go to committee where witnesses can be called and where further discussion can be had about it. It is absolutely crucial that we get our act together on this. The situation with immigration consultant regulation in Canada has gone on too long and it has caused too many problems for too many people. So it is good that the government has placed this on the agenda.

I hope that through the process of committee hearings and continued debate on this legislation we can end up with a bill and a regulatory body that will serve the needs of Canadians and the needs of those people who want to come to Canada to start a new life and contribute to the building of this country.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada to discuss Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, introduced by the government. These changes should tighten the legislation governing the activities of consultants who help prospective immigrants, refugees and other individuals who want to enter Canada and remain here.

First, I would like to congratulate the minister on this initiative. I believe the government's action is laudable and the intent well-meaning. We agree, in principle, that there are people all over the world who prey on unsuspecting individuals, individuals who want to immigrate, or even prospective refugees who want to come to Canada. These people, in retribution for money or other services, act as consultants to these prospective immigrants.

As has been mentioned by my other colleagues, and I am the last in a long list of people who have spoken on this bill, Liberals have been calling on the government to take action as a result of the 2008 parliamentary report from the special advisory committee.

We know that many prospective immigrants ask for the services of these individuals as they prepare their immigration to Canada and we know that prospective immigrants rely on unregulated global consulting firms. We are not necessarily talking about an individual working from a small office or home. We are talking in some cases of actual global networks of consulting firms that are helping each other and inventing laws as they go. These consulting firms consistently give advice on international laws and specifically Canadian immigration laws for very exorbitant fees.

Not only do these consultants provide fraudulent advice but they often make empty, unfeasible promises that cost their clients dearly. When I say these promises can cost their clients very dearly, I mean they can cost a lot of money but also they sometimes cost potential immigrants dearly by inducing them to tell lies that can result in Canada’s gates being closed forever to them.

As commendable as the minister has been on this bill, I would like to bring up some specific questions. For example, how does the government intend to control unscrupulous consultants operating offshore without interfering with the sovereignty of the country?

I know the minister mentioned that he just came back from India, China and other countries particularly in Asia and said the government of India was willing to co-operate by amending its laws to regulate immigration consultants. What I worry about, and I would certainly like to hear something from the minister on this, is how the monitoring and evaluation of these consultants can be carried out in countries where there may not be an infrastructure in place.

I read a lot of the ethnic newspapers here in Canada. Many of them are in the ethnic language, but there are also lots of ads that appear in either French or English. I see the number of immigration consultants that proliferate everywhere. I am not always sure there is an infrastructure in place in the country of origin to actually control what is going on over there. That is one question.

The other one is, how many countries are we talking about and is it really feasible for the government of the country of origin to actually control what is going on with these immigration consultants?

The other problem is one that I saw when I visited India many years ago, and that is the proliferation of false documentation. The minister referred to this in his speech.

There was talk about birth and marriage certificates, death certificates, professional diplomas and so forth. Sometimes these certificates do not seem genuine, but very often it is virtually impossible for us to tell whether they are genuine or not. So what can be done to prevent this proliferation of certificates?

My colleague, the MP for Papineau, has reminded members of the House about the vulnerability of individuals seeking to enter and remain in Canada. I am not going to repeat his words. These were very important words because it shows us again how unscrupulous people in Canada and elsewhere prey on the vulnerability of people who come to this country wanting to make a better life for themselves, who are not always refugees but people willing to sometimes invest money in this country and yet, because of lack of knowledge, can be preyed upon by these unscrupulous consultants.

I would like to remind the House that the initial initiative came from the former Liberal government, which in 2002 created an advisory committee to identify the ongoing problems within the immigration consulting industry. This committee's task was to identify the issues and propose ways to regulate the industry.

In 2003, there was a very large debate on this subject and a regulatory body was established called the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants with the mandate to act as a regulatory body for the governance, education and, most importantly, accreditation of immigration practitioners.

Bill C-35 suggests creating a designated body. I want to stop right there and say that a basic question remains. Why does the government want to create a new body in Bill C-35 to replace the old one?

We all agree that the old body had some major faults. I will describe them in a few minutes, but the question I want to raise is why can we not just improve an existing institution rather that totally destroying it and replacing it with a new one with all new regulations? Why not try to improve what already exists and take advantage of its institutional memory and the experience of its members to move forward?

There have certainly been some problems with the creation and operations of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants. For example, there was the entrance examination for members that was drawn up and evaluated in a way that seems rather dubious. There were also some decisions made by the society that lacked transparency. It was seen to operate in a way that was often not very democratic. There were also some remarks such as the lack of accountability on the part of its board of directors. I would not want the board members to feel individually targeted. I am referring to the way in which the institution operated and not particular individuals. There were also conflict of interest problems with the board, especially with the people who created the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants and are still members of it.

Certainly, as I see Bill C-35, members who are now coming into the debate ought to step back and ask the questions. One question among many is, how important is corporate memory in the development of an organization and in the development of this particular organization?

It is important that we have corporate memory that we can carry on. At the same time, and I do underline this, I am not saying that nothing should be done. We should be build on what already exists. It would be fruitful, and I mentioned this, for the standing committee to ask how we can possibly merge the CSIC strategic plan and its original reason for being established in 2003 with the corporate strategic plan and vision of the Canadian Migration Institute, which is actually part of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants.

I have other concerns with the CSIC. For example, we can look at the outdated training material. Members of the society have spoken to me about this. It needs to be redone. We have talked about communications in official languages. As the critic for francophonie for my party, I am very aware of the need to do all the work and to publish all the work on the web and elsewhere in the two official Canadian languages.

Another concern that has been raised in the standing committee's report is the limited ability of members to voice concerns about the CSIC since the rules of professional conduct were amended making it a professional offence to undermine CSIC and compelling members to treat CSIC with dignity and respect. We should be allowed to criticize without it being thought that we are undermining.

Once again, this government is not known among Canadians for its openness and keen sense of accountability. It cannot be said that it sets an example of good governance.

