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

[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.

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

Madam Speaker, I will accept the minister's invitation made at the end of his speech. The members of the Parti Québécois will study this bill carefully. I meant to say Bloc Québécois. I am going to regret that for a long time; I will be reminded of it. I am sorry.

We have reservations and concerns about jurisdictional issues. In that regard, I would like to know if the minister is open to studying this matter and if there are specific provisions allowing Quebec to manage the consultants in its own territory, as was proposed in the report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. I hope that his remark about the Parti Québécois does not indicate that he intends to quit Parliament and be elected to the National Assembly. It would be a great loss for the House of Commons.

I consulted my counterpart in Quebec, the Minister of Immigration and Cultural Communities, about the bill and regulating immigration consultants. The Government of Quebec adopted its own regulations earlier this year. In its legislation, it refers to the governing body appointed by the federal minister. Therefore, Quebec has decided to use the same national body. If the Government of Quebec decides to implement its own system, that is its decision. The framework of the Canada-Quebec immigration accord provides for certain powers of selection.

We will be very flexible in our co-operation with Quebec and we will respect, as we always do, its areas of jurisdiction. At the federal level, I believe it is important to have a common system. These amendments will serve to improve it.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to welcome the minister back to Canada from his foreign travels. As he knows, the New Democratic Party of Canada has been pushing to crack down on unscrupulous consultants. I have two questions for the minister.

It has taken quite a few years to come up with this bill. The immigration committee recommended legislative changes that would establish a body similar to the Canadian Bar Association or any professional body that would have the power to regulate itself and also to enforce the laws. The bill in front of us did not go that route. It went toward having a body that would be appointed by the minister and ultimately the minister would be in charge. CSIS or the RCMP would be in charge of going after the crooked consultants if it was proven they had done something wrong. That is a slightly different approach. Perhaps the minister could explain why he took that approach instead of the approach recommended by the immigration committee.

Also, what kind of resources are being put in place to ensure that the enforcement would be done properly? Even if the bill is worthy of support, if there is no enforcement mechanism, that really would not work. Perhaps the minister could give us some assurance that the buck stops there. How do we know that the law will be enforced?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Trinity—Spadina not only for her question but for her long hard work on this issue. She played a critical role in the recommendations of the standing committee in June 2008 which informed the bill and our approach.

I think their might be a slight misunderstanding because, in point of fact, the structure that we are proposing is a self-governing regulatory body that would be recognized by the government. We would not be creating it by statute which is what the provinces do with their professional bodies, but it would still be much more clearly accountable to the minister as a result of these amendments, to ensure that the organization is operating in a fashion that is accountable to its members in the best interests of its clients and the broader public interest.

Clearly there have been concerns raised about the current regulatory organization, and quite frankly, that is what has prompted these steps.

We think this is the most practical approach. Some had suggested the government should create its own kind of mini-bureaucracy to regulate immigration consultants. We felt that would be hugely expensive and could potentially become a blank cheque that could cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

We think it is the responsibility of the industry to regulate itself and it has an incentive to do so. Let us be clear. While there are crooked consultants and ghost consultants out there, there are many very legitimate practitioners who do their business properly and respect the rules and the best interests of their clients. We think they are the best to typically police the conduct of others.

Having said that, yes, we will rely on the law enforcement agencies, such as the CBSA, to continue enforcing the criminal provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

In respect to the question about resources, first of all I have raised with the president of the CBSA and my colleague the Minister of Public Safety the importance of prosecutions against crooked consultants and I am pleased to note a growing number of successful charges and prosecutions in that area.

I am sure the CBSA has every intention to continue devoting appropriate resources to the protection of the rights of applicants for immigration status. I encourage the member to question the CBSA about its precise allocation of resources when this bill is sent to committee.

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

Madam Speaker, we see that the Liberals are passionate about this debate. First, I would like to assure my colleague that in a sovereign Quebec, I might go to the Parti Québécois, but for now I still have a lot of work to do here.

I would like to come back to the issue of jurisdiction. At first glance, in this legislation the federal government is going further in controlling the profession. I wonder whether the minister realizes that the government is encroaching on an area that is generally recognized as Quebec's jurisdiction.

Since the minister acknowledges that Quebec has implemented its own measures, does he not believe that it would be important to think this through and implement a more efficient system instead of a parallel, redundant system?

Quebec has indeed adopted its own rules. He referred to the federal agency that existed at the time because that is what was in place when this regulation was made. Now that we are faced with a change and new agencies, should we not immediately consider a system that is more respectful of the jurisdictions the Bloc Québécois is here to defend, and a system that is more efficient because it avoids unnecessary redundancy?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I fail to understand the hon. member’s objection because we are respecting Quebec’s jurisdiction. The regulations emphasize that one of the governing bodies is recognized by the minister and the Quebec bar. In addition, we always consult the Government of Quebec on these matters. That is one of our duties under the immigration accord with Quebec. We did so in the current case and in regard to the body that will be recognized by the minister to regulate the industry.

Thus, we are working together with Quebec. The Quebec government and the federal government are working together to prevent the squandering of resources mentioned by the hon. member. We do not want two different bodies on the federal and provincial levels, because that would be wasteful.

[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]

Madam Speaker, first, let me congratulate the hon. member for Papineau on his appointment as the official opposition critic for Citizenship and Immigration. I very much look forward to working with him in this capacity as I did in his prior responsibility for multiculturalism.

I would like to thank the member for supporting this bill because I believe that it is not a partisan bill. This bill came from the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, and I hope that it reflects consensus in the House.

I very simply thank him for his constructive approach and we look forward to getting into the details at committee.

In those many cases he has dealt with in his riding office could he tell us whether he has ever come across constituents who feel they have been scammed, defrauded or given bad advice for which they have paid money? Has he had any personal experience with that in his constituency case files?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for the opportunity to report that all too often, families come to my riding office with stories of promises people made to them, of work they had done, of handing over money and getting no help in return, if they were lucky. If they were unlucky, their applications were turned down because their advisors told them to lie or to hide the truth. In our system, if people make false representations with respect to important facts, we, as a country, have to reject their applications. That happens far too often, and I hope that, in the spirit of cooperation and with a desire to improve the system, we can reduce the number of vulnerable people who are taken advantage of.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating the hon. member on his appointment to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration as the Liberal Party's critic.

In his speech, he quite rightly referred to the first recommendation in the committee's report about ghost consultants. In the report, the committee recommended that immigration consultants working in Quebec should be regulated according to Quebec laws and should not fall under a Canada-wide organization.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Liberal Party for supporting this recommendation in committee.

There is one thing I would like that party's new critic to tell me. Does he agree with his three colleagues who supported this recommendation in committee, or has the Liberal Party changed its position? Does he still believe that consultants working in Quebec should be governed by Quebec laws and recognized by a Quebec organization that falls under Quebec's professional code?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have not yet had the opportunity to attend a committee meeting, but I can say with absolute certainty that the Liberal Party will continue to respect Quebec's jurisdiction over immigration and other matters.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member for Trinity—Spadina for a very quick question because of the statements by members coming up.

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

Do you want to see the clock at 2 o'clock?

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Is there agreement to see the clock at 2 o'clock?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member can ask a question when the debate resumes after question period. The hon. member for Papineau will have five minutes left in questions and comments.

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.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The hon. member for Papineau had the floor before question period. There are five minutes now for questions and comments about his speech.

Therefore, I call for questions and comments. The hon. member for Trinity--Spadina.

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

Mr. Speaker, in 2004 the former Liberal government established a self-regulating body. The body unfortunately did not have the power to regulate any of those consultants. Subsequently we have noticed that little has changed and in fact, some things might have gotten worse and there are more consultants who are unscrupulous and are preying on the most vulnerable.

It led to a series of articles in the Toronto Star called “Newcomers bitten by toothless law”. Because this body had no power, it really did not get the job done.

My question for the hon. member of the Liberal Party is, what was the rationale in 2004 in creating such a body that had no teeth whatsoever to ensure that the most vulnerable immigrants would be protected?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was obviously not in the House in 2004, but I know that for many years, since the 1980s, voters have often told members of the House that they were exploited, mistreated, misled and stripped of their savings by immigration consultants who did not do their job very well.

Obviously, in 2004 there was a desire by the House, by Parliament and by the government at the time to address this issue, which led to the creation of the CSIC. Over the past few years, the CSIC has had some troubles but has improved in its way of dealing with things.

We shall see at the end of the call for bids process this fall whether or not there will be an alternative to CSIC selected or whether a renewed CSIC will continue to regulate immigration consultants in Canada. Until then we will continue to try to make sure that these most vulnerable people are not preyed upon by unscrupulous business people who have no interest in their well-being.

[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.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my hon. colleague from Jeanne-Le Ber on his very clear explanation of the situation and on the work to be done in committee.

I wonder if he can explain why consultants in Canada seem to be incompetent, yet those in Quebec appear quite competent. What do they have in Quebec? Can we do something to help those consultants become competent? Is the member suggesting that the other consultants should be allowed to do their own thing, by province or otherwise? I would like to know what he intends to propose in committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question and I appreciate his interest, especially considering the blatant lack of interest demonstrated by the Liberals in this issue. They have not asked any questions since this debate began.

To answer the question, honestly, I do not think the committee or any other body has ever taken a close look at the degree of competence of consultants based on what province they come from. What we have noted in Quebec, in terms of numbers, is that there are far fewer immigration consultants, at least those who are officially registered with the association. Does that mean the phenomenon is more marginal? We do not know. Does it mean fewer consultants register because they do not identify with the association?

Some members came to see us, saying that they had difficulty taking the tests and communicating in French. One thing may explain the other; it is difficult to say. There is no doubt, however, that Quebec, with its civil code, has a different legal reality than Canada, with its common law. With the Canada-Quebec agreement on immigration, Quebec's immigration framework is quite different, so people need to have training that is specific to Quebec, and not Canada, in order to practice in Quebec.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, particularly in my instance, a lot of immigration work comes through my office in Yellowknife. I have very capable staff there but they are not trained, especially by any organization or agency, to a standard that would perhaps be equitable across the country in how they treat these very sensitive immigration files.

I wonder if my colleague has any comments on how this bill might be interpreted by people who perhaps would not get advice that was perfect from employees of members of Parliament. As we all know, the offices of members of Parliament are often the last refuge of immigration appeal or immigration information. How does this work out there? How do we separate this from the concern that the consulting activities of our own staff are protected under this legislation?

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

Mr. Speaker, that is a very interesting question and all the more appropriate given the lack of questions from the Liberal Party. I get the impression things will go well in committee. There will not be many questions from the Liberal Party because this subject does not seem to interest them since not a single Liberal bothered to stand up. Either that, or my presentation was so clear they did not feel the need to ask any questions.

I want to come back to my NDP colleague's question. Employees in our constituency offices are currently not affected, nor will they be under this bill. We are not paid for our advice, or at least not in my riding. I would hope that my colleague does not send his constituents a bill for his advice. The idea behind regulating those who do give advice is to control those who do so in exchange for payment from their clients.

As far as the advice my colleague gives to his constituents is concerned, I encourage him to tell them that generally speaking, they do not need to pay someone to file an application for immigration. They can apply on their own. If they run into specific legal problems during the process, my colleague should encourage them to talk to a lawyer or a notary who has the necessary training to address legal issues.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the comments of my colleague from the Bloc.

One of the substantial things this bill does is provide for significant investigative measures and outcomes that will enable the regulatory body to pursue crooked consultants.

I point out that the bill authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations providing for the disclosure of information relating to the ethical or professional conduct of a representative. The governing body could then investigate the conduct and, where appropriate, pursue disciplinary action.

The bill also proposes to extend the time of the investigation from about six months to about five years. The bill allows for the pursuit and, in some cases, the conviction of those who have not been acting in accordance with the law.

