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

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the dialogue by the member and certainly the ending of his speech where he indicated that the opposition party, the Liberal Party, will be supporting the bill at second reading to move it to committee.

I have heard now from two members of the Liberal Party today on the bill with respect to the issue of the regulatory body that will exist. There is a bit of a misunderstanding here. This would be a self-regulating body. While we have spoken this afternoon about the difficulties we face with fraudulent consultants, rip-off artists and all of the other names that we use to describe these individuals who take advantage of other human beings, we also have a number of people in this industry who are legitimate. They would like the opportunity to self-govern and to ensure there is no place for those who are not in this business to help people but only to hurt people and for their own financial advantage. This will not be a regulatory body with the same sort of statutes as some of the provinces use with their agencies or regulatory bodies, depending on the profession, but it will be one that is set in place and it will be a self-regulatory one.

Part of the problem of getting into creating statutes is that we end up creating bodies that are costly. There are many bureaucracies that exist for years upon years and end up costing the taxpayer tens of millions of dollars. We do not want that. We want a very simple straightforward piece of legislation in this process that will do what its title says, which is to ensure that crooked consultants no longer have a place in this country to do business.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words of the parliamentary secretary. I will take his word for it because all of that will be judged when the bill goes before committee.

There is no reason that an organization must compete to be selected to be this regulatory body. The legislation and the guidelines are in place. It is like when we bring forward an amendment to the Criminal Code. Canadians know exactly what the do's and do not's are.

Once this legislation spells out the do's and do not's clearly, with no ambiguity of what a consultant can and cannot do, then why do we need to put out a bidding process for a board to be selected to oversee this? Of course, the minister will have the final say over this. This is absolute and total control in my mind.

However, I will give the parliamentary secretary the benefit of the doubt and, when it goes before committee, we will see where it goes.

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

Mr. Speaker, the immigration committee studied this issue at length, travelled across the country and discovered that the existing group that the hon. member was talking about had lots of difficulties. I spoke about those problems yesterday, and I can highlight a few more, but it is certainly in the immigration committee's report that was before the House and which Parliament adopted in November last year.

One of the issues we have is that the legislation that was created by a former Liberal government is deeply flawed. It actually allows people with no licence to practise. Why would people belong to an organization if they can practise anyway? As a result, half of the people are licensed and the other half are not. There must be legislative change because this is a huge loophole, which means that we have a body that has absolutely no power.

The member talked about the provincial government, and there are lots of provincial nominee programs. How does the member see that this new body would end up working with the provincial governments so that we can ensure that any applications, whether they are through the provincial nominee program or the federal program, are only done through regulated immigration consultants?

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when I referred to the province, I was referring to the actual duties of the immigration consultant, a consultant who is properly trained, properly prepared to take on an immigration file, whether he works on a provincial side or a federal side, and follows specific guidelines clearly knowing what the repercussions would be should he or she violate the rights of that individual and the law as it is.

However, I will get back to the member who said that the Liberals did nothing. It was as a result of the Liberal initiatives that the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants was formed. It was what I was referring to earlier. Any piece of legislation, in this case immigration legislation, 15 years ago was different than it was 10 years ago or what it is today and, I can guarantee the member, will be different 10 years from now. Parliaments exist to address circumstances as they change.

The member spoke extensively to the RCMP being the enforcement mechanism. We do not need the RCMP to look into this. We need rules that consultants will adhere to and, if they do not, we simply remove their licence and they will not be allowed to work. Should they work illegally, then we add and enforce the penalties, which would solve that kind problem.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the comments of my hon. colleague for Scarborough Centre. He said, “with greatest respect to lawyers, it should not just be lawyers”. On behalf of the lawyers, I appreciate his comment and I agree with him. There are certainly lawyers who work in the immigration field and have a great knowledge of the immigration regulations and the laws that apply, but there are other people who are in fact very knowledgeable.

He is also right that the whole industry of immigration consultants is one that has changed and developed a great deal in the last 15 years. He is also right that it is time to regulate this area and take strong action because it is something that many of us, if not all of us in this House, find to be a concern. People come to us and we discover perhaps that in some cases someone unscrupulous was dealing with them. In other cases, we find people who are really knowledgeable, know what they are doing and do a good job. It does not need to be a lawyer but it does need to be someone who is well trained. It is important that we ensure that people working in this field are well trained and have the appropriate qualifications.