The government has withheld information from the commissioner of inquiry studying detainee transfers, for example. It consistently blocks freedom of information requests from the public. I do not want to go further in this vein. We need to have more information because other members can certainly share their own experiences of government secrecy and the shutdown of communication.

I want it to be made clear that I am not condoning any alleged concern that members of the public may have with the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants and the operations of the organization as outlined in the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration 2008 report. I am drawing a parallel.

I would like to come back to the fact that we must build on our experience, meaning that in this case we should not be dismantling an institution; rather, we should be using our knowledge of what is working and what is not to keep what works and improve it.

The main problem we may also seem to be dealing with is that the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, CSIC, which is a non-profit corporation, has made it mandatory, and I think rightly so, to have those who want to be accredited to go through an education process before that can take place. However, we know from comments we have heard that this education process is incomplete and that it has to be ameliorated, once again, building on what we know, on the weaknesses that people have indicated to us.

There is also, as I mentioned before, a perceived conflict of interest of members of the board.

The Canadian Migration Institute, which is an arm of the society, is the body that carries out the accreditation in order for an individual to be recognized as a certified consultant.

Surely, I think that this is no different from other professional bodies that regulate and certify professionals for a fee.

There are arguments regarding members of the board of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants who now sit on the for profit board, the Canadian Migration Institute, the CMI, a wholly-owned group of the not for profit CSIC, as I mentioned before.

I would like to say once again that although the Liberals approve this proposed legislation in principal, because we need Bill C-35, there must surely be other ways of resolving some of the issues that I highlighted here today.

I would like to reiterate that it was the Liberals on this side of the House that started investigating and implementing regulations for the immigration and refugee consultant industry. I am speaking on behalf of all the members here as well as those who are not here. We want this endeavour to succeed, and we believe that we are more than halfway to our goal.

We intend to work with the government to ensure that those who want to come to Canada can get the help they need without having to rely on unscrupulous consultants.

We offer our expertise in the spirit of the kind of remarks that I making here in this House.

We would like to see a wider public input into what the accreditation body could look like and how its policies can be reframed. I hope hearings of the legislative committee studying this bill will not be rushed. What I hope, in fact, is that this bill will be accepted by this House, that it will then go on to be studied by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, which will ameliorate it, and that while the standing committee is studying this bill, it will take the time to hear from Canadians from all parts of the country.

We must hear from those people who have been used by unscrupulous consultants. The minister asked my colleague, a few minutes ago, whether he had any knowledge of people who had actual experience of being used by unscrupulous consultants. I think that is an important question. It is an important question that the consultative committee will have to ask of the witnesses.

However, again, I ask the question, why do we have to destroy an administrative body in order to re-establish another one? Why not start from what we know of the old one and build on that?

Finally, we would like to hear from Canadians on how we can make our immigration laws simpler. I welcome the intervention of the minister who said just a few minutes ago that he is working on this global approach. I hope that the global approach will not mean that there will not be a possibility for us to intervene when we think the decision taken is the wrong decision. However, he is working on a global approach and I hope that global approach will make it simple and accessible for those prospective immigrants so that they do not feel the need to go to an immigration consultant, and that they, and here I am in agreement with the MP from the NDP, are not taken advantage of as is the case sometimes. So the recourse to consultants and the recourse to MPs, we hope, will be much less than what it is now.

I also hope that all the concerns raised in the 2008 standing committee report will be reflected in the government's present vision for the re-established body.

So, the process has started. We want to get it right. We feel that we are more than halfway there.

Again, I reiterate that we intend to work with the government to ensure that those who wish to enter Canada can get the assistance they need without the use of unscrupulous immigration consultants.

We support Bill C-35. We hope that it will receive the votes needed in order to send it to committee for further study.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, crimes against immigrants cannot and should not be tolerated. For far too long, we have been soft on those who prey on the most vulnerable, prey on those who have dreams to make Canada their home. The media is littered with stories of potential immigrants who pay some consultants thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, and are taught to lie and end up having their applications destroyed because they were given poor advice. The New Democratic Party of Canada has been pushing for tough and effective legislation to crack down on these unscrupulous and crooked consultants.

Many years ago, in the early eighties, I was an assistant to a former member of Parliament, at that time the NDP critic for immigration, Mr. Dan Heap. During my time with him at the constituency office, I saw a wall of potential immigrants being cheated out of thousands of dollars and having their dreams of being able to stay in Canada destroyed.

Working at that time with the Globe and Mail, I had my mother carry a concealed tape recorder to look at some of these unscrupulous consultants. This was in the early 1980s. Subsequently, there were a series of articles in the Globe and Mail that documented many cases where she was given the wrong advice or overcharged. Back then, we were hoping that something would be done.

Unfortunately, even in the 1990s, nothing much was done and matters became worse and worse until 2002, when the House of Commons immigration and citizenship committee conducted a study, and then in 2004, when the former Liberal government enacted legislation and set up an organization. Unfortunately, the advice from the immigration department and the community was ignored and the organization had no power to regulate. The agency that was charged with protecting the vulnerable newcomers did not improve the situation. In fact it got worse. The Liberal government just never got the job done.

The bill before us today, Bill C-35, is a step in the right direction. Consultants must be licensed in order to charge fees or act on a person's behalf. The Canadian Border Agency must be given resources to enforce this law. We could have the best law, but if there is no enforcement, it would not be worth the paper it is written on. Immigration officers must be trained to detect fraud. They must be trained so that sufficient information is given to applicants and there is no need to hire an expensive consultant or a lawyer for straightforward immigration applications.

At the immigration committee, we have studied this issue for many months and we have issued two reports. During our travels, we have heard that the existing organization, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, has a lot of shortcomings. The membership fees are too high and membership examinations are prepared and marked in a questionable way. We also heard that CSIC has failed to develop an industry plan. We heard that their decision-making lacks transparency and is not conducted democratically. We heard that the CSIC board of directors is not accountable to anyone. This is the board body that was established in 2004. There is no possibility for CSIC members to call a special meeting of the society. Compensation for CSIC board members, like their spending, is extravagant, ill-advised, and unaccounted for. CSIC board members are in a conflict of interest, because they created and currently serve on the board of the Canadian Migration Institute, a related for-profit corporation.