I would simply ask the member to comment on both of these points. Will his party be supporting these important additional measures?

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

Mr. Speaker, I will try to quickly answer in order to allow a Liberal member to ask a question and take some interest in the matter.

We are concerned about the real ability of the government to intervene and to take coercive action that will make people feel they have some support.

Having said that, the measures outlined by my colleague are all in the Quebec Professional Code, legislation that has been developed over the decades, is very extensive and has a very good framework. They are trying to recreate in Ottawa something that already exists in Quebec, where professional orders already have these abilities and powers, and even more when it comes to investigative powers, disciplinary measures, sanctions and court action, and so on.

In my opinion, it would be more efficient and respectful of Quebec's jurisdictions to allow a Quebec body to regulate consultants working in Quebec while recognizing that the rest of Canada may feel the need to create such a tool for itself. We recognized this in our committee report. It was the intent of recommendation 1. We will be studying this issue.

We said that we would support the bill at second reading. We will study it carefully and wait for everyone's comments before forming a definite opinion about the details of each clause.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, given that there are still no Liberals asking questions, I will ask my colleague a question myself.

I have two points to raise. First, will the committee study the training that consultants receive? Second, will there be resources or methods for monitoring these consultants, not only in Quebec and Canada, but overseas as well?

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right to bring up the lack of Liberal participation in the debate. However, we were treated to some rhetorical gymnastics by the member for Papineau this morning. We thought that he would be quite actively involved in the debate and concerned by the issue, but it seems that he did not have many points to bring to the debate today other than those in his speech.

The issue of overseas consultants is really quite problematic. Quebec has taken a step forward in regulating consultants by asking people to state whether they paid for consultation services overseas. I can assure my colleague that I will raise this point in committee in order to take the issue of overseas consultants as far as possible.

[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.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague the member for Trinity—Spadina for her thoughtful comments, her work on this issue for many years and, particularly, for her leadership in crafting the 2008 standing committee report from which she quoted.

I will respond in particular to some of her suggestions about operational and administrative improvements that would help to reduce the demand or the need essentially many people feel to hire consultants to simplify the very complex process to apply for visas or immigration to Canada. I agree with her that the CIC could do a whole lot more to improve the process to simplify it and make it more transparent.

I readily admit that Citizenship and Immigration Canada has been significantly behind the curve when it comes to harnessing new information technology that would help to simplify the process in the way that the Australians have. She is quite right that they have a system that works easier to attract applications and reduces a lot of administrative burden because people are able to apply online for most of the business lines in its immigration ministry.

I am pleased to report to her and to the House that we have begun the process of finally rolling out the global case management system, which will, in the not too distant future, create a seamless worldwide electronic management of immigration and visa applications. An increasing number of applications will be able to be done directly online.

I can also report that in 2006 there was a simplification of most of the forms and we continue to look for ways that we can simplify those forms. We continue to look at ways that we can improve service and make things simply more user-friendly, and that is really the objective.

I want to thank her for that. Perhaps this is an area the committee could dig into in greater detail. It could look at the Australian and other reference points.

As a ministry, we are finally beginning to enter the 21st century as it were in terms of facilitating easier client service. She is quite right that this will mean less reliance on consultants, both legitimate and crooked.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for taking this step and introducing the bill in front of us. It has been a long time coming.

A user-friendly, seamless service would be tremendously good news for many of the applicants who are struggling with the paperwork. Members of Parliament have spent thousands of hours trying to get status updates for their constituents. Constituency offices in some urban centres would tell us that 80% of their cases are immigration-related and it really should not be that way. It is costing us time and it is costing the visa office time to dig up these cases every time an MPs office calls. This is not helping the immigrants. It is not helping the department. It is not helping the MPs office.

The Auditor General has been telling us to get this done right, to be user-friendly. It would be really good news if we could get out of the paper-driven process. I cannot wait to see that day arrive.

In the meantime, at committee let us look for the most constructive ways to get this bill through and see if there are ways we can even improve it. Let us work together to provide the best services for potential immigrants.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I had asked this question earlier of the Bloc member and I want to clarify some aspects of this vis-à-vis employees of members of Parliament who act so many times on behalf of immigrants across the country. In some cases they may give advice that would determine the course of action immigrants would take on whether they would move for one type of visa or the other. According to this situation, exemptions given would be under agreements or arrangements the government has. Does that suggest there would be some training or some understanding of how to apply this?

Right across the country, as every MP will indicate, we are the front line for the immigration services of Canada. Is that going to change or are we going to find some way that we can interpret this law so our people can rest assured that they, acting on behalf of us, are not going to be in contravention of the law?

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

Mr. Speaker, my reading of this bill is that it is totally legal for any non-profit organization or MP's office to provide as much information or act on behalf of constituents. A lot of immigrant service organizations, non-profit ones, will continue to give that kind of advice as long as a fee is not charged. It is illegal to charge a fee if not licensed. MP's offices will not charge a fee. If no fee is charged, then it is totally legal to provide advice, and that includes relatives, MPs' offices, or any immigrant serving agency. I do not think there is any problem with that at all.

MPs' offices should not be a sub-office of the immigration department. Sometimes we feel like we are one. There is no reason why we should be one. However, until the day when we do not need to get status updates, et cetera, we will continue to provide the service to our constituents. I do not think we need to fear that we will be contravening this law because no MP's office is requesting a fee from constituents, at least I hope not because I believe it is illegal.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Maybe Karygiannis.

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

Some may say that one needs to join a certain party in order to do that. I have actually heard of those kinds of allegations in fact.

Also, I know that CIC does provide training to MPs' offices from time to time so they would be able to give good, sound and wise information to our constituents. I certainly hope that the immigration department will continue to provide this kind of training to all staff of members of Parliament.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, to confirm what the member for Trinity—Spadina said in response to the member's question, those who are affected by the bill and the associated regulations are those who provide advice or representation for consideration, which is defined as compensation. Therefore, MPs and non-profit groups will be very clearly excluded so they can continue to provide that advice.

There is another point I want to add about the service improvements. I should have mentioned that I witnessed on my recent trip to Asia that our immigration managers there have been very effective at improving client service. To give one example, in our Beijing office we are processing 50% more temporary resident visa applications this year than last, but we are typically finalizing those applications the day they are received in our office. Therefore, there is same-day service, which is a huge benefit because it means people do not have to call to find out the status of their application. We are seeing that kind of innovation and efficiency happening throughout the ministry, thanks to the very competent public servants working at Immigration Canada.

[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.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member and congratulate her on her remarks and perceptive questions. I would like to respond to some of them.

The member asked how we can monitor consultants who operate abroad. If a person is representing an applicant for a visa or immigration to Canada anywhere in the world and he or she represents that person to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, it does not matter whether the person is in Canada or India, we will not deal with the person unless he or she is a registered member in good standing of the designated regulatory body.

How do we monitor these consultants? We identify whether they are registered by going to the CSIC website and seeing if they are a member in good standing. What typically happens is that the larger consultancies in Canada, the more legitimate ones, will establish offices in our major immigration source countries and have them register and become members of the regulatory body. The problem is that most of the consulting and representational work done abroad is done by ghost consultants.

The legislative changes here will clarify that acting as a ghost consultant is illegal for Canadian legal purposes. However, the real problem is that most of the really nasty stuff is the production of counterfeit documents and the like where people will never report. They will continue to operate as ghost consultants abroad, which is why we need the co-operation of governments abroad in bringing in legal frameworks and focusing more enforcement resources on this area of exploitation of their own citizens.

The member asked how we will follow up with these countries. There are 180 source countries for immigration to Canada and we cannot realistically expect all of them to have a seamless legal system for the regulation of immigration consultants. I am focusing on, by far, the three largest source countries where we tend to see fairly high levels of fraud, which are China, India and the Philippines.

We had very productive meetings. My officials are now bringing together some of the dossiers on the worst offenders in the industry. For example, we are aware of one guy in India who took at least a quarter of a million dollars from students in one scam alone, producing clearly counterfeit banking documents that he submitted, probably knowing full well that CIC would reject the applications, but he had the cash in hand. We will take that information, put a bow on it, take it to the state police in Punjab and say that we want the guy prosecuted. I got an agreement from the chief minister in Punjab that the police will follow through with enforcement on cases like that. So we are making progress finally.

How do we stop the proliferation of counterfeit documents? It is the same kind of thing. We just need to work with those local governments. I can give the member one case. Our officials In Delhi and in Mumbai brought the local police clear evidence of the counterfeit of Canadian visas that were being sold, if I am not mistaken, for $10,000 a piece. The Indian police arrested the perpetrators and they are now facing criminal charges. Therefore, by proactively co-operating with local police services we can actually deal with the problem.

I have run out of time to address her questions about the designation of the regulatory body but I would be happy to get into that at committee with our colleagues.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. minister. Of course I had other questions to ask. The only thing I would like to add is that I understand that he chose the following three countries: China, India and the Philippines. Those three countries have huge populations and their citizens often live far from government centres and police services.

I think it is an excellent idea. I have some doubts about the effectiveness of this measure, but I understand we must start somewhere, and this is perhaps a good place to start.

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

Mr. Speaker, at the committee we said that the problem with the CSIC was not just a growing pain. Under the former Liberal government, the legislation was set in a way that CSIC has no power to sanction immigration consultants who are not members of the society and it cannot seek judicial enforcement of the disciplinary consequences imposed on those who are members.

Further, because the CSIC's jurisdiction is not governed by statute, there is no possibility for dissatisfied members and others to influence the society's internal functioning through judicial review.

In the view of the committee, these shortcomings should be addressed by new legislation.

Would the member now be satisfied, given our findings at the immigration committee, that because of these shortcomings we need new legislation and that just patching up the old one will not work? That was in the recommendation from the committee which was endorsed by the House of Commons.

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

Mr. Speaker, I understand the words “new legislation” as being interpretable by the new legislation that the government has just put forward with Bill C-93. I welcome the bill because it is an excellent idea but it could very well, as I suggested in my presentation, simply reform the existing body.

I thought I had made it clear in my presentation that I am not in any way saying that the body that did exist and still exists was and is perfect. Far from it. I mentioned many of the weaknesses that it has. I also welcomed the minister's bill.

However, what I queried was the fact that we were going to destroy one institution and the little bit of good that it did as well and replace it by another. My suggestion was that rather than destroy it we should ameliorate what already exists.

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

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that in the original legislation to set up the CSIC, there was an attempt to professionalize the opportunity, similar to law societies and the Ontario Medical Association, to discipline those among the ranks and to have the legislative capability to sanction those who were outside of the authority. However, the legislation did not give the CSIC that kind of power. In fact, I have heard many who in good faith have become members and who have been very critical, as both my colleagues have talked about.

At committee is it not really a matter of legislative action to empower in a professional way the CSIC and to do that quickly. As long as this exists there will be those who are literally outside the law who are exploiting those who are most vulnerable. Is it not possible for the committee to get on with that very quickly and then come back to the House with a legislative remedy?

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

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has put it much better than I could have. Once again, this is entirely compatible with Bill C-93. What we are asking for and certainly what I am asking for is a modification, as we say in French, une amélioration de ce qui existe déjà. This is the legislation that the consultative committee asked for. We have it before us. We have waited a long time. There is a question of time as well.

The longer we wait for a new body to be created and, once it is created, to have new members, all this time is being wasted as people are waiting and some people are being taken advantage of.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Halifax, Product Safety; the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway, Public Safety.

[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.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the member for Burnaby—Douglas for his very constructive remarks and for his intimate awareness of the challenges many of our constituents face in dealing with this industry.

He has raised a number of good points. One I thought I would respond to is his commendable suggestion that accelerating the process for processing applications at CIC would reduce, to some extent, the demand for the services of consultants, both legitimate and unscrupulous.