I am sure my colleague would like to comment on that some more.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to clarify something for my good friend from Halifax West. I was not saying that lawyers do not do a good job. They do an excellent job. I was not saying that lawyers should not engage. I was simply saying that it does not necessarily take lawyers to work on these files. Lawyers can work on these files but so can properly, and I stress properly, trained immigration consultants who know the legislation.

Lawyers can earn some money as well and immigration consultants can earn some money as long as it is done legitimately, without ripping people off.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand today in the House to speak to Bill C-35 which is set to bring long overdue regulations to the industry of immigration consultants in Canada. This is very important legislation for my constituents of Newton—North Delta and one that inspires great personal interest for me, as well.

When we talk about the immigration process in Canada, the discussion represents a range of issues much larger than forms, applications and interviews. What we are ultimately talking about are the hopes and dreams of people looking to come to this country to make a better life for themselves and their families.

As an immigrant to Canada over 25 years ago, I can personally recall how emotional it was to step onto Canadian soil with desire, determination and the will to succeed. So, when I hear off cases where people filled with this spirit of optimism have been taken advantage of and bilked of thousands of dollars, it makes me very angry.

I will now talk about the current situation and how ghost immigration consultants, as they have been labelled, operate with impugnity.

These particular individuals are known as ghosts within the industry because all their activities take place before the submission of an immigration application, keeping them off the radar and unregulated. Their names never show up on the documentation and oftentimes, these consultants do not even bother to show up at the hearings even though they have already pocketed the fees they have charged in advance.

The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, in its current form, has no ability to crack down on the pre-application stage, and this is where immigration applicants become victims in the hands of those who provide bad advice and offer false promises. Sometimes these false promises include fast-track approvals and high-paying jobs. Sometimes applicants are not even eligible for a visa but are told differently by their consultants. These consultants sometimes advise applicants to lie about their past or to fill out their forms improperly so that they are charged with misrepresentation later on.

Ultimately, all of these ghost consultants, more often than not, lead to two outcomes: the rejection of the application and the loss of thousands of dollars of an applicant's hard-earned money. This is a phenomena that has been going on for decades in Canada and the most recent developments to correct the industry's problems have not been effective.

The establishment of an advisory committee by the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration in 2002 led to a set of corrective options. However, the creation of a self-regulatory body to regulate immigration consultants in the fall of 2003, namely, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants or CSIC, has not provided an adequate solution to the problem that arises from the acts of these consultants I am talking about. In fact, some might argue that the conditions within the industry have continued to deteriorate over the past seven years. The problem with the CSIC is that it really has no teeth or enforcement capacity to take the proper measures to crack down.

It also became clear in the standing committee's hearings surrounding the proposed changes that CSIC clearly does not have the confidence of immigration consultants right across the country.

Furthermore, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has little ability to disclose information on those who provide unethical or unprofessional representation or advice.

Bill C-35 represents a series of very positive steps because of the sweeping changes they will bring to this unregulated industry. The bill is proposing that a new entity be established that has the ability to properly license its members; to regulate, conduct and look into the complaints; and to have the government intimately involved in its affairs to ensure that investigations occur and the necessary disciplinary actions are taken.

It is about time that providing professional immigration consultation without the proper authorization and certification is a criminal offence.

It can only be done by looking at the examples of other self-regulatory bodies as earlier speakers have pointed out, such as the associations for lawyers. I personally belong to the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia. I am also a member of the Association of British Columbia Land Surveyors that regulates us and disciplines us if we do not perform according to the standards and guidelines it has set.

It is about time that we bring in an association that would regulate those consultants so the prospective immigrants to this country are not ripped off. It is about time that the industry had a governing body that all consultants could participate in, where being a member of that society would only let them practice in that way.

It is also time for the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism to have an ability and oversight to step in and take the appropriate steps to ensure that this new governing body is improving the industry and the conduct of those calling themselves professionals.