We heard that many members had little choice but to pay $800 to buy an outdated educational video in order to obtain sufficient continuing professional development points to maintain a CSIC membership; that the ability of members to voice concerns about CSIC has been limited since the CSIC rules of professional conduct were amended, making it a professional offence to “undermine” CSIC and compelling members to treat CSIC with "dignity and respect”; and finally, that the CSIC website is set up so that members cannot communicate with one another by sending bulk email messages.

These are allegations, complaints that we have heard. The committee, after this long study, decided to take action. We issued a report recommending that we find some ways to protect the most vulnerable; that we establish a new corporation with the power to license its members, examine their conduct, and resolve complaints; and that the Government of Canada remain involved in its affairs until it is fully functioning.

We also recommended that a regulator establish no-cost complaint procedures to support immigrants with precarious Canadian status in lodging complaints. That is important, because some of those who are the most vulnerable feel that if they complain, they will get deported, which means that their case would not be examined by the immigration department. We have to establish complaints procedures for these immigrants. Part of the recommendation said that we have to inform immigrants that their complaints to the regulator will have no negative impact upon their immigration applications.

Moreover, we recommended coordinated investigations and enforcement of the law. We wanted a lead agency to be named to coordinate investigation, communication, and enforcement efforts within four months after the 2008 report. It is unfortunate that this never quite happened, but I sure hope that if this bill passes a lead agency will be named as quickly as possible to make sure that the law approved in Parliament is enforced properly. If not, it would be a real mistake.

We also recommended that the CSIC website should contain a list of authorized representatives practising in this country .

In November of last year, I moved a concurrence motion on these recommendations. The House of Commons supported these recommendations and supported the concurrence motion, so the intention of this House is clear. We want new regulations, new legislation to protect the most vulnerable. We want clear enforcement guidelines. We also want to make sure that education will continue so that potential immigrants, even if they are overseas, will understand their rights and know how to go about filing a complaint.

The new regulations would provide the minister with the power to designate a new body to govern immigration consultants, and we need to make sure that this body is picked in a way that is transparent, and that this body is legitimate, democratically run, and willing to go after those who are violating the law.

We note that under their rules of conduct, a consultant must never “knowingly assist in or encourage any dishonesty, provision of misleading information, fraud, crime or illegal conduct”. Yet through the Toronto Star series, we have noticed that a number of CSIC members allegedly gave wrong information and told people how make up a story to get into the refugee claimant process, even though they had no such refugee experience. They end up giving the entire immigration system and refugee claimants a bad name.

It is important for the minister to continue monitoring a new body to ensure it behaves in a way that will protect the most vulnerable because if not, lives could be ruined.

One day I hope immigration regulations can be clarified and simplified in a way so potential immigrants do not feel they need to hire someone to submit applications for them. I also hope the laws will be applied in a way that immigrants do not feel is arbitrary. They should be transparent so immigrants know where their applications are. Also the whole process should be on the Internet so applicants can tell how far along their applications are, how much longer they have to wait, what their application numbers are and whether they have submitted all the right documents.

I note the minister has just returned from Australia, which has that kind of processing. Because it is e-filed, immigrants can tell whether all the documents are done in a way that is appropriate. This kind of processing would be transparent and immigrants would not need to hire a consultant, a lawyer, or even come to a member of Parliament to get a status update of their applications.

Also one day I hope visitor visas or refugee claims are done in a way that is clear. Then migrants or potential visitors who want to come to Canada will not feel they need to hire consultants. After all, we are supposed to serve those who want to come to Canada.

Why is this important? It is critically important because we know some of these immigrants have a choice to go to other countries and we want the brightest and the best to come to Canada. If they keep hearing all these horror stories of relatives, neighbours or friends who have been ripped off by the most unscrupulous consultants, they will not have confidence in Canada's immigration system.

I also note that Australia's website shows almost every month which immigration consultants have been de-listed, for what reason and which new consultants have been listed. Those kinds of lists on the Internet are kept up-to-date so any time people want to hire a consultant, they will know clearly who is qualified and who is not. I certainly hope this would be the kind of system we would go toward.

Last, it is critically important that through the Canada Border Services Agency there would be some kind of investigation of the type of fraud now being committed by some of these consultants. Those who are victimized will then feel they have a chance to speak out. If the investigation of their claims proves their case was completely messed up because of bad advice by unscrupulous consultants, their claims should be re-evaluated.

In the meantime, on behalf of the New Democratic Party of Canada I will continue to carefully monitor the progress of the crackdown on crooked consultants and scrupulous consultants so that all crimes directed against immigrants will be severely punished.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak about Bill C-35, which deals with the important issue of immigration consultants.

This has been a long-standing issue. There are people committing fraud and profiting from others' naïveté, and this has always been the case in all areas. And even though we as parliamentarians or citizens fight daily to lessen its presence, the problem will most likely continue to exist. You only need to watch television shows like J.E. or La facture to see that this is true. There will always be people who will abuse others to try to make a lot of money in a short amount of time.

That said, there is something different about immigration. The people going through this process are much more vulnerable than the average person, which means that there are many more people trying to take advantage of them. This issue has become very troubling.

MPs, especially those of us from urban areas, have all heard stories about people who have had unfortunate dealings with immigration consultants, with people who defrauded them, gave them bad advice or took their money. I would say that this is the tip of the iceberg because the people living in our ridings are those who have been able to navigate the process and settle in Canada. There are many people living in other countries who were fleeced by such consultants and whose voices we seldom hear. That is just as worrisome.

Why are these people more vulnerable to fraud than the average citizen? Because of their ignorance of the legal system and their rights as citizens. Even though they are not Canadian citizens, anyone who lives in Canada is protected by Canadian law. Immigrants often have a vague idea about the country they are going to. It is often a dream and some people are prepared to make sacrifices to make it come true.