I agree with him. Our ministry has taken some really significant steps in that direction. To give the member an example, three years ago it was taking five to six years to process applications for the federal skilled worker program, our core economic stream of immigration. Five or six years was completely ridiculous.

As a result of our action plan for faster immigration, over the past two years we have been processing new applications we receive in that program within several months. We have gone from several years to several months. Six to 12 months is the range, but in most missions it is happening in about seven or eight months. That is great news. The credit goes to our officials as well as to the additional resources voted by this Parliament.

Second, the provincial nominee program has grown substantially. He will know that in British Columbia it may have outstripped the federal skilled worker program as a source of permanent-resident economic immigrants. It operates on a priority processing basis. Usually those applications are processed in a matter of a few months.

In most missions, we are keeping on top of priority processing of what we call priority family class. Family class one or spousal sponsorship applications are typically being processed in a matter of about four to five months.

Finally, many of our missions have significantly improved the processing times for temporary resident visas. I can report, based on my recent visit last week to Beijing, that they are processing temporary resident visa applications on the same day they receive them in the mission.

A lot more could be done. There are certain streams that are not moving as quickly, but we are making progress. I just want to point that out.

We always look forward to advice from parliamentarians on how we can make further progress to speed up the process.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for being part of the debate on this legislation. I know that it has been his practice for other legislation he has brought to the House. I appreciate that he uses his time in that way. I think it is a very important contribution he makes to the discussion this afternoon.

While I appreciate that steps have been taken to improve processing in some of the categories he mentioned, he does downplay a little bit the frustrations people have with the delays in family class applications. Certainly for people in my constituency, that is the point where they are most frustrated.

That has been one of the strong points of Canada's immigration system. That is the part of our immigration system that has a built-in settlement program. The family helps people settle into Canada. That is one of the points of our immigration process. We promised people that if they came to Canada, they would be able to bring family members after them. That is one of the places where we are still messing up. People are still very frustrated about the length of time it takes to have a family member join them here in Canada.

There is still work to be done. I am glad that there is progress being made in some of the categories, but if the minister talks to the people who contact my office, they are still waiting. I am sure that the folks who contact the minister's office and his constituency office are still waiting for action in those areas as well.

There is a lot more to be done on this very crucial aspect of Canadian policy when it comes to our immigration program.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like thank the hon. member for his great speech and presentation on this subject.

My riding of Sudbury seems to be the hub for northern Ontario when it comes to immigration cases, and we need to thank the Sudbury Multicultural & Folk Arts Association for the great work they have done for decades and the YMCA for the work being done on this file now.

I have to commend my staff for the number of cases we are dealing with in relation to immigration. I also want to commend the minister and his office, because when we have to make that call, when I have to call the staff there to get some support on a case, they have been nothing but superb.

When we look at cases that come into my office, and I have had people across from me crying because they have spent thousands of dollars on crooked or unscrupulous consultants to get a family member over, we want to do everything in our power to help them. We have been able to do that in Sudbury with some great staff and with support from the ministry. I think we also need to tip our hats to the work that has been done by this committee to try to end this.

There are several recommendations coming from the committee. One of them that I would like to point out today and ask my hon. colleague about is recommendation number seven.

The committee recommends 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 comes back to what I was saying at the start of my statement about the work we are having to do in our offices. Sometimes, as I heard from my hon. colleague from Trinity—Spadina, the constituency office ends up being more of an immigration office.

I would like to ask my hon. friend from across the way what he thinks some of these simplified processes would be.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am a little distant from my own personal experience of looking at immigration applications. I used to do that as a staff person, and now folks do that work for me, and I want to pay tribute, as the member mentioned, to the people who do that work for us in probably all the constituency offices of all members of Parliament.

Certainly in my office, and I suspect in most urban offices, immigration casework is probably the largest piece of work our staff do in terms of helping constituents with specific programs. I know that the circumstances of those cases are often the most difficult cases my staff deal with. I have great staff in terms of caseworkers who work on these issues for me. Ayesha Haider, Caren Yu, and sometimes Jane Ireland do this important work for me. They sit with people who are trying to figure out the immigration process. Often, even with their many collective years of experience, they are baffled by something that has happened in this process.

There is a lot of work that could be done to make the process simpler, to make it clearer to people, and to make it possible for them to understand exactly what the requirements are so that they can meet those requirements themselves, without the assistance of a third party, such as a constituency office or some kind of professional immigration consultant or lawyer or notary or those kinds of people. It would be really nice if our system could function so that people could make those applications directly, using their own skills and abilities. They would only engage those people in situations that were infinitely more complex or particularly special in some way.

Right now, too many people feel the need to seek out assistance, because the system is cumbersome in some way for them. I think we could make significant progress in simplifying both the requirements of the system and the basic forms and other information people are required to fill out and provide.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member will well know that there have been recent developments in terms of calls for open government and proactive disclosure. It would seem to me that it is incumbent upon governments themselves to identify areas in which a public education mandate should, in fact, be incorporated into the work of all the ministries and commissioners who serve us.

I wonder if the member would care to comment on whether the kind of information he has shared today with the House is the kind of information that, in fact, should be on the minister's website.

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

Mr. Speaker, of course this kind of information would be helpful to have on the Citizenship and Immigration website so that we could be doing a better job of providing people with helpful information about the process they are engaging in and what that process requires. I think that we can always do a better job on that front.

[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?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I also want to compliment the member. He always talks about his family when he gives a speech here. It is Stefano's birthday, so happy birthday Stefano.

This is a former minister and the last point that the member raised is extremely important. I want to give him the opportunity to amplify on how this has been not just about immigration matters but generally in terms of an approach to governing. Rather than dealing with the important issues in a substantive way, we continue to have bills which are regurgitated, re-introduced and somehow put through so that we can continue to repeat a message rather than to deliver important legislation.

This is very significant in terms of the characterization of the government. I think the member will have some comments.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Mississauga South. He is one of those members who actually critiqued all of the work that I used to do. I think he has developed an expertise of his own and he does not need anybody else to say that he has done a good job.

I am sure the member felt as least as offended as I did that all of those people I mentioned here on this side of the House who had developed an expertise and who were genuinely trying to make the system function better for the purpose of developing an understanding of what immigration does in the development of this county, in other words how we pick the next people we are going to call Canadians, how we get them here quickly, how we essentially make them work for us, and how we do that in the most responsible and Canadian of ways.

They actually did all of that, and they want to make those representations yet again. The problem is that we are talking about “yet again”. All of those yet again suggestions focused on what we must do, the substantive issue of immigration. What is the vision that we have for this country?

Please do not tell me that in talking about road building we have to use this quality of asphalt and it has to be this many lanes and it has to be such and such. No, do we want to build the road? Do we want immigration here? Do we want consultants, lawyers who are responsible to their clientele? Do we want to be able to say that we have people who can fashion a regulatory body that works for them and works for the clientele that they need to serve?

In order for us to do that, we have to have confidence in our own vision and our own ideas. On this side of the House we have developed those over time and we would still like to be able to present them to the Canadian public. They will agree with us.

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

Mr. Speaker, for 13 years the Liberals have promised to crack down on unscrupulous consultants.

During that time in 2004, the former minister of immigration had a unique opportunity to really set the legislation right, to make sure that there was a legislative body to regulate consultants. They chose not to do so.

Instead, the Liberals set up a body that was bound to fail because CSIC never had the power to sanction immigration consultants who were not members of the society. It cannot seek judicial enforcement of disciplinary consequences it imposes on those who are members. Further, because CSIC's jurisdiction is not governed by statute, there is no possibility for dissatisfied members and others to influence the society's internal functioning through a judicial review.

This is what the immigration committee's report said, that it was not done properly in 2004 and as a result matters got worse. More immigrants got ripped off because they thought there was an organization that could protect them, that if they registered there was some kind of legislation that would govern the consultants. Little did they know that there is really nothing because half of the people do not register and the other half register with a body that has no power.

How can we say that this is not a crisis? It is a crisis. How could the former immigration minister justify that this is not a problem and not a serious situation that we must deal with in the House of Commons?

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

Mr. Speaker, I try to be truthful on all occasions, so I am going to tell the member that she is absolutely wrong in both cases. I have not said that we should not do this. I have asked, what is the crisis? The definition for a crisis for me is something that bubbled up there that was not there before and that we have to deal with right now.

Second, in 2004, I was not the minister and when this was put together it represented all of the issues that everybody wanted.

Third, there are immigration lawyers, some more competent than others, and what is the recourse for satisfaction? That was the question that everyone wanted to have addressed by my predecessors. So many of the consultants at the time were actually lawyers. In fact, the first president of the immigration consulting group was a lawyer. As I said earlier on, the very first thing is caveat emptor. If one is in need and goes to where the price point satisfies, that is the kind of advice one is going to get.

I am not sure that one can make decisions for everybody. As I said, what happened at the time was that my predecessors, in their wisdom, put together an educational system in place for licensing that satisfied what committees in the House were telling them needed to be done and what stakeholders in the community wanted to have done. But I go back to the point that was most important. It was not that the process required the greatest urgency. The process represented what the substance; that is, what immigration was supposed to do for people. Was it going to lead out an opportunity for hope, for improvement for those who would immigrate, and was it going to provide an increased enhancement of a Canadian experience for those of us who were already here?

That is what everyone wanted to discuss. They did not want either the issue of consultants or of lawyers, or of anybody else doing things secretly outside the law or under the table. All of those things take away from that big experience, the experience of holding out hope to new Canadians, or those who would be Canadians, and greater ambition for those who already are through that process.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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, I appreciate the parliamentary secretary's comment, but I am not alone in raising this concern about the difference between a statutory body with a stand-alone piece of legislation and an action by the minister. These are quite separate and I am not alone in raising this concern.

Many stakeholders have raised this concern. In fact, when the House of Commons committee on immigration looked at this issue, it was one of the recommendations: that we actually have an effective body that is established by statute.

There is a difference in reporting to the minister as opposed to reporting to Parliament or to being accountable in that way. Members of the board actually being order in council appointments is quite different from being at the whim of the minister. I am willing to watch this. I want to look at the legislation in depth and hear from witnesses to try to play this out to see what will happen.

I have never heard of anything like this. One does not ask for bids on who is going to be Law Society of Upper Canada. If we are going to regulate the legal profession, say, in a province like Ontario, we do not put out bids for who is going to do that job best, or the College of Physicians and Surgeons, or the College of Teachers, or accountants or any other profession. One does not ask for bids on who is going to regulate them. One actually establishes a board and makes it effective.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in Windsor West there is a significant immigration element and a number of terrible situations have taken place. People have been exploited quite significantly, and what is sad is that sometimes it is the first experience people have getting assistance when they come to Canada. Unfortunately, sometimes they have gone to these consultants or even lawyers who have charged significant fees, and the lawyers and consultants sometimes contact my office to get assistance in doing the work. It is unacceptable.

I would like to know from my colleague, is he looking at this in terms of creating a penalty system? I hope there are going to be some strong incentives to crack down. In fact, in Windsor the consultants have billboards and different types of advertisements around the immigration centres so that people are attracted to them immediately. I am hoping we are going to look at issues such as that in terms of advertising and the ethics surrounding that.

This is an important opportunity to fix it. A lot of women and children get taken advantage of in the system, as well as men. With English as a second language, people sometimes do not know all the ins and outs of it or about the services they can get from constituency offices. I am lucky to have Karen Boyce, who works pretty well full time for me on immigration matters and can solve some of the problems that some of these consultants are getting away with charging hundreds of dollars for, which unnecessarily sets immigrants back when they first come to Canada, especially when their incomes are very modest, to say the least.