While I support Bill C-35 at this stage, I also want to make a note about the current state of the immigration system in our country because the blame for these unscrupulous practices must also fall on the government.

I want to cite a column written in the Toronto Star by Allan Thompson on July 17 of this year. Thompson correctly pointed out that in introducing this legislation, the minister:

--comes across a bit like a doctor, cracking down on the symptoms of an illness, rather than treating the illness itself.

He went on to state that:

--because many of those people are ill-served by the system itself. Because they lack information or the ability to access a confusing and opaque system, many of these anxious applicants turn to unscrupulous consultants--

This is a topic that I have been speaking about for many years. The immigration system as a whole is not user-friendly.

I can give perfect examples in my office or any other MP who has an immigration population in their riding. Our staff are working around the clock to deal with the system. There are no clear guidelines from the minister to the overseas officers that are deployed there. The people who want to come to Canada are on a point-based system. There are 29 new categories that the minister brought in. If they do not fall in the 20,000 applications then they have to receive a market labour opinion that says they have to raise employment in Canada via these consultants who are charging thousands and thousands of dollars to get them that letter and that approval.

Also there is a backlog that has only grown larger since the government has come to power. Severe funding shortfalls prevent adequate numbers of staff both here domestically and internationally.

Immigration applicants are treated as little more than numbers that can be picked, chosen, and often discarded because of the abundance of applications. Information is difficult to navigate both in terms of ease of access, linguistic diversity, and response time for inquiries.

Even on the temporary resident visas that people are applying for every day, we hear from the officers overseas that they have to give proof of relationships in one day. The second month they will see the information about all the siblings that are living in this country. Every day the list is growing and there is nowhere to find on the government website all this information that would be helpful for those individuals when they are filling out the application that could also help when these people are being ripped off by these consultants.

For many other reasons the system is failing and pushing anxious applicants and their families into the hands of those who are looking to abuse their trust and exploit their vulnerability.

To conclude, I want to endorse Bill C-35 as a vital step forward in ensuring that the people are treated fairly when it comes to receiving help for their immigration applications, but I also want to stress that if we empower those tasked with administering our system with support, resources and guidance, then the system would naturally provide the best defence against the kinds of individuals that Bill C-35 is looking to protect us from.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to put a question to the hon. member. He spoke about the incredible frustration that new immigrants experience. I was wondering if he could give concrete examples of the type of frustrations that lead people to use these charlatans, these ghost consultants, just to show the terrible anguish that new immigrants are going through when they try to land themselves here in Canada.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank the hon. member for Etobicoke Centre for all the good work that he is doing for all those immigrants who are living not only in his riding. In fact, he has talked to me about issues concerning those people from coast to coast to coast. He has brought up a very good question.

A perfect example is the new list of 29 categories that this minister has brought in. Only 20,000 people can qualify under the point system to get in, while others, in order to qualify under the unlimited scheme, need an employment arranged form. That is where the exploitation happens.

The other thing is that when the temporary workers come in, they are promised $25 an hour because they are needy. They are told that if they work two years they will be given permanent status, which is not true. Then they keep working probably at $5 or $10 an hour cash.

There have been many people who have come to my riding and I have had an opportunity to help them. I can quote an enormous number of examples.

We must ensure that we bring in a body that is statutorily regulated, that is self-governing like any other professional body, and will ensure that it takes care of those individuals so that the prospective immigrants are not ripped off by those consultants time and time again.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, would the member think that going out for a proposal call to try to find an oversight body that was objective and up front is going to take too long? Would it not be better to look at the regulatory changes that have come about as a result of what the committee has heard and implement immediately a statutory body that would have the teeth to regulate in a professional and up front manner?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot agree more with the hon. member. This is exactly the way to go. We cannot ask for bids to have a body that will regulate this based on the money that we pay it. I know there are lawyers sitting right next to me, the engineers and accountants. We have those associations. We have--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order. I will have to stop the member there.

The House resumed from September 22 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.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, other than our colleagues, who are first nation members, you, I, and all of our colleagues in the House have something in common: we are the descendants of, and in fact some of us are, immigrants to Canada.