Many people do not immigrate for themselves but do so for their children. They hope to give their children a better life and are willing to make many sacrifices. They find themselves dealing with disgraceful people who tell them that they can easily obtain permanent resident status, a visa and Canadian citizenship, but that it will be expensive. They claim to be good consultants with the necessary contacts and say that they are needed in order to follow the procedures.

That is obviously not true; they are taking advantage of the immigrant's ignorance. In theory, anyone should be able to immigrate to Canada without using a consultant or someone paid to help them. Some people feel reassured. The department probably has some work to do in order to simplify the process and make people feel comfortable navigating the immigration system by themselves.

In general, I tell people that they do not need to spend a fortune on immigration consultants and that they can apply on their own. I often tell them that if they have legal problems or a special legal situation they can see a lawyer or notary, who will be more qualified to help them with the process.

So, lack of knowledge is the first factor. Another factor is often the political culture. Some people come from countries where corruption is common and where many things happen through nepotism or shady deals. Something like that seems to happen here sometimes, even in this Parliament.

Generally speaking, I am sure everyone would agree that we have far fewer problems here than in certain other countries, where that is the norm and that is how things are done, and where one must know a politician to make things happen.

Some people therefore believe that someone from the political sphere needs to intervene directly in order to move their file along. So consultants claim, either truthfully or more often falsely, that they know the right people to help someone get his or her visa and become a permanent resident. Once again, that is obviously absurd, since there is no need to know any one particular person to immigrate to Canada. One must simply meet all of the criteria and make the application. Although the system is not perfect, generally speaking, no matter who examines the application, the decision should always be the same.

In addition to the lack of knowledge about Canada's legal reality and the political perceptions that they may bring from their home country to a destination country, there is a third factor, namely, the bonds of trust that certain consultants abuse when dealing with people of the same ethnic origin. Some consultants will use the fact that they went through the immigration process themselves and will tell their clients that they can do the same thing for them, because they are of the same ethnicity, come from the same country and are now successful immigrants. People will blindly trust such individuals, and that is clearly abusive. We looked at this issue in the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, because we were told that this is a very common problem. We are therefore very concerned about this issue.

The committee did a comprehensive review and prepared a report with a number of recommendations. The first recommendation made by the committee—not the last or second last—was that in the committee's opinion, consultants working in Quebec who make applications in Quebec should be officially recognized under Quebec laws. Canadian laws should therefore take into account this reality and ensure that a transfer is made to Quebec with regard to regulating the profession, in order to address the specificity of Quebec in terms of its immigration powers under the Canada-Quebec agreement, and because of its specific professional system. Furthermore, Quebec is its own nation with its own particularities and it is important that Quebec has control over this type of tool and the way immigration consultants are governed.

This recommendation exists. I hope that the parties that supported it will continue to defend this same position and defend Quebec's right to govern its immigration consultants. What is more, the Government of Quebec subsequently developed supplementary rules to take these characteristics into account because the need truly exists. Immigration consultants in Quebec need to speak French and must pass an exam on aspects of the immigration process that are specific to Quebec, such as the Quebec selection certificate. They will have to know related standards and how to assess and evaluate individuals in Quebec. It is quite different from the system used in Canada.

When the Quebec government put these regulations in place, it referred to the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, which already exists. That was the fastest and simplest option, but we must think seriously and take this opportunity to be even more effective, since this society will probably disappear and be replaced with something else.

In Quebec, there could be an association governed by Quebec laws, and in Canada, there could be another association. This model would be more effective, and would be in line with the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Why am I talking about the importance of giving Quebec control? It is a matter of jurisdiction under the British North America Act. Quebec has exclusive jurisdiction over regulating professional associations. I would like to quote an excerpt of the brief presented by the Barreau du Québec to the advisory committee on immigration consultants:

Although the provisions of the former Immigration Act allowed the federal government to create a quasi-judicial administrative tribunal, and allowed a barrister, solicitor or “other counsel” to represent individuals for a fee, that is not the case with the issue of establishing a college of consultants and establishing strict regulations to govern a profession. The Barreau du Québec believes that the creation of a college of consultants is not constitutionally viable.

Bill C-35 does not change anything. As it stands, the federal government essentially governs those who make representations on behalf of their clients to the federal government, but it does not truly have control over a person's ability to act as an immigration consultant and to provide advice for a fee.

But with Bill C-35, the government wants to take things further. We are not opposed to the intent, because we agree. However, by taking this further, the government is getting very close to creating a professional association. That completely interferes with the Quebec government's jurisdiction.

I would like to quote Quebec's criteria for establishing a professional association or order:

(1) the knowledge required to engage in the activities of the persons who would be governed by the order which it is proposed to constitute;

(2) the degree of independence enjoyed by the persons who would be members of the order in engaging in the activities concerned, and the difficulty which persons not having the same training and qualifications would have in assessing those activities;

(3) the personal nature of the relationships between such persons and those having recourse to their services, by reason of the special trust which the latter must place in them, particularly because such persons provide them with care or administer their property;

(4) the gravity of the prejudice which might be sustained by those who have recourse to the services of such persons because their competence or integrity was not supervised by the order;

(5) the confidential nature of the information which such persons are called upon to have in practising their profession.

These five criteria are clearly fulfilled in the case of immigration consultants. It requires knowledge—point 1—which must be governed by an appropriate order. People who work as consultants are very independent, and it is difficult for an outside person to assess their work if they do not have the same qualifications. The fundamentally personal nature of the consultant-client relationship is obvious.

Clearly, serious negative consequences can befall those who get bad advice. Their lives can be turned upside down and their plans can come to an abrupt halt. Confidentiality is also a factor.

As we can see, this is all about Quebec's jurisdiction, so much so that Quebec felt the need to establish its own regulatory system. The federal system, even with Bill C-35, cannot guarantee that specific elements of Quebec immigration law will be taken into account.