I would like to ask my friend what he would like to do with regard to penalties or having some enforcement mechanism. It needs to be sent as a message to some of the worst of the offenders.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Windsor West for those comments. I think we probably have similar experiences in our constituency office.

Since he thanked his staff, I would like to thank Mazhar Shafiq, Angela Bonfanti and Steven Serajeddini, who spend much time in my office responding to those concerns, often doing hours and hours of work sometimes fixing problems created by lawyers and by immigration consultants, which is a concern to me.

I think the member is absolutely correct that this is an issue. There is a problem here because the board, or the society, or the agency is going to have to have teeth to take on people who are not members of the association. This is a critical concern. We are going to have to find a way to make sure that there are sanctions for people operating outside the law, that there are penalties that are strong and will act as a deterrent, and that we will safeguard the public interest. These are all things that we will be watching for at committee in trying to ensure that this is an effective piece of consumer protection legislation as well as bringing honour to the way Canadians become citizens and enjoy their citizenship.

[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.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Before we go on to questions and comments, it is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, Arts and Culture; the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan, Aboriginal Affairs; the hon. member for Etobicoke North, Health.

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Scarborough Centre.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the member for Winnipeg Centre.

Before I ask him a question, I just want to make a comment. He said that when the Liberals took office in 1993, we slashed and cut, and so on. I am not going to deny that we fined-tuned the system. However, compared to now, it took less time to process those immigration applications. He was not a member at that time. I was a member. I was elected in 1993. Processing an application was much faster at that time than it is today.

We did reduce staff. We did fine-tune. Nobody denies that. The country was almost unofficially bankrupt.

The member talked about immigrants coming in and about part-time workers. He talked about money going out. He talked about refugees. He talked about competing for immigrants. I was a little bit confused. I know that we need to fix the immigration consultant process, but can he clarify for me whether he is for the one per cent of our population immigration policy for bringing immigrants to Canada, or is he against it? I was just not clear on that.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, let me be perfectly clear. I am very much in favour of the 1% per year target. I believe that we need to strive for more immigration, and we need to compete internationally so that more people choose Canada as their destination.

One per cent of our population per year would be about 330,000 per year. We have come nowhere near that. My first choice would be that we do.

I will comment briefly on my colleague's opening remarks. In 1993, when the Liberals took over, maybe it was faster to process an immigration file, but by the time they had finished gutting the immigration system and had laid off one-third of the civil service, trying to process anything became a nightmare. That is when the burden fell to MPs' offices to become de facto immigration offices.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened with a great deal of interest to the member's comments. He is always very good at keeping my attention, presenting an interesting dialogue, and offering up some good points for debate.

The member did not speak as much as I would have hoped about the purpose and intent of the bill and the fact that his party has indicated that it is in fact going to be supporting this bill to get it through second reading and to committee.

I want to comment on a couple of things and ask for clarification. He alluded to the temporary foreign worker program as somehow being a problem with respect to this piece of legislation. I am not sure how. I have been across this country, from province to province to province. There are large companies, but mostly small businesses. In fact, he need not to look further than two seats behind him, to the member for Welland, whose riding encompasses a great deal of agriculture. These small companies need to have temporary workers to assist them to actually stay in business.

The member needs to understand how these companies work. I do not know whether the member has misunderstood or is unaware of how the temporary foreign worker program assists Canadian after Canadian company to stay in business and provide goods for this country.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to clarify my remarks. Maybe I was not clear in the connection I was making between the unscrupulous immigration consultants and the temporary foreign worker program.

We know of and hear of examples of these immigration consultants advertising overseas, and in some cases in Mexico, on this continent, that for a fee they can get people into Canada as temporary foreign workers. These people pay quite a large fee up front to the labour broker, but then they are disappointed when they arrive and find that either no such jobs exists or that the terms and conditions are far less than promised. That is the problem I was trying to illustrate.

In that context, I raised another issue, which is that these labour brokers in the construction industry—not at Tim Hortons but in the construction industry—are undermining and debasing the industry. They are bringing teams of these temporary foreign workers, who are being paid peanuts, and are displacing crews of Canadian construction workers.

The charge-out rate for these guys is about $25 an hour total, all included. The charge-out rate for a unionized tradesperson can be as high as $40 to $45 per hour. So there is a 25% or 50% advantage for using temporary foreign workers instead of legitimate Canadian tradespeople on these jobs.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Winnipeg Centre for raising some important issues on the problems there have been with immigration consultants. I want to come back to the issue of temporary foreign workers, live-in caregivers, and farm workers.

What we know is that either immigration consultants or labour brokers often misrepresent what is going to happen to these workers when they come to Canada. Then we find out that when these people actually get to Canada, after this misrepresentation, the labour laws of this country are not upheld. I know that in my own riding, we have had farm workers who, when they complained, were immediately given a plane ticket back home. Not only do we have this issue of the problems with these labour brokers and these immigration consultants who are, quite frankly, ripping off people who are least able to afford to be ripped off, but then when they come here, they are not protected.

I wonder if the member could comment on the fact that not only do we have to clean up the issue of the immigration consultants and the labour brokers, but we also have to look at how these workers are protected by the labour laws in this country once they come into Canada.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan for those legitimate points.

It is true that temporary foreign workers find themselves in a grey area when it comes to their rights, and they are extremely vulnerable to the whims of the employers. If they complain that they are sleeping 12 to a hotel room, as we have heard, if they complain that they are being paid $10 an hour cash instead of the $25 an hour they were promised as tradespeople, they are simply sent home.

Again, there are unemployed Canadians standing at the gate wishing that they had their old jobs back. I am talking about big projects. I am talking about high-rises. I am talking about schools. I am talking about airports. It used to be skilled, qualified Canadians with journeyman carpenters tickets in their pockets building those projects. Now a team of Mexicans, who were brought up here under false pretenses and are treated like galley slaves, are building Canada. To whose benefit is that? Why are we letting in 200,000 people a year, 50,000 for the construction industry alone? Tim Hortons gobbles up a lot of temporary foreign workers.

There are an awful lot of unemployed construction workers in western Canada who have been put out of work because of this government's propensity to allow temporary foreign workers, willy-nilly, anytime anybody asks for them. The room for abuse at both ends of this process is enormous. The Mexican worker is being sold a bill of goods that says that there is a job in Canada that pays $25 Canadian an hour with a good place to live while they are working. They arrive here, and they get $10 or $15 an hour and sleep 10 to a hotel room, and they are taking jobs away from us. If this bill will stop that from happening, it has my vote.

[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.

[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?

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member for Timmins—James Bay is quite correct when he says that the system has become Kafkaesque.

What is required, and, hopefully, one of the changes that will take place in committee on this particular issue with these charlatans who abuse potentially new Canadians, is that a statutory body be created. Self-regulation is perhaps a good idea in the case of professional engineers and lawyers, but in this case we are dealing with people who are not Canadians, who do not know Canadian laws, who do not know where to turn and, unfortunately, do not know what rights they have to deal with those who have abused their desperation. That is in terms of this specific law.

However, we need a little bit of common sense when we revamp the whole act. I have stood watching a line of potential new immigrants outside one of our embassies. In that lineup there were young fathers. Their clothes and the size of their hands showed that these were young fathers who had worked with their hands and who had this incredible drive to build a better life for their families. The country that happened to be in is a country in terrible economic turmoil and in transition.

It was sad to watch because I knew those individuals would not get into our country. Under our current point system, it was guaranteed that the barrier would prevent them from landing in Canada and yet they had exactly what we wanted: the will to work, to work hard and to succeed.

On the other hand, in that same lineup I saw a couple of men dressed in flashy Armani suits and dripping in gold. I knew that with an investment of a few hundred thousand dollars, and we know how they arrived with that money in that particular country, they were guaranteed to land in Canada expeditiously.

The system must be revamped. We must apply some common sense and we need to look at the past to see why we succeeded in the past and why we are failing today.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member gave an impassioned speech about the importance of immigration to our country and the importance of this bill which, I am sure, will pass.

I had an opportunity this morning to read the minister's speech. Interestingly enough, one of the earliest statements that he made was that people do not have to go to consultants. I know that one of the reasons he was thinking of but did not mention was the fact that members of Parliament become one of the most significant players in applications, whether it be for sponsor information or for visas, et cetera.

What the minister did not address was the resources that are made available to make the system work well and to incorporate the responsibilities of members of Parliament in this process. The irony here is that new members of Parliament do not even get any orientation on how to advise people with regard to immigration. This is an oversight. We do not have the resources and we do not have the training when staff turns over. This is a real travesty. I think the government has let it go.

Maybe the member will want to comment on this.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I remember with fondness, as a small child in Toronto's Queen-Bathurst neighbourhood, where my grandparents, as new immigrants, set up their first business, a bakery. The member's mother was one of the customers who would come in to buy hot bread. What a wonderful reflection of what immigrants contribute to our country.

The member is quite correct in pointing out the hypocrisy of what the minister said, which is that potential new Canadians do not have to go to consultants. My goodness, where do they turn to when the system, as has been referenced, has become Kafkaesque? Some of them turn to the minister.

I mentioned Iryna Ivanie who has four Canadian children and has been separated from her husband for over five years. She wrote a letter to the minister because she had nowhere else to turn. I also wrote to the minister at the start of this year. What was the response? The response was, no. That is not good enough individually and in terms of the whole system.

I certainly hope that Bill C-35 does not become window dressing that hides the reality of what is going on behind that wall, a system that has become dysfunctional. The minister has been on this file for a number of years and knows it well. He must get the job done.

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

Madam Speaker, the Canadian Society for Immigration Consultants was established by the Liberals a number of years ago. It was a genuine attempt to create an oversight body that would be effective and that would separate and address the kind of issues that have been raised. Obviously the hearings have indicated that it is not working effectively.

Could the member suggest ways in which that body could quickly be turned around and made an effective oversight body similar to the Law Society and similar to other oversight bodies, and not risk going back many months and not get something to address the kind of concerns that he has raised?

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, yes, in 2003, CSIC was established by the Liberal government because it identified that these parasites were preying on the confusion of new Canadians. However, it has also been shown that in the past seven years that it is not good enough. What we need to have is a statutory federal body that oversees. We need a professional association but we also need federal government oversight.

I want to further illustrate what has happened over the last couple of years. I have mentioned that of the skilled workers coming from Kiev, 80% of the cases are finalized today in six years and eleven months, 83 months. Horrific, seven years. In 2004, under a Liberal government, it was 34 months. That was still not good enough. It was just under three years.

However, today, under the Conservatives watch, it is now six years and eleven months. That is unacceptable.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-35. I listened yesterday to some very good speeches regarding the bill and some very good ideas. I might say at the outset that this bill is long overdue. I hope this Parliament lasts long enough for us to get the bill to committee and see that it does find its way through the system and into law.

As the last speaker indicated, this is not an issue that just came up in the last seven years. It might have taken the Liberals up until the last seven years to recognize this as a problem, but I can tell members that this was a rampant problem back in the 1980s.

When I was elected provincially in Manitoba in 1986, one of the concerns we had at that time as a provincial government was how to regulate the immigration consultants. In order for us to come to grips with that issue and deal with it, we had to find out just how big the problem was because immigration consultants were everywhere.They were not just lawyers doing it. In fact, lawyers were probably in the minority in terms of participants. We had many travel agents doing immigration consulting on the side. We had all sorts of people from all walks of life involved in one way or another in the immigration consulting business and charging big fees. As a matter of fact, some of these people were so well connected that they knew people on the Immigration Board who, in those days, were political appointees and oftentimes local, well connected people. Of course the immigration consultants would develop a rapport with them and try to get special considerations. I realize that the government has gone beyond that stage and tried to take steps to make that process a little better than it was.