Yesterday in the House of Commons we heard speeches on Bill C-35 from two such members. The member for Newton—North Delta told his particular story of a young man arriving on Canada's shores as an immigrant from India and what an incredibly inspiring story that was. The immigrant from India, with virtually no money in his pocket, had a deep desire in his heart to build a new life in a new land. Who could have foretold that 25 years later he would be here, among us, in the House of Commons as one of the legislators of laws for this great land?

We also heard a speech yesterday from the member for Eglinton—Lawrence who also arrived as a new Canadian 55 years ago as part of a wave of Italian Canadians who arrived in Canada in the fifties, sixties and seventies. He mentioned that while he was speaking in the House, his grandson, a third generation Italian Canadian, was watching his immigrant grandfather address this august chamber, the House of Commons.

What incredible stories of Canada's potential, of Canada's promise. This has been the story of Canada right from the first days of Confederation. In Canada's first House of Commons there was a member elected by the name of Alexandre-Édouard Kierzkowski, a refugee from Russian imperialism, and a member of Canada's first House of Commons in 1867. That has been the story of Canada, wave after wave of people arriving on these shores.

The French, who settled and, along with the existing first nations, created something unique to Canada: a new first nation, the Métis. After the English, soon after Confederation there was a large wave of Bukovinians, Galicians, and Ukrainians who transformed the bush of the Northwest Territories into the golden wheat fields of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The Chinese arrived to build our railroads, those ribbons of steel that bound our geographically vast land into a cohesive oneness.

More recently, as I have mentioned, the Italian Canadians and Portuguese Canadians arrived in the last half century and transformed our cities, cities such as my home town, Toronto. They transformed those cityscapes and created those jewels, the most liveable cities on the planet: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver. What this speaks to is a system that is dynamic. Our multicultural mosaic is not static; it is a constantly evolving multicultural mosaic. That is Canada's promise and strength.

Unfortunately, over the last number of years our immigration system has been suffering from dysfunction. In fact, I would even say it has reached the point where the system pretty much does not work.

In the past there have been two types of newcomers to Canada. There have been the refugees, going as far back as the Loyalists, the underground railroad, and more recently, the Vietnam and Iraqi war resisters. Even my grandparents landed in Canada, on freedom's shores, as refugees from communism, from the horrors of Stalinism. There have been the refugees and there have been the economic immigrants who saw Canada not just as a free land but also as a land of opportunity, having departed from lands where at that point in time, unfortunately, opportunities were limited. In Canada the opportunities were limitless.

The waves of people that landed on Canada's shores landed here because Canada is a free country and, as a consequence of that freedom, it is a prosperous country. All of those people had something in common. They came here with a willingness to work hard so that they could build a future for themselves, for their families and for future generations. They succeeded and they contributed back into their communities and to the greatness of our country.

Unfortunately, we have a current refugee and immigration system that has ceased to function. It creates confusion. It creates a situation of shattered dreams for hopeful new Canadians, new immigrants to our country. In this confusion, and in desperation that is fed by the confused system that we currently have, the ones who step in are the charlatans, the ghost consultants, who prey on impossible dreams and make impossible promises. They prey on the most vulnerable.

As my colleagues have said, I also am supporting this bill which deals with crooked consultants. I am supporting sending the bill to committee to further refine it. But let us not lose sight of the bigger job at hand. That job is to fix our immigration system. We need a new act.

Let me mention specific cases to show how desperate the situation is for potential new Canadians and the circumstances the current system forces them into.

Marya Kunyk arrived on a work visa as a live-in caregiver. She had to work two years over a three-year period to be able to begin the process of becoming a Canadian. Just a year after arriving and working on fulfilling that obligation, she was crossing at a crosswalk and was hit by a car. It was a horrific accident. The driver was found guilty, but Marya today has a shattered body, literally. Parts of her body have been replaced with pieces of steel.

What is the system doing to Marya, who needs continuing health care and physiotherapy so that she can once again become a functioning productive member of society? The system is deporting Marya back to a country that cannot provide the health care she requires. The system is deporting her because she is not fulfilling the obligations of her contract that she work two full years. It is just common sense. She has not been able to fulfill the obligations of that contract. She was hit by a car through no fault of her own.

Is it any wonder that there is so much desperation among new Canadians that they turn to these crooked consultants, these charlatans who prey on that desperation.