They also use the term “shared jurisdiction” and talk about how this does not fall under federal jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is one thing, but what about competence? Is the federal government competent to do this?

The abject failure of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants proves that the federal government does not have the competence to do this because it does not have the necessary expertise. In Quebec, the Office des professions du Québec oversees all professional groups. The regulations are a hundred or so pages long. The laws are substantial and provide real powers to investigate, intervene and sanction. The federal government does not have that. It would have to start from scratch and come up with all-new legislation for something that Quebec is already equipped to deal with. Personally, I do not think that is an efficient way of doing things at all.

The Bloc Québécois is concerned about the transfer of information proposed in the bill. In committee, we will ask questions about whether this bill goes too far in terms of what it wants lawyers and notaries to transfer to the federal government. Does this respect Quebec's legislation regarding confidentiality and the transfer of information? We will take a close look at that.

For all these reasons, the Bloc Québécois will be supporting this bill—at least at second reading—in order for it to be considered in committee. This is an issue we care about. We agree with the government and the other parties that the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants is not working. It has serious governance and transparency problems. I have seen student associations that were much better managed than this outfit.

I have personally tried to obtain information and have been routinely prevented from getting my hands on it. Members come and see us regularly complaining of the association’s exorbitant fees. They also complain of questionable policies, overly bureaucratic offices, outlandishly high fees, cronyism, general meetings where only the chair speaks and folks can only give input by way of email. In short, it is not a glowing record and there is nothing to inspire people’s confidence. The association has very serious governance issues and it fails at winning over its members and giving the profession a credible and professional face.

In closing, I would like to talk about the bill’s title. The government is carrying on its ridiculous tradition of giving bills ludicrous titles. In this particular case, the title is, “The Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act”. The title in English is even more ridiculous. That has to stop. They will tell me that what I am saying is of scant importance and that it has no bearing on anything, but as parliamentarians, we pass laws that should be objective and not subjective.

What will the next step be? A good budget and a good piece of immigration legislation? It does not make sense. We will settle this matter in committee, and I hope that the government will stop grandstanding and making grand gestures. Rather than giving bills really menacing sounding names and saying that they are going to stiffen penalties, they need to get out there in the community. Even if the penalties were 10 times stiffer, without people to enforce them and prosecute, there is no point.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is a real pleasure to rise today in my new capacity as official opposition critic for youth, citizenship and immigration. I have had a number of opportunities already to address youth issues before the House, and to speak today on citizenship and immigration and more specifically on Bill C-35 regarding the regulation of immigration consultants is both an honour and a challenge. For how we deal with the twin issues of youth and immigration today will define how successful our country will be tomorrow.

This House is currently wrangling with great verve over paperwork regarding rifles and on whether we got a good deal on some airplanes, and although these and other issues are legitimate and pressing, I fear that when we expend as much energy as we have on what seems urgent, all too often we find ourselves neglecting that which is most important.

The work we are doing here has its place in the long history of this beautiful country, which is still young. Instead of always trying to handle things on an ad hoc basis, moving from crisis to crisis, we should pay more attention to building for the future. One of our greatest responsibilities in the House is to prepare the next generation, and the next generation means our young people and our new arrivals.

We are a country of immigrants. Regardless of whether our family timelines are measured in millennia, centuries, decades or weeks, we are all bound together by a common dream of building a better life for ourselves and for our loved ones. That is why it can be so disheartening to see the politics of division, cynicism and fear take up so much space in our national narrative when we need to be drawing on the politics of hope, shared values and vision to be worthy of all that previous generations have fought for, created and given to us today.

Discussions and debates on immigration have been as much a part of Canadian politics as anything else we have struggled with as a nation, and it is always amazing to see how much the best among us have always said the same kinds of things. To go back 150 years, a few years before Confederation, Thomas D'Arcy McGee was pushing for a common Canadian patriotism, unhyphenated and shared by all who live in this land regardless of origin. I think it would be right for us to remember his words now:

Dear, most justly dear to every land beneath the sun, are the children born in her bosom and nursed upon her breast; but when the man of another country, wherever born, speaking whatever speech, holding whatever creed, seeks out a country to serve and honour and cleave to, in weal or in woe, when he heaves up the anchor of his heart from its old moorings, and lays at the feet of the mistress of his choice - his new country - all the hopes of his ripe manhood, he establishes by such devotion a claim to consideration not second even to that of the children of the soil. He is their brother delivered by a new birth from the dark-wombed Atlantic ship that ushers him into existence in the new world; he stands by his own election among the children of the household; and narrow and unwise is that species of public spirit which, in the perverted name of patriotism, would refuse him all he asks...

A few decades later, Wilfrid Laurier said:

My countrymen are not only those in whose veins runs the blood of France. My countrymen are all those people—no matter what their race or language—whom the fortunes of war, the twists and turns of fate, or their own choice, have brought among us.

Our country was created by people of multiple identities, and we have become strong not despite our differences but because of them. Our future, the future of our society and our economy, even the future of our planet, will depend entirely on our ability to work together, not to erase our differences but to accept them and recognize that the only way to meet the challenges facing us is to make use of all the diverse perspectives and views around us.

Everywhere around the world we are living globalization that brings multiple nationalities, identities, cultures, religions and languages into conflict within established states. The temptation when times are difficult is to play up our differences, to point fingers at identities or others and choose to divide for gain rather than bringing together. This is a path that will lead us into great peril when we think of the tremendous challenges we are facing as a planet, whether it be around the environment, poverty, human rights or just around the simple challenges that are going to derive by having to live together, nine billion of us, in a limited space.

Canada can and must demonstrate that national identity is not about our colour, language, religion or even culture. Our national identity is based on a shared set of values, values of openness, compassion, respect for each other and the rule of law and not only a willingness to work hard to succeed, but a desire to be there for each other in times of difficulty, to be there for the most vulnerable among us. This is what defines Canadians from coast to coast to coast and the more we play up those differences, the less we are able to rise to the level that the challenges will require of us.