I see this as a work in progress. I do not feel that proceeding with the bill and passing the bill will solve the problem because whenever in society there are large monetary rewards available for people to access, they will find a way to do it. Therefore, no matter what rules we set here in Parliament, there will be unscrupulous people who will find a way around whatever rules we set.

However, while it is late in the game, it is good that we are coming to grips with it. I am very happy that we are concentrating on the problem, and whether this solves the problem or even part of the problem will be something we should applaud. We certainly need tough rules against people who take advantage of vulnerable people. We not only need tough rules but we also need tough enforcement.

For the last several hundred years we have had immigrants coming to our shores for a whole number of reasons. If we look back in history we find the early explorers, starting with Leif Eriksson, I believe, but certainly Christopher Columbus and other explorers who were out to find new resources and new lands for their kings. It became a policy of kings to expand their empires by looking for more resources, whether it was new trade routes, new products, furs or gold. There have been various stages of immigration over the years.

We know, for example, in parts of Australia, where I was a number of years ago, many of the original immigrants to the Tasmanian area were from penal colonies. People were taken from prisons in Europe and sent to those colonies.

We had stages in our history when people were involved in the gold rush. Just south of Manitoba is the Black Hills area. The gold rush in that area brought thousands of immigrants to our country. There was the California gold rush and the Yukon gold rush.

The member for Timmins—James Bay talked about how people came here for jobs and for a better life.

Many people came here because of religious persecution in their home countries. They came here during certain periods when their governments back home were treating them badly, and that was their way to escape. People came here because of political problems in their home countries. There are numerous reasons why people have come to our country over the years.

Many people from China came to Canada to help build the railway. Perhaps John A. Macdonald would never have been able to get the railway built had it not been for Chinese immigrants coming in by the thousands to do what was essentially a very dangerous job. Many of them died during the process.

People have observed that there were fewer rules for immigration in those days. Several hundred years ago, people could simply come to our country and essentially get in, but today we are dealing with many more rules that have been brought in by different governments.

The Liberals, by virtue of the fact that they have been the government for most of the last century, have, in fact, been making the rules. To their credit, they have certainly encouraged immigration over the years. People with another view have said that they created the problems with the present immigration system that we are now trying to solve.

Several members have indicated that MPs' offices are deluged with immigration questions and immigration problems. Generally speaking, if that is a problem, that is an indication of a systemic problem within the government. I can think of other problems, on a provincial basis, for example, that people in large numbers have complained about to their elected officials, and finally, the political system wised up to the fact that something needed to be done about the problem to move it away from elected officials, because it is not really our job as elected officials to be running government programs.

One of the things I was surprised about as a new MP was that many MPs' offices are spending inordinate amounts of time and effort on immigration problems. Immigrants will oftentimes tell me that when they had a problem, it was their MP who solved it. When we are using up so much of our time on one particular problem, we have to deal with the problem through new laws and new enforcement and major changes.

This is not a problem that has developed in the last half dozen years, or even in the last 10 years. This problem was very much alive 25 years ago, and probably long before that. Why all governments have taken so much time to come up with a solution is really a big question.

The member for Winnipeg Centre made a fabulous speech yesterday on this subject, and he dealt with a number of areas. His riding is in the core area of Winnipeg, and he sees a huge number of immigrants who come to Manitoba.

The Manitoba government had enough foresight about 10 years ago to come up with a provincial nominee program, which, by the way, has attracted about 15,000 immigrants in the last year or so. The program has been a winner since the NDP government of Manitoba actually set it up. As a matter of fact, it was so successful that the government of Nova Scotia looked at it, studied it, and I believe adopted, or copied, the program.

The same thing happens all over the country. When there is a good program in a province, in Quebec, for example, other provinces will take a look at it. This program developed in Manitoba got such immediate, positive results that the Nova Scotia premier at the time, John Hamm, a Conservative, took a special interest in this area and came to study the program.

The member for Winnipeg Centre points out that when many immigrants first come into the province, initially they settle in his riding, so he has had a first-hand view of the immigration problems. He also sees the consultants at work. He indicated that he uncovered a situation, and I am sure that there are many such examples, where consultants were telling people that for $3,000 they would get them a letter from the person's member of Parliament, as if that was going to be their ticket through the process. That was one of the examples he discovered. The question is how many more examples of people paying these huge fees for something that, in fact, would have been free have gone undiscovered.

Before the member for Winnipeg Centre was the terrific member that he is for that constituency, that seat, for a very brief period, was held by the Liberals under Mr. David Walker. I know that he too had a lot of time to spend on immigration problems. As a matter of fact, my wife tells me very often the story of when she was trying to get her father in from Peru. They went to Mr. Walker's office, and he did a terrific job of getting them through the paperwork and the problems they had getting her father into Canada.

The question is whether MPs' offices have now become the official funnel through which all immigration issues and problems have to pass. Perhaps it is better that they come to the MPs' offices than to the immigration consultants.

The fact of the matter is that the immigration consultants catch them at an earlier stage. The immigration consultants are sitting in positions as travel agents. They are the ones selling the tickets.

The previous member who spoke before me made some good points. Yesterday the member for Winnipeg Centre talked about issues with the temporary worker program and how that program is being abused and profited from by some consultants. CBC did a big exposé about 20 years ago about immigration consultants in Manitoba who were involved in the immigrant investor program. The members will know all about that program and how it works. It basically attracts richer immigrants to the country.

These immigration consultants were not just operating here in Canada; they were operating outside Canada. They were travelling over to, in this case, I believe, the Philippines and were operating out of there. They were running ads in the paper in the Philippines with pictures of the immigration consultant shaking hands with or standing by the mayor of Winnipeg at the time.

I guess, as a politician, you have to be careful who you get your picture taken with, because you never know how, when, or where it is going to be used. The mayor of Winnipeg at the time was a wonderful gentleman, and he was very surprised to find out that his picture was being used in another country by an immigration consultant who was attracting people by showing that he had credibility with the mayor. If the immigrant wanted easy access into Winnipeg, this was the consultant to deal with, because here he was in a picture with the mayor of Winnipeg.

He took a lot of people for a lot of money. They employed him to fast-track them into the country, but in addition to that, this guy was also a real estate guy. He was selling them businesses that they had not seen other than through pictures. In one case, he sold a bakery in a rundown building in a rundown part of town for probably double or triple its value. When the immigrant investor ended up in Canada, they found themselves in a very difficult situation, because not only had they paid this guy consulting fees, they had also overpaid for the bakery they were buying. This is just one example. There were other examples.

The member from the Conservatives who was just commenting now knows of what I speak, because he was around in those days. He knows that this immigration consultant had connections and friends in his own provincial party. They were working together as a group. There was a group of them. These people were not people that any political party would want to be involved with. However, you cannot stop people from joining your party, and in some cases, you do not know why they are joining your party. These guys were smart enough to know that if they could connect with local politicians, mayors, and provincial and federal politicians, it was good for their business. It was a good business practice.

Of course, CBC did its job in exposing this person, but by then the damage had already been done, and these investors had lost most of their money.

This is the kind of activity that gives the country a bad name, because these people have friends back home, and they will certainly relate their experiences of coming to the country. When we are trying to attract immigrants, this is not a selling point if you run the risk of dealing with these types of fraudsters.

The member for Winnipeg Centre pointed out yesterday that the goal was to have a certain percentage of immigrants come to Canada on an annual basis. In actual fact, I think in only a very few years have we actually met the target. I do not think we have ever met the target. We have come close to the target in only several years.

The fact is that the government is on the right track with this particular bill. I am not one to not give the government its due when I think it is on the right track. In this case, it is on the right track. I just hope that it stays around long enough to get this bill through the process and does not prorogue Parliament again or call a quick election because it sees some short-term, quick opportunity on the gun registry or any other idea that kind of hits the government's fancy as the days progress. I hope that we apply ourselves.

We saw what happened under Lester Pearson. For six years of minority government, a lot of things were accomplished. The Conservative government has been around for five years and what does it have to show?

I would suggest—

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Questions and comments, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

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

Madam Speaker, we went from the explorations of the explorers back in the 1700s to whether the government would stick around long enough to get this bill through. I find it quite fascinating that the member would like to use history as a guiding lesson.

In the close to five years that the government has been here, just with respect to this ministry, much has been accomplished.

If he is worried about what may or may not happen in the future, it certainly will not be because of this party. For the next two, three or four years, we will do whatever it takes to get out of the economic difficulties that the world now faces. Our country is sitting on the leading edge and there is no need for elections to move those things forward. If the opposition wants to talk about elections, that is fine. On this side of the House, we are focused on governing and moving forward.

With respect to the bill, it is very clear. I think I heard at the very end of the member's statement that he does support this bill and will vote to move it forward to committee. I appreciate the fact that there is some constructive nature to his discussions. I heard from the member for Etobicoke Centre, too.

When it comes to citizenship and immigration, there is no need to take a view that will not be positive, that will not see the bill move to committee, then back here for third reading and then implemented.

I have several quotes from the industry, and I would like to get the member's comments on what the industry has said what the bill will do for those who suffer under crooked consultants.

The first quote is from Peter Bernier, national president of Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants, who said, “It is the dawn of a new era for Immigration Consultants as announced yesterday by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney”.

Phil Mooney, past president of Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants, said:

We're delighted [about Bill C-35] because proper immigration consultants are victims of the crooked ones too. They steal our clients with lies and false promises and they give the whole industry a bad name... We've been very unhappy with the way we've been regulated. Our members complain bitterly...

The industry likes what we are doing. The industry knows it will be a good bill. I want to hear the member say that he will support the bill.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I remind all members that they cannot use the name of a sitting member of Parliament even when quoting an article.

The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I do not know why the member is getting so riled up. The fact is we have said we support getting the bill to committee.

The member should learn from the hon. minister who showed a lot of class in the House by attending the debate on his bill. He not only listened to each of the speakers, but asked the first question. In fact, he was the only Conservative minister to do that in the spring.

We recognized at that time that this was the proper approach. That is what is done in other legislatures and should be done here, too. What the government typically does is the minister shows up, makes a speech and then is not heard from again. Ministers are not even here.

His minister showed a lot of class with the previous legislation. Not only that, he was successful in getting support from our party, the Bloc and the Liberals. That is the way we should operate in the House. That is way Lester Pearson did it in the six years he was prime minister in the 1960s. He unified the armed forces and he brought in the Canadian flag and medicare. He did a lot of things in six years.

What do you have to show for your five years?

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I am sure the hon. member was not asking me what I had done for five years.

The hon. member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, there are still concerns that the changes regarding this new regulatory body will be made through regulation. This is somewhat of a concern because it will not have the power to sanction immigration consultants who are not members, nor have appropriate enforcement powers regarding membership or the dedicated resources to enable it to do the job properly.

Also, the bill and the dialogue at this point still has not incorporated any mention of the role that members of Parliament and their constituency staff play in terms of immigration and citizenship matters without any orientation, training or resources for that purpose.

The member may want to comment on that.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, as usual the member offers excellent insight into the problem, and he is absolutely right. When we leave most of the implementation procedures to the regulations, the devil will be in the details. This is why we have always argued that we should have as much of the details in the bill so we know what we are dealing with.

The government would like to strip the bill down as much as it can and leave as much as it can to the regulations so it can essentially run things on a day-to-day basis the way the minister sees fit. As opposition parties, we do not like that approach. I am sure when we get to committee, the member will be there, he will argue his point and we will get some of these issues clarified at committee.

We are certainly in favour of getting it to committee. I am happy with the initiative that the government has shown in this area.

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

Madam Speaker, I am glad the member addressed in his speech things we could do to improve the system and ensure that people would get the assistance they need and were not necessarily driven to use an immigration consultant.

He mentioned that a lot of people come to MPs' offices now for those services. It is not the ideal situation that MPs should be immigration service centres, even though we are willing to offer that service.