In another case, Iryna Ivaniv is a young woman who has been trying for over six years to bring her husband to Canada from Ukraine. She has four young children, Canadian children. I will read from a letter that she wrote to the minister:

1. We have four young children who are Canadian citizens: 6-year-old; 3-year-old; and 5-months-old twins. They have a right to have both their parents raise them....

2. Our twins were born premature. They're under pediatric constant supervision and need medical care which I do not feel could be obtained in Ukraine in satisfactory manner.

3. All our children are registered to start school and daycare from September 2010. I must stress that Canadian children 6-year of age must attend school under The Education Act.

What has happened in the case of Iryna Ivaniv? Just in the past two months, her husband has once again been denied the opportunity to come to Canada to unite this family.

How does this happen? Through an access to information request, I have been able to get the notes of the decision. It is astounding. The decision states that Iryna Ivaniv is still in possession of Ukrainian citizenship and can therefore freely access all health and social services in that country. She is not a Ukrainian citizen; she is a Canadian citizen. Ukraine does not allow dual citizenship. She is a citizen of one country.

How is it that decision-makers who do not even understand the rules are making the decisions?

Further on the decision states that the children would benefit from being sent from their country to Ukraine so they could be with their extended family, so there would not be disruption to the children's life separation from their grandparents, and it is significant disruption that we have caused because in Ukrainian culture, extended families are traditionally important.

My goodness. We would take Canadian children away from their mother, their Canadian grandparents, their Canadian uncle, deport them, and send them to a country half a world away.

These cases clearly illustrate how dysfunctional the system has become. Is it no wonder that people prey on the desperation of people such as Iryna, on the desperation of people such as Marya.

Let me also reference a statistic from the public database of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration regarding the processing time for skilled workers from Kiev, Ukraine. In 2009, 80% of the cases were finalized in 83 months, which is 6 years and 11 months.

What employer in Canada will wait seven years for an employee that has been hired from a foreign country to arrive? What about the people in those countries, under the skilled worker class of immigration, who are waiting not several months, but year after year after year? What has happened to Canada's promise?

As I said earlier, Canada's dynamism and greatness has been built by the waves of people who have arrived on Canada's shores. We often reference the incredible natural resources of this vast land. Yes, we have been blessed with natural resources unlike any other country in the world, but our greatest resource is our human resource, the deep reservoir of human capacity that we have.

Canada is unique to the planet in having people who have an intricate understanding of every culture of the world, who speak every language of every people on the planet. In a future global village, what an incredible advantage that gives us.

That promise has to be reinstated. Canada cannot become a land that is static, that loses its dynamism. Yes, this particular bill addresses one issue, one small part of the dysfunction, and that is why we are supporting it. However, I certainly hope it does not distract us from the job at hand, and the job at hand is to put in place a new system. Canada's future is at stake.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's speech and thought of my family who came as immigrants from Hawkhill in Dundee, Scotland to work in the mines. They came with immigrants from around the world, Ukrainians, Finlanders, Bulgarians, Italians, and lived in the working-class communities of northern Ontario.

In those days, coming to Canada was a fairly straightforward process. Canada needed hard workers. It needed workers to do the dirty jobs that sometimes Canadians would not do. Out of that we built our communities and across Canada generations of wonderful youth grew up, were educated and became doctors and leaders in their communities.

I see today in my region of northern Ontario the difficulty that immigrants have coming into Canada, immigrants with the same drive that our parents and grandparents had. They are sometimes faced with very Kafkaesque rules and are not sure if they will fall through the cracks of the bureaucracy. If they fill out the form the wrong way, they worry that they will be deported. That is why they are susceptible to these so-called consultants, because they need help and they put their trust and money with consultants who may not have their best interests at heart.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague a question regarding his experience working with immigrant constituents who come into his office. What does he see as the key elements that are required to assist immigrant families coming to Canada who do not get much help from the federal bureaucracy and have to go to consultants or, if they can, to the office of a member of Parliament?

What are the steps we need to take to weed out the crooks, scam artists and people who are negligent from the ones who know what they are doing and can help immigrant families settle in this country and make a great contribution to Canada?