That is why it is so important that we get our approach to immigration right, both in the House certainly but also as we collectively reflect upon it in homes right across the land. We must stay away from the easy polarizations. We are dependent on immigration for our economy, but we have an example to offer to the world. That means we need to get it right, which is why we, on this side of the House in the Liberal Party, are pleased to see Bill C-35 on immigration consultants. It is an issue that speaks to the very justice of a country of which we are so proud.

Imagine citizens of faraway lands taking it upon themselves to seek better lives for themselves and their loved ones. Maybe they make the decision for negative reasons, such as war, oppression or famine, or maybe they make it for positive reasons, such as seeking opportunity or being filled with hope and dreams. They take the difficult decision of uprooting themselves from all that they know and lived through to travel across the oceans to begin a new life.

It is a moment of tremendous vulnerability and uncertainty and it is perfectly normal and natural for them in that situation to look for help, to try to figure out how they are going to be able to make it to a land where they are not sure about the customs, they have trouble with the language, maybe they do not even understand the process. In that moment of tremendous vulnerability when they are asking for help, unfortunately they can make decisions that will not help them but lead them into losing their dreams altogether.

I am sure all of us in the House have met well-meaning constituents, people who come to us for help, who took the advice of unscrupulous consultants and fudged the truth in their applications or misrepresented something about their desire to come to Canada. As a result, they have an indelible X on their file that will mean that any dream they had of becoming part of this great nation, this community that we build toward the future will be washed away.

In my constituency office in the short time since I was elected I have seen over 500 immigration cases and too often they are complaining about the cost of the process. It is not the cost of the application fees and the medical evaluations and it is not the frustration with the hard work that our civil servants in our missions abroad do. It is worries about the cost and the frustration that comes with having spent exorbitant amounts of money on people who promised the world and could not deliver.

This was a problem that came through for many years in the House, which is why, in 2002, we established an immigration committee to look at this situation. We then created the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, an independent, federally incorporated, not-for-profit body, operating at arm's-length from the federal government, responsible for regulating the activities of immigration consultants who were members and who provided immigration advice for a fee. Unfortunately, CSIC was not given the power to properly investigate and prosecute disciplinary matters. It did not have statutory powers to audit, subpoena or seize documents and did not have the resources to properly police immigration consultants.

Since its creation, unfortunately we kept witnessing ongoing problems with unscrupulous individuals operating both in Canada and abroad as immigration consultants, cheating immigrants with inappropriate fees. These ghost consultants continued to be a problem and legitimate consultants were concerned that these crooked individuals put a stigma on the entire profession and made it difficult to do their jobs and protect vulnerable immigrants in their time of great hope and need.

In 2008, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration published a report that made nine recommendations to improve the process. First, the committee recognized that Quebec would remain responsible for managing the consultants within its own borders.

In respect to a new approach to regulating consultants, the committee recommended that more investigatory and punitive powers be provided regarding those members who do not deserve the confidence placed in them by people who want to come to Canada.

The committee also wanted to improve the government’s ability to supervise the work done by these regulators. In addition, it recommended that communications with potential applicants should be improved, because these people are so vulnerable.

It is in response to this report that the government is now introducing Bill C-35.

The government claims that Bill C-35 would close loopholes currently exploited by crooked consultants and would improve the way in which immigration consultants would be regulated. The proposed draft regulation will amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act so that only lawyers, notaries and authorized consultants who are members in good standing of a governing body authorized by the minister may provide advice or representation at any stage of a proceeding or application.

This is important because currently the act does not regulate the activities of consultants during the pre-application or proceeding phase. Although not in the draft legislation itself, the government has publicly stated penalties would include a sentence of up to two years in jail or a $50,000 fine, or both. While this is positive, rather than introducing stand-alone legislation to permit the creation of a statutory body to regulate immigration consultants as was recommended by the Citizenship and Immigration committee, the government has decided to amend IRPA to change the manner in which third parties are regulated. It has launched a public selection process whereby organizations, including the current regulator, are competing to be selected to be the arm's-length regulatory body. The legislation provides the minister with the power to designate a body through regulations, not legislation.

Many stakeholders have expressed concern that the decision to change the regulatory body through regulation rather than through stand-alone legislation will not result in the necessary governance and oversight required for the new body. There is also concern that the new body will still not have the power to sanction immigration consultants who are not members, nor have appropriate enforcement powers regarding its membership.

The bill also would allow Citizenship and Immigration Canada to disclose further information relating to the ethical or professional conduct of an immigration representative to those responsible for governing that conduct and would expand the time for instituting proceedings against individuals from six months to five years.

These are positive changes. We are still very concerned about the resources that have not been made available to the regulatory body and to the Canada Border Services Agency, for example, to enforce sanctions against ghost consultants and legitimate but wayward ones. We are concerned about the missing legislation that might give more teeth to the body to reprimand its own members.

I am, however, in favour to sending the bill to committee because I believe in the safety of our future Canadians and of the family and friends of our new Canadians. I will be voting in favour because I want to ensure that we protect vulnerable immigrants from unscrupulous individuals who use the immigration process to cheat people out of their life savings.

I will be voting in favour in the hopes that we, as a Parliament and members from all parties, can work together in committee and bring the amendments that will make the bill better into a law that will be in the best interests of Canada. Canadian and more precisely the residents of my riding of Papineau want this Parliament to work together. It is in this spirit that I will support the bill because, simply put, a big part of our shared Canadian identity is ensuring that we do all we can to protect the most vulnerable among us.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

moved that Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, as Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, I am pleased to have this opportunity today to launch the debate on Bill C-35, the Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act.

I am proud to rise to support this important legislation, which would allow us to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to strengthen the rules governing those who provide advice on immigration matters for a fee.

As hon. members know, the great values that govern Canada, namely freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, make our country one of the primary destinations of choice for immigrants from all over the world. Unfortunately, Canada is also associated with the emergence of practices which, for too long, have been synonymous with unscrupulous behaviour in the immigration industry.