One other idea, and something I put forward, is that we look at the office of the worker advocate in Ontario, which deals with problems surrounding worker compensation problems, and establish something similar federally, an arm's-length government funded office of the immigration advocate to do that kind of work for people to ensure the government takes responsibility to ensure people get that kind of assistance.

Does the member think this is another reasonable idea toward solving the problem that people have with the complications and the problems that arise as they engage our immigration application system?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his idea. In actual fact he is probably right. I had indicated that I really did not think that one bill would necessarily solve all of the problems. I only applaud the fact that it is actually being addressed, and it is long overdue. It is probably something that should have been done by the Mulroney government 20 years ago. We were certainly aware of the problem in the Manitoba in the eighties and it was probably around a lot longer than that.

The member's idea is a very good one and he should take it up at the committee process and with the minister and the parliamentary secretary to see whether it could be put into force.

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

Madam Speaker, in the report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration regarding immigration consultations, the first recommendation was that consultants who work in Quebec be subject to Quebec laws. At the time, this recommendation was supported by the NDP.

I would like to know whether the New Democrats still agree with this proposal and whether they are prepared to study and support amendments to ensure that consultants in Quebec are regulated by Quebec laws.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member is certainly very active in all areas of the immigration field. On behalf of our party, we have an open mind to those different options and certainly would be happy to look at every one of them when it comes to committee.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to discuss the bill. We are dealing with a very important problem and really we need to discuss so we can fix the problem as opposed to tinkering around the edges.

We understand the need to regulate and ensure that immigrants to our country do not have to deal with unscrupulous people. That is why the government put forward CSIC in 2003. It was meant to be reviewed, as it is now, to see whether it would work or not.

It turned out that there were some flaws in that process, and we know what those flaws are. First, while the group had the ability to prosecute, it did not have the ability to audit or subpoena and it did not have any legislative and legal abilities to do a whole lot of things. Second, it did not have enough resources to get the job done.

It is good that the government has recognized there needs to be something done and I think this is a first step. However, it does not address some of the problems. As we know, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration looked at this problem and it came up with some recommendations.

What the bill does not do is address the most fundamental problem identified by the committee and the recommendations made by it. It does not significantly fix the governance issues and problems that the committee identified, and we need to do that. Putting this within IRPA and tinkering with it around the edges does not really solve the problem. We need to look at a regulatory body that is arm's-length and has statutory powers.

If we look at it, this suggestion is not without precedent. In the provinces many professional bodies, for instance, under a separate legislation, were given the autonomous ability as statutory bodies, such as the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the College of Nurses, the engineering professional group. They would then look at people who would undertake that professional work, in this case immigration consultants, who would therefore be screened to be properly trained, to have the right credentials, first and foremost, and be able to assess whether those credentials were valid or not.

What we see in the provincial legislation for professional bodies, which is a provincial jurisdiction, is that it was able to give them the powers to audit, to examine files and practices, to subpoena and to have the ability to punish and remove people directly from that profession if it was felt they were not working under the ethical guidelines, processes and procedures that the profession was set up to do.

There is a precedent for this and this is what the government should be thinking of looking at doing at a federal level, and that is devising a statutory regulatory body that would have the same autonomous ability. I am not faulting the government for deciding something has to be done, but the problem with what it is doing is that it does not give the body teeth. There needs to be teeth to punish and find out what is going on.

If provinces could do this with professional regulatory bodies, the federal government could do it with immigration consultants. There should be clear standards, ethical guidelines and ways in which they can decide whether the consultants actually have the credentials they need. It is pretty clear the precedent exists with the provinces.

One could argue that the professional regulatory bodies the provinces set up are there to ensure that Canadians are safe and protected, that they are not ripped off, harmed or hurt by professionals who do not have credentials and are not practising under guidelines. At the same time, I do not think we could ask immigrants to accept less than we expect Canadians to have. When immigrants want to come to our country to build a new life, we need to ensure they have the benefit of the law.

It is a complex issue, coming to a new country. Immigrants do not understand the culture. They do not understand the laws of the country. They are coming in blind. They come in and someone tells them that they can help, that they can walk them through it and get rid of the red tape. I know because we deal with a lot of immigration issues in my constituency office. There are people who have little money when they come here. Many of them are coming to make a better life for themselves. They spend thousands of dollars, and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, getting bad advice, being sent down the wrong channels. These people are frustrated. They are upset. They are lost. They are confused. This is their introduction to Canada.

That cannot be the introduction to Canada for new immigrants. They have to be able to expect better of this country. They have to be able to expect that the rule of law prevails. They have to be able to expect that there are certain ethical practices and guidelines that are going to protect them, not only when they are striving to come here, but also when they are here.

It is very important that we look at this bill. One of the things about this that I think is important for us to look at is the committee report. There are some clear recommendations in the report.

Consider recommendation two: “The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada introduce stand-alone legislation to re-establish the Canadian Society of Immigrant Consultants as a non-share capital corporation”.

Organizations can now bid to take this over with no set statutory powers at all. We are allowing the same group that had been doing the work before to continue to do it. I do not want to blame them; they had not been given the appropriate powers or resources to do their job properly. But everybody can now go ahead and put their tender forward for this job.

So nothing is going to change. All we are doing is changing the manager. We are not changing the process. We are not ensuring that the process is rigorous and clear enough for everyone to understand.

This is a key thing that I wanted to suggest. Why reinvent the wheel? I do not understand this. Why is the government reinventing the wheel when we had a committee that studied the issue, that listened to a lot of witnesses. It heard what the witnesses said. In the second recommendation, the committee spoke to the issue of governance, the issue of powers, the issue of a need for a statutory body.

The third recommendation is: “The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada assist in re-establishing the new regulator and remain involved in its affairs until it is fully functioning”.

So the government is not walking away and allowing a body to have regulatory powers without due diligence. The government is going to be asked to ensure that this is happening, that all the bells and whistles are in place, that the structures are there, and that there is due diligence. Once it sees that this party is able to function on its own, then the government can say, “Fine, you go ahead and do it”, in the same way that we see provinces have done with their regulatory bodies.

We have all seen the problems people have had in coming to this country, but I want to say that there are many immigrant consultants who do excellent work, who are well qualified, and who have done a great deal to help new immigrants. However, the problem with having a few bad apples is that they spoil the whole bunch.

I know many immigrant consultants who are doing good work, who have all their licensing, who are following the rules, who have ethical guidelines and practise due diligence, and who yet feel that people do not trust them. For the sake of Canadians and newcomers alike, it is important for the government to ensure that the system it puts in place is one that everyone can believe in and can trust. Trust is important. If we do not trust the people who are there to help, if we do not trust their work because they have all been tarred with one broad brush, then we harm the whole process. It is important for the government to have a process in place that people can trust and that the government itself can trust, so that it knows that immigrants are led in the right direction and that the greed of some bad apples does not leave them floundering.

In one instance, I had a couple who were coming to Canada and had spent $20,000, which is a lot of money, and they were led in all different directions. Finally, they came to my office in tears. They had been turned away at every angle, at every door they opened.

The immigration department was not buying what they were saying, mainly because the consultant had not given them the right advice and had asked them to apply for immigrant status under the wrong criteria. They had spent all that time.

Then, once they had done it, and this is the real problem, they had now set this process in motion. The immigration bureaucrats all have this storyline that they were told they should bring forward. To walk away from that makes them sound like liars.

When they are given bad advice, the poor immigrants sound as if they are lying. They go to a puppet consultant who tells them that they have been doing it wrong, or they come to our office and we tell them they have been doing the wrong things. They now have to go back and change all the things that they were asked to do and all the information that they gave, and after that they are already suspect.

At the end of the day, it harms their ability to come in as immigrants, when they are regarded as dishonest because they were led down the wrong track.

If we are changing the way immigration works, we all agree that the system of immigration and the refugee system need to be fine-tuned, need to be fast-forwarded, so that people do not have to wait so long. We need to be clear on what we are doing.

I think the government has decided that it wants to go there. If the government is going to make the step to go there, it should do it properly. It should take that bold leap and make sure that once and for all we have changed the system so that it is one that people can trust, one that does not frustrate the immigrants or the families in Canada who are sponsoring people to come over.

That is really important, because we are going to be looking at immigrants in a different way now. We have been looking at immigrants according to different criteria that are not working anymore.

We do not need only highly educated immigrants with Ph.Ds and the expanded language requirements we require. We are looking for tool and die makers, electricians, and people who practice the kinds of trades that we do not have anymore. All of these things we have to think about.

Immigration is the key to how this country was built. People who come here bring skills, knowledge, and all sorts of things that help this country to grow.

I do not think there is anyone, except the aboriginal people in this country, who did not come as immigrants at some time, whether it was eight or ten generations ago or just yesterday. All have contributed to building this country through hard work, knowledge, and skills.

As a small country with only 32 million people, we are facing a huge crunch. We are going to have to be competitive in a global economy. We have to do so with only 32 million people. We are not going to have massive numbers of people like China and India. We are going to have to make sure that we are depending on the best, the brightest, and the most skilled people in this country. We need to look at immigration as a key means of achieving this goal.

The statistics coming out of Statistics Canada and the immigration department tell us that by 2011 we are going to be dependent on immigration for 100% of our net labour force. We need those skills. Take my own profession, physician. We have three million Canadians who do not have a family physician. Yet we have many people here who are trained physicians and who have been, in keeping with the old story, driving a cab and have not been working at their job for 10 years.

They need to be able to work and to help us to develop the kind of nurses, doctors, engineers, technicians, and technologists we require in this country. We need the construction workers, the electricians, the master craftsmen. We need more than just one group of people.

When people go to our missions abroad and apply to come here as immigrants, sometimes they are given information that they find not to be true. Sometimes they come here, believing that they had come to a country where they would be able to live, work, bring their families, and build a nation, just as all of us in the past have done, only to find that they were given false information.

An important part of the shift that the government is planning must be to ensure that foreign missions are given the same clear message. There is probably a list of licensed and properly trained consultants that they can be given so that people can know that that they are getting a list of bona fide people. This should be done in different languages, not merely in English and French. Many people who are coming to Canada speak other languages.

We have the ability to translate into every language in the world. We should use this ability when we are talking to people in their own country and giving them the advice that they need.

These are important issues for us to take care of. It is not a simple, one-shot deal. I think the bill falls far short. I would like to see the bill amended, strengthened. We have heard everyone say that. I want to congratulate the government for taking this first step, but it is not a good enough step. Let us do this right, once and for all. Everyone has been talking about changes to the immigration system, and we have all been tinkering at the edges.

Our former Liberal government can say the same thing. We tried, and we did what we thought was good. We now need to review it. If it is not working, let us fix it, but let us not tinker with it. Let us make sure we have this door open for skilled immigrants who will bring their families and stay here, who will start to build a nation, whose children will grow up and become Canadians and help us to be more productive and competitive in the new global economy.

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

Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciated the member's comments. In large part they are complimentary toward the process we are trying to work through with this bill. Some of her suggestions merit consideration at committee.

However, I do want to clarify something. It is important to understand that the statutory board the member spoke of was certainly something that the standing committee looked at. The difficulties related to this option include the tremendous costs associated with it and the tremendous amount of delay that would result from creating an agency complete with civil servants and a new bureaucracy. To move those two issues aside, the government body that will actually exist will be designated by the minister and will have the authority to penalize. It will have the authority under regulation to pursue and investigate consultants who are not following the rules.

From a committee perspective, it is certainly something that we can look at. It would help to get strong suggestions from each of the parties, at committee and here in the House, on what these regulations for the governing body should look like. Let us understand: the intent here is to give that self-regulatory body the authority to enforce law and ensure that consultants are acting in a manner that is going to be helpful. Whether it is temporary workers, their families, or potential immigrants, we want the legitimacy of the industry to be what stands out, not the terrible actions taken by a few crooked consultants.

I have had the opportunity to clarify. I would like to get the member's reaction, because it is critical and timely. She mentioned many times how important it is to move quickly. This is the way to ensure that it will move quickly.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, what I am suggesting is not without precedent. Like lawyers in the provincial law societies, immigration consultants should have the ability to be a self-regulating profession. I was not suggesting that bureaucrats do this; I was suggesting that bona fide immigration consultants set up the structure themselves and help the profession to be self-regulating.

It is like the case of physicians. The College of Physicians and Surgeons is run by physicians and law societies are run by lawyers, not by bureaucrats. What we are suggesting is that there should be a watchdog to ensure that this works while it is getting off the ground. Then, after a year or two, the government could float it out as provincial governments have done with other self-regulatory bodies like the law societies.

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

Madam Speaker, the bill seeks to ensure that all consultants are covered and licensed before they can practice. It also looks at a continuation of education and enforcement.

While the bill in front of the House is important, our concern ultimately is to make sure that all consultants are scrupulous, that they give proper advice and do not charge potential immigrants an enormous amount of money. It is important that there be enough enforcement measures, enough training, for immigration officials so that if we come across unscrupulous consultants there will be ways to ensure that potential immigrants are protected.

Aside from dealing with the bill in front of us, what other measures does the member think are important to ensure proper enforcement and implementation of the bill so that ultimately at the end of the day no potential immigrants will be exploited or open to some kind of crooked consultants who would take their money and destroy their immigration cases?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague suggested that this bill intends to look at licensing, education and enforcement. That is not all that professional regulatory bodies do in the provinces. There is the task of being an ongoing watchdog which takes complaints from whoever is using that particular professional body, in this case immigrants. They would have the ability to complain to the statutory body. The statutory body would have the ability to audit, to go into the consultant's office and seize the consultant's files. It would be able to look at what the consultant had been doing. That requires a different set of powers. It is the same set of powers that provincial regulatory bodies have, as I have suggested.

Not only do we need to license consultants and indicate what they should be doing, but we also need to be able to monitor them. A watchdog function is needed. We need to be able to hear complaints. We need to ensure that people practise under certain rules of ethical conduct which the regulatory body would set up.

Ethics and conduct are a huge part of what the law society and the College of Physicians and Surgeons do. One could be the brightest person in the world, could have graduated from Oxford with a great medical degree, but if that person does not have the right ethics and his or her conduct toward patients is not proper, that person will be hauled on the carpet.

The watchdog function needs to be ongoing and there needs to be the ability to hear complaints, because how will we know if somebody is not practising properly? There has to be a complaints process that can follow through, investigate, audit, seize documents, and deal with the practitioners that are not practising properly.

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

Madam Speaker, when the committee report on immigration consultants was passed, the first recommendation made by committee members was that immigration consultants working in Quebec should be regulated by Quebec.

The reason is simple. First, there is an immigration agreement between Quebec and Canada, which means that the immigration system in Quebec is quite different and requires different expertise. Second, in Quebec, there is the Office des professions du Québec as well as a whole regulatory framework. The provinces are responsible for governing professions.

The Liberals and the New Democratic Party supported this recommendation at the time. I would like to ask the member if her party still supports the committee's first recommendation. Is her party willing to study and support possible amendments in order to act on this recommendation?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have been referring continually to the report and the recommendations. My hon. colleague is right. Recommendation one speaks to the issue that immigration consultants from Quebec shall be officially recognized under Quebec laws, because as we well know, Quebec laws are totally different from our common law. They happen to be civil law. We need to be able to look at that legislation working on its own. I think that is a reasonable thing to expect.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this bill on behalf of the New Democratic Party of Canada. I am also happy to say that our party supports this bill.

It is a very important part of any responsible opposition not only to constructively criticize a government when we think its policy direction is ill-advised or incorrect, but it is also very important, as a responsible opposition, to congratulate and support a government when it introduces legislation that is correct and addresses a very real problem.

I want to congratulate my colleagues on the government side of the House for bringing in Bill C-35. The bill goes a long way toward dealing with a problem that is very pressing in this country.

The short title of Bill C-35 is the cracking down on crooked consultants act, which shows the government's penchant for giving its legislation catchy titles, but the title captures what the bill is about. Bill C-35 prohibits unlicensed consultants in the immigration field from providing advice or submitting applications on behalf of potential immigrants. It gives the minister the power to establish a new body that would regulate immigration consultants through a tendering process.

New Democrats, in particular my colleague from Trinity—Spadina, have been pushing for legislative changes to eliminate unethical immigration consultant practices for a long time now. At present, one out of every two immigration consultants is not licensed. There are many horror stories of vulnerable immigrants being cheated out of substantial amounts of money, in some cases their life savings, and worse, having their chances for a new beginning in Canada destroyed in the process.

In the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, our party and the committee received two supporting reports with nine recommendations on this issue. These include legislative changes and, more importantly, enforcement and education efforts, which are vital to making this legislation workable in practice. Again my colleague from Trinity—Spadina moved a motion for concurrence in that report which, through the wisdom and efforts of members of this House, passed in the spring of this year.

As another member said very well, other than first nations people in this country, we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Almost everybody in this House owes his or her place in Canada to the courage of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or ancestors even further back. In some cases, members of this House are direct immigrants themselves, so it is an obvious point to make that Canada is one of the most multicultural countries on earth and one whose entire societal fabric is based on immigrants.

My own riding of Vancouver Kingsway is one of the most multicultural ridings in the country. Forty per cent of the residents of Vancouver Kingsway are of Chinese descent, from the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau. Eleven per cent of the residents of Vancouver Kingsway are South Asian, hailing from India, Pakistan and the Punjab. Ten per cent of the residents of my riding are from the Philippines. Five per cent are from Vietnam, Korea and a host of other countries. Indeed 70% of the people in my riding are visible minorities and are now the visible majority in my riding.

There are over 100 languages spoken in Vancouver Kingsway. It is truly a cultural mosaic, one that is vibrant, strong and healthy. Many people in Vancouver Kingsway are first, second or third generation immigrants. I would venture to say that the majority of people in Vancouver Kingsway are within one of those three categories.

Of course, we have to pause and examine the profound reasons that people immigrate to Canada. Everybody who came to Canada, I think, came here because they had a dream. Sometimes those dreams were to build a better life for their families. Sometimes they were seeking freedom to practise their religion. Sometimes their dream was to escape poverty and enter a land where they felt equal opportunity was available to them and their children. Sometimes that dream involved pursuing an education. Many students come to Canada hoping to obtain an education upon which they can build a better life.

We also have to remember that this country, Canada, has been built by immigrants. We have already heard mention of the fact that one of the most important nation-building projects this country has witnessed, the building of our national coast-to-coast railway, could not have been done without the contributions of Chinese Canadians. Those people came here and were subjected to horrendous racism, including legislated racism, but they persevered and helped build a strong cultural Chinese presence on the west coast of our country and, indeed, in every province across this land.

The story of my own relatives is a typical one.

In the 1920s my grandparents immigrated to Canada from Hungary. First my grandfather came with his brother. They landed in Halifax and ended up taking a train across Canada. They were dropped off in October on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan in a little place called Dewberry. He and his brother had to walk 21 miles from the train station to their end destination. They lived in a sod house for two winters. They cleared land under a government program whereby if one cleared a quarter section of land within two years, one would be allowed to homestead it and own it. My grandfather did that and three years later brought his wife over from Hungary. At that point they raised my mother who to this day still speaks Hungarian and has exposed me to that cultural history and tradition.

My father had a similar story. His grandparents came from Ireland, Wales, and Germany. I think I am a fairly typical Canadian who can reach back just a generation or two and touch countries across the world.

What all immigrants have in common is courage, trust and faith. Their stories also can be heart-rending because many immigrants experience the reality of separation from their families, loneliness, insecurity and indeed poverty when they arrive here. Statistics in this country are rife with the difficulties and specific challenges that particularly face first generation Canadians.

Bill C-35 is targeted at protecting those immigrants, and that is critically important. It protects immigrants from unscrupulous immigration consultants who would prey on those people whose dreams make them vulnerable. They prey on these people for the most unjustifiable reason: pure money.

I want to pause and say that there are many professional and ethical immigration consultants practising in this field across the country, particularly in British Columbia. There are many diligent immigration consultants who provide intelligent and well-earned advice and help people from all over the globe access Canada's immigration system. I think those consultants join with us in Parliament today in wanting to keep their profession one that is well regulated and full of integrity. Those immigration consultants realize they have an interest in doing so. I want to point that out in particular because when we talk about a profession, we must recognize there are many people of integrity as well as those whose professional standards leave a lot to be desired.

I have met many excellent consultants. I have met people like Rose White and Bob White who have come to my office several times and given me their opinion on all kinds of immigration issues. Rajesh Randev helps hundreds and hundreds of people come to this country but who otherwise would be completely mystified by the process.

Cecile Barbier, a person who lives in my own neighbourhood, a recent immigrant from France and a lawyer from that country has taken immigration courses, so that she can also put her knowledge to work, helping other people. These are the kinds of immigration consultants who want to have a law in this country that makes their profession a regulated, respected one.

There are important organizations in British Columbia that also do critical and pivotal work for immigrants: SUCCESS Immigrant Settlement Services and PICS provide absolutely essential services to immigrants from every corner of the globe.

I think we have heard from all MPs. I do not think there is a member in the House who cannot stand up and tell stories about Canadians and residents of their ridings who come to their offices with terrible problems with the immigration system that they face. Sometimes I joke that I do not have a constituency office; I feel like I have an immigration law practice.

I would like to give an example of an issue on which I dealt with the immigration minister just yesterday. A resident in my riding is a citizen here with her husband and daughter who is from Colombia. She has had her mother and her brother visit here on temporary resident visas, in other words, visitor visas. Her younger sister has applied to come here just to visit her sister for three weeks and she was turned down three times. This person in Colombia is a woman with a law degree. The first time she was turned down she was in university and she was turned down because she did not have the income. Then she got her law degree and she was turned down the second time because she did not have a travel history.

This is of course a vicious cycle in which many people find themselves. How do we get a travel history if we are turned down for a visa because we do not have a travel history? This is the third time this person has applied for a visa. She was turned down this time because a visa officer in Colombia misread her application and said that she did not have sufficient income from her employer when the figure and the employer were listed right on her paperwork.

These are the kinds of typical problems that MPs face every day. These are the kinds of problems that immigration consultants could help with if they are regulated, trained, and held to a standard of professionalism that they want and need.

In my constituency I deal with immigrants every day that I am in Vancouver. People from the Philippines tell me that the number one export of the Philippines is not a good; it is people. I deal with Filipinos every day who come into my office, trying to engage in family reunification, trying to bring aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents, and cousins to Canada so that they can build their families.

We must realize in this country that in many areas of the world family is not defined as one's parents and children; it is defined as one's aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and grandparents. That concept of extended family is critically important to many people.

People come into my office who hail from China, where the rate of refusal on spousal sponsorships from places like Beijing is approaching 50%. That means almost one out of every two people from China who are married and are making applications to bring their spouses over are rejected.

People come into my office from India who are consistently rejected when they try to bring relatives over to attend a wedding. This is particularly a problem in Chandigarh, which has about the highest rate of refusals of temporary resident visas, TRVs, in the world.

These are the problems my residents face every day and with which they come to their MP for assistance. Our offices processes hundreds and hundreds of these cases every year through the hard work of my constituency assistants, Theresa Ho and Christine Ackermann . They help these people. They go out of their way and do yeowomen's work to help these people with their problems. These are people who do not have money to pay an immigration consultant or a lawyer. So they come to us.