We all know that applicants for immigration to Canada do not need to use the services of an immigration representative in order to immigrate here. The Government of Canada treats everyone equally whether or not they hire a representative to deal with Immigration Canada in their application to visit or move here. However, because moving to a new country has its own challenges and because immigration procedures often seem complex, many prospective immigrants seek the services of a consultant for help in navigating the process of immigration.

Now while most immigration consultants working in Canada are acting professionally and ethically, the unfortunate reality is that there are a number of consultants who are acting dishonestly or even illegally to try to profit from people's dream of coming to Canada. This is one of the biggest issues that new Canadians raise with me from coast to coast. In many meetings with various ethnocultural communities across Canada, I have heard numerous unsettling stories of people being taken in by dishonest immigration consultants or unethical representatives.

These are people who take sometimes thousands or tens of thousands of dollars from individuals. I heard a story from a man of Chinese origin who had given over $100,000 in cash to a crooked consultant who had falsely guaranteed him immigration to Canada as an investor immigrant. I have also heard of students giving people sometimes over $10,000 to guarantee them status in Canada and in return get nothing. Often these crooked consultants will knowingly submit counterfeit documents in support of an application with careless disregard that our ministry officials are likely to identify the fraud, reject the visa application and often that will injure the person's chances of visiting or coming to Canada for at least two years. The crooked consultants do not care because they typically have the cash in hand and have already made their profit.

There are literally thousands of such representatives, from unauthorized consultants to labour recruiters and student agents both in Canada and around the world. We want people to know that despite what some unethical representatives might say to prospective immigrants, no one has special access to the Government of Canada and all applications are treated the same. It is important to underscore this because many of the bottom-feeders in this industry will imply to people that they have some kind of in, some kind of special access to decision makers in the Canadian immigration system, and that is never true. It is important for people both here and abroad to understand that.

It is also important for prospective visitors or immigrants to Canada to know that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If someone is offering guaranteed immigration status in Canada for a fee, go the other way, in fact, run in the opposite direction. Immigration fraud takes many forms. Immigration applicants in all immigration categories may engage in fraud against our system and some seek assistance from crooked consultants or other third parties such as labour recruiters or document counterfeiters.

I was recently in India where our officials briefed me showing me hundreds of examples of the thousands of counterfeit documents they get that are produced by this industry: fake bank transcripts; fake academic transcripts; fake banking statements; and fake marriage, death or birth certificates, just name it. Some of them are quite crude but, again, often the counterfeiters and the crooked consultants do not care because they have already done their business.

Some fraud happens here but much happens overseas. Some examples include lying to an officer on an application form or counselling economic migrants to file unfounded refugee claims. A related concern is consumer fraud where crooked consultants, labour recruiters or student agents charge exorbitant fees to applicants or promise services that are never delivered.

I returned this morning from a visit to our top immigration source countries, including India, China and the Philippines, and my second visit to India since becoming minister, where I met with senior officials from the state of Punjab and discussed progress made to date, as well as our continued co-operation on this issue.

I received a commitment from the federal ministers of the Indian government to bring forward significant amendments to their immigration act, to help crack down on unscrupulous immigration advisers in India. As well, I managed to secure a commitment from the minister of public security in China that he would appoint a special high-level representative to work on a task force with us in combating immigration fraud in that country.

And so, we believe that we are making progress in this respect.

To give members an idea of the scope of the problem, we have in our visa office in Chandigarh, Punjab, what our officials call a “wall of shame”, with countless examples of the thousands of fraudulent documents, including fake marriage certificates, death certificates and travel itineraries. Each one of these documents represents a broken dream. It represents somebody who paid money, often thousands of dollars, and ended up getting tricked by a consultant in return.

I have also seen first-hand in that city billboards put up by consultants with a ripoff of the Government of Canada wordmark offering guaranteed visas. As I say, this is something with which we must deal.

I also expressed my concerns during my trip to the Philippines, where I met with the president and senior government officials, where unscrupulous consultants and agencies are also a major problem. I received assurances from officials in that country, as well, that they too will support our efforts.

The Government of Canada is determined to protect the integrity of its immigration program against fraud. We are determined to crack down on immigration scams, dishonesty, false promises and unethical practices, and we are also determined to take action against the individuals who engage in fraudulent activities.

First, we launched a public information campaign to help potential immigrants learn how to protect themselves against false claims made by crooked immigration consultants and other representatives.

We have also posted warnings and notices in 17 languages to raise awareness on our website and in all our offices and missions abroad.

We have also held meetings in city halls to consult people from every region of the country, to listen to their stories about crooked consultants, and to ask for their suggestions on how to protect Canada's immigration system against scams and dishonesty.

In May 2009 Citizenship and Immigration Canada hosted on its website an online questionnaire to gather information from individuals who have used representatives in the immigration process. The goal was to provide the department with information about the nature and scope of fraud in the immigration process, and to help form our efforts to tighten the rules governing representatives and prevent wrongdoing.

The response showed how widespread the problem truly is, with many prospective immigrants and new Canadians detailing their experiences. Listening to victims and stakeholder groups this past year has given us a clearer picture of the nature and scope of the problem and their direct input has informed our efforts to prevent fraud. I would like to thank all of those who participated.

It is pretty obvious that fraud remains a major threat to the integrity of our citizenship and immigration programs, and that it adversely affects all of us.

We must act to protect potential immigrants and the integrity of Canada's immigration program. Bill C-35 provides an opportunity to do so by cracking down on crooked immigration consultants.

The changes we propose would strengthen the rules governing those who provide advice on immigration matters and representation services, or who offer to do so. These changes would also improve the way immigration consultants are regulated.

These changes are in line with the amendments that we proposed in the Citizenship Act in order to regulate citizenship consultants.

Bill C-35 would amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act so that only lawyers, notaries in Quebec and consultants who are members in good standing of a governing body designated by the minister could provide advice for a fee at any stage of a proceeding or application, including the pre-application period. After all, anyone who provides immigration advice for a fee is acting as a professional and so they should be members in good standing of an authorized regulatory body.

While the current legislation regulates the activities of consultants from the point of view of the submission of an application or proceeding, it does not regulate their involvement in the pre-application period. This is important because it means that unscrupulous consultants are not currently obliged to disclose their involvement during that pre-application period, and this is where the most exploitation occurs.

Our government's proposed legislation closes this major loophole by requiring that all advice or representation supplied or offered for a fee be provided by an authorized representative, who would have to be a member in good standing of a bar of a province, the Chambre des notaires du Québec, or the body designated by the minister to govern immigration consultants.

This would make it an offence for anyone other than an authorized consultant, lawyer or notary to conduct business at any stage in the proceeding or application. By casting a wider net unauthorized individuals who provide paid advice or representation at any stage would be subject to a fine and/or imprisonment.

In addition, the bill before us would allow my ministry to disclose information relating to the ethical or professional conduct of a representative to authorities responsible for investigating that conduct, which would typically be the Canada Border Services Agency or on citizenship matters, the RCMP. This is something that should be obvious but is not actually provided for under the current act.

Above all, the proposed legislation responds directly to concerns and recommendations raised by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration of this House in its report entitled “Regulating Immigration Consultants”, which was presented in June 2008. The report itself was based on broad consultation with the public.

I heard concerns like these myself and it is apparent that a new approach to the regulation of immigration consultants is needed.

That is why the proposed legislation would also give the minister the authority to designate a body to govern immigration consultants and establish measures that would enhance the government's oversight of the designated body.

The body regulating consultants must regulate effectively and must be held accountable for ensuring its membership provides services in a professional and ethical manner.

Accordingly, information from the designated body would be provided to the minister, and this is something that does not currently exist, to ensure that the integrity of the immigration system is maintained. This information would permit the minister to evaluate whether the body is governing its members in the public interest. Concerns about the lack of such public interest focus have been raised by the parliamentary committee and many others.

According to a unanimous 2008 report by the standing committee, complaints were also heard from a number of immigration consultants across the country, many of whom expressed great dissatisfaction with the way that the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, or CSIC, is currently governed.

That is why I have already taken steps to address this problem, a problem that poses a significant threat to the immigration system and that has created a lack of public confidence in the regulation of immigration consultants in general.

In the Canada Gazette on June 12 of this year I announced CIC's intention to launch a public selection process to identify a governing body for recognition as the regulator of immigration consultants under the existing immigration and refugee protection regulations.

The notice of intent invited comments from the public on the proposed selection process. That process is now underway following the publication in the Canada Gazette on August 28 of a call for submissions from candidates interested in becoming the regulator of immigration consultants. Interested parties have until December 29 of this year to deliver their submissions.

What we are looking for is a regulator who can support Canada's immediate and long-term immigration objectives while working toward maintaining and building confidence in our own immigration system.

The successful candidate must show that it can effectively investigate the conduct of its members and sanction those who do not play by the rules. It will also need to understand the importance of ensuring that consultants respect Canada's immigration laws, and the rights and best interests of newcomers.

Once an entity is identified, if necessary, a regulatory alignment may be proposed naming a new governing body. In this case transitional measures would ensure continuity of service for both consultants and their clients during the transition period.

The other non-legislative improvements related to the proposed changes include continued efforts to make potential immigrants aware of the dangers of hiring crooked consultants.

Improved services, including web-based tools and practical videos, are being developed by CIC and will help people submit an application to move to Canada totally on their own.

I can also assure hon. members that the Government of Canada will continue to use bilateral and multilateral opportunities to deal with the issue of fraudulent activities by immigration consultants abroad.

As I mentioned earlier, the international component to addressing crooked immigration consultants was initiated during my trip to India in January 2009, when I raised this issue in Chandigarh with the chief minister of Punjab, and was continued in my recent trip.

We have all heard the horror stories about people falling prey to the deceitful schemes and machinations cooked up by crooked consultants. The media across Canada has done an excellent job of shining a light on these injustices. To give an example, the Toronto Star's “Lost in migration” series was particularly hard-hitting and eye-opening.

As we have seen and heard, prospective immigrants often shell out exorbitant amounts of money, sometimes their entire lifesavings, in order to get a promise of a high-paying job or fast-tracked or guaranteed visas. As is so often the case, would be immigrants find out too late that they have been deceived.

These cases of fraud and deception are too common, but they should never be considered inevitable. That is why the government is committed to addressing immigration fraud in all forms and working to better regulate immigration consultants. That commitment was reiterated in March in the Speech from the Throne.

I would like to conclude by stating that this important piece of legislation has been widely praised, including by victims and legitimate immigration consultants. For example, the president of the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants said, “We have been calling for such changes for a long time, and are in full support of them”.

Bill C-35 has also received positive attention from the media on June 9. The Globe and Mail stated in an editorial that it makes “--a significant shift from the previous system of self-regulation of the immigration consulting industry”. The Toronto Star said that, “Cracking down on crooked Canadian immigration consultants is a great idea and [the government] should be congratulated for taking that step”.

We are confident that the amendments we are proposing to make to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act through this bill would better protect people from crooked consultants, and the damage and misery that they cause.

I hope that I can count on my opposition colleagues to work with the government constructively to ensure its speedy passage through this House because we have an obligation as legislators, as government, and as Parliament to defend the vulnerable, to ensure that Canada maintains its best reputation as a country open to newcomers, but to ensure that it is done in a system that is based on fairness, the rule of law, and the protection of the vulnerable. We believe that this bill takes a great step forward in that direction.

Immigration

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, every year, thousands of would-be immigrants and visitors to Canada are exploited by unethical, crooked immigration consultants who sometimes take thousands of dollars from people, exploiting their dream of coming to Canada, and return no services or, even worse, counsel people to commit fraud that hurts their chances of coming to Canada.

This government is taking action. We have introduced today Bill C-35, an act to crack down on crooked consultants and make it a crime, punishable with up to two years in prison, for people to act as consultants if they are not properly registered. We are also taking other measures to ensure a proper accounting of these--