I have also had people come into my office who have been victims of unscrupulous immigration consultants. One of the most heart-rending situations is when people come to this country, work one, two or three jobs, undergo intense pain by being separated from their families, work for years, save up money working jobs for $8 and $9 an hour and after working two or three years, save $3,000 or $4,000, which they give to an immigration consultant because they think that person will help bring their relatives over, only to discover that person abused their trust.

They lose their money, do not get the results they want and, worse, in many cases the applicant's record is permanently marred so that their relatives can never come over. That is wrong and is something that cries out for immediate rectification by sound legislators. I want to congratulate the government for bringing in this legislation, which I think goes a long way to addressing this.

What we must ensure and be vigilant about as parliamentarians is that this legislation is sound and that it works. It does not do any good to bring in legislation that cannot be actuated in practice. We need to ensure that we establish a regulatory process that has teeth, one that licenses immigration consultants and establishes sound standards, so we can ensure that any people calling themselves immigration consultants in this country have the proficiency and professionalism required to carry out their duties in a proper manner.

We must ensure there are adequate enforcement measures because standards without enforcement are of no use. We must ensure the immigration consultants in this country know that if they try to practice without licences or provide services they are not entitled to provide, they will be caught and there will be consequences.

We must also ensure that the public knows about it. We need to ensure that every person wanting to access the immigration system in this country can go to a website and see at a glance, like is done in Australia, who are the licensed immigration consultants, who are not licensed, who has made application and failed, and those who have a black mark against them. These are all critical components of a sound piece of legislation that ensures it does not just amount to words on a paper but actually makes a tangible difference in people's lives.

I also want to comment briefly on the government's attempt to bring in legislation that the previous Liberal government failed to do. I hear members of the Liberal Party talk about this legislation, but, of course, when they were in power, they did not get it done. After numerous consultations and hearings, the former minister, the member now for Eglinton—Lawrence, set up a regulatory body that had no teeth.

The Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants had no power to enforce regulations or to prevent unlicensed consultants from practising. To make matters worse, that organization was not required to behave in a democratic, efficient or transparent manner. I am glad to see that members of the Liberal Party standing up today are supporting this legislation after having the opportunity of 13 years in government and failing to do so.

In fact, in many respects what they did was even worse, which was to set up a process that did not work. That breeds disrespect and sets back policy development because people look to a regulatory framework that does not work as proof that a regulatory framework is not valid or needed, and that is not the case.

I want to, once again, indicate that New Democrats stand behind immigrants in this country. We want them to be able to unify their families, we want them to be able to have a fair, fast and efficient immigration system. We will join with the government and all members of the House in helping to ensure that immigration consultants in this country practise in a manner that is professional and helpful.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Before resuming debate I should advise the House that we have now completed the first five hours of debate on this bill and we have come to the 10-minute interventions and 5 minutes of questions and comments.

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Richmond Hill.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate today on Bill C-35.

We spend a lot of time talking about the importance of immigration to Canada, and rightly so. The difficulty, however, is that people almost have to be Philadelphia lawyers to figure out what the rules and procedures are in order to immigrate to Canada. There is no real consistency in terms of what we tell people at our embassies and high commissions, about what the job market is like in a particular field, how long it will take in terms of the process in general to come to Canada, or under what basis people can come to Canada. For many people here who want to sponsor relatives, it turns out that they think it is a right rather than a privilege.

Not understanding the process has led to people looking for consultants. In some cases a consultant is really not the appropriate term given the fact that many of these people have limited if any understanding. There are some very good consultants out there and there are obviously some bad apples.

The difficulty is that as members of Parliament we are charged with the responsibility of dealing with legislation. In 2008 the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration produced nine recommendations. Now the question I have for the government is, why were they not implemented?

One of the difficulties around this place is that when a standing committee deals with a particular issue, it deals with a stream of witnesses, debate, amendments and comes up with very concrete recommendations that are sent to the government, sometimes it is as if we have basically wasted our time.

Now I realize that in 2008 there was a federal election, but since then these recommendations have not been implemented. I think that is absolutely unacceptable when we look at the nature of the recommendations to fix part of the problem. This legislation before the House is not a panacea. It is not going to solve all of the problems. It is not going to solve all the backlogs. It is not going to deal with the financial issues in order to implement the kind of process that we need in place.

In my office alone, one person is dedicated solely to deal with immigration. Now I am not an immigration office. In theory I seem to be part of an extension of the department. In many cases the department is dealing with the applications that need to be dealt with. We have too many people applying and not enough resources to deal with those applicants. Fortunately, I am very blessed with a very committed, dedicated individual who really understands the process, after the last five years.

The difficulty is that people's expectations and understanding of what is involved is like night and day. Many of these people are victims of consultants and it all starts where they are applying. Do our embassies and high commissions have the kind of information readily available?

One of the recommendations in this report was recommendation no. 8. It clearly indicated in 2008 that we needed to have the most up-to-date information, that people really had to understand what was going to be awaiting them if in fact they came to Canada, in terms of language skill requirements, job opportunities, housing, et cetera.

The difficulty is that most people enter this process rather blindly. Because they think that there is sometimes a quick fix, they deal with consultants. Some of these consultants turn out to be more of a problem than a cure.

In 2008 the standing committee made nine recommendations. One of them which I think was extremely important was this whole issue of a stand-alone agency that would deal with this issue in terms of having the summary powers needed to do the job properly.

Rather than amend the Citizenship and Immigration Act, we need to have a body that has the power to deal with consultants both from a regulatory standpoint, and some colleagues have talked about the provincial process of many regulatory bodies, but also the power to investigate and the power to really come down on people who mislead, who in fact basically take money when no service is really rendered.

Immigration is supposed to be important to this country and yet we have a system that is broken, and I would defy anyone who would suggest otherwise. People just need to go to any constituency office of a member of Parliament in the greater Toronto area or the greater Vancouver area and they will certainly see the difficulties that members of Parliament deal with. That is because we do not have the necessary tools. We do not have a legion of staff that can deal with this. There often is a lot of burn-out because one person dealing with this in particular is very difficult. We hear the most tragic stories of people who want to come to this country for a new opportunity but, again, it is the issue of dealing with this.

The last Liberal government, our government in 2005, put $900 million toward trying to deal with the backlog, which really was not enough, as with the present government which was not enough.

I am sure many members of Parliament have been asked by people how to speed up the process or how they can be fast-tracked. Obviously we can fast-track when we can fast-track them all and we cannot fast-track anyone.

Will this legislation deal with the problem? It will only deal partly with the problem. We support it going to committee. A 2008 standing committee report has nine recommendations in it, part of which deal with the issue of consultants. If the government had implemented those recommendations, we would perhaps be onto something else today. The fact is that we continue to try to reinvent the wheel instead of asking what the major problem is here.

If in fact we had no immigration policy, how would we create one that would address the economic needs of this country and the kinds of issues that we as Canadians believe are important and be able to attract people to this country? Instead, we always deal around the edges. We do not deal with the problems per se.

A stand alone regulatory body, as recommended by the standing committee in 2008, is what is needed. It really needs those powers, as we have said. However, this proposed legislation only deals with part of that issue. It does not really deal with the significant governance issues that the standing committee looked at when it listened to the many witnesses who came forward. We need to deal with that.

We also need to be working with our international partners. We need to get better coordination in terms of everything from people smuggling to the fact that people set up shot overseas and say that they are a consultant. When they are asked what kind of regulations there are, they say that one can come to Canada and do this and that.

Many of the people who come to my office have been drained financially paying money to certain individuals who in the end tell them to go see their MP. In other words, let the MP now try to deal with the problem that they in many cases have created or clearly have not been able to deal with. We need to look at that. It is obviously part of the solution.

As we know, consultants are often not lawyers. They provide advice and the difficulty is that sometimes they are not up to speed on this.

I have held information sessions in my riding dealing with the process. One is absolutely dizzy by the time one listens to how this process works: how does one do this, can one appeal this and then there is another appeal, what happens if one comes under certain classifications. One has to be a Philadelphia lawyer to figure that out.

We have these ghost consultants. We have these people who say that they can solve one's problem. It goes back to the fact that people accept money to give advice which often turns out not to be very helpful.

When we have standing committee recommendations, the best thing the government can do today would be to embrace those nine recommendations and move forward so we can deal with other aspects of immigration. Again, within those nine recommendations we also deal with a stand alone body that would deal with this. I think that is part of the solution but it is not the total solution.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, colleagues around the House have touched on almost all of the important aspects of this legislation by now but I want to highlight two or three areas that are of significance to me in my capacity as the member representing Scarborough—Rouge River.

Canada's immigration program has actually been a very successful public policy tool and it has served Canada extremely well over the decades. With all due respect extended to our first nations, we are a country of immigrants and this has always been the case. We have learned how to do it well but our immigration act and procedures have provided the infrastructure under which people have come to Canada from all around the world. It is a controlling mechanism for people movements from outside Canada to Canada and we are absolutely, without any reservation, a receiving country of many wonderful people throughout our history.

My particular constituency happens to be about 75% immigrant, which is a relatively high percentage. Three-quarters or more of the people in Scarborough—Rouge River are, or were, immigrants. That means that in my work as a member of Parliament, and this includes my staff in the riding and in Ottawa, we see a lot of immigration issues on behalf of constituents. Those constituents are connected to other places around the world. We see immigration issues from all around the world of every type and description.

I know there are many millions of happy customers of immigration consultants as well as immigration lawyers. Many immigrants, depending on what type of immigration they follow, which procedural line they follow when they come to Canada, rely on professional advice, and that serves them and it serves Canada. They pay for it. It is quite a well working and positive system. However, that is not to say that it is perfect. What we are dealing with here today is a component of the immigration infrastructure that is not working well.

I want to recognize here on the floor, because I am not so sure we have done it, all of the good work of all of the immigration lawyers and consultants who are out there. There are thousands of them out there all doing good, professional work and we should recognize that. I say that because that comment lies in stark contrast to the name that the government has given to the bill. The short title is “Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act”.

This is somewhat Orwellian. The government has decided to put colourful, descriptive advertising into the title of its bill. The government has not quite gone so far as to put neon signs up on the Peace Tower yet, but contorting the title of a bill in this way is inappropriate. However, it has chosen to do it. I have been here for over 20 years and it is the first time I have seen this kind of Orwellian manipulation of the short title of a bill to broadcast something. If the name of the bill were totally descriptive, I would not object, but in this case the bill describes itself as a bill to crack down on crooked immigration consultants.

The bill is much more than that. It purports to regulate the whole class of immigration consultants, most of whom are good guys. The name of the bill stigmatizes a whole class of people. Would the government do the same thing if it were further regulating architects? Would it write a bill that cracked down on stupid architects or write a bill to crack down on stupid, incompetent ships' captains? I do not think that is the right way to do things. It stigmatizes a whole class of people.

What we are doing here with this bill is facilitating the further regulation of immigration consultants, which is a good profession, whether they are professional consultants or whether they are lawyers.

I wanted to get that straight. I say shame on the government for manipulating the short titles of bills in this way.

We want to try to fix or allow consultants themselves, by self-regulation, to fix some of the problems we have seen, and they have been described here today. One of the areas that I do not think we will be able to fix is the problem of a consultant in another country. We can deal with consultants here but we have never successfully found a way to deal with the enforcement of someone who acts as a consultant in Damascus, Shanghai, Colombo or New York City, someone who just says, “I'm an immigration consultant. If you pay me 10,000 bucks, I will deliver your documents and get you into Canada. All you have to do is pay me the 10,000 or 20,000 bucks and I guarantee a great result”.

That consultant is out there in another country and our laws cannot apply extraterritorially into another country. So it is tough for us to regulate this in a way that would regulate that person in that other country, which we all regret. Sometimes we call them ghost consultants. Immigration officials, as I understand it, will refuse to accept an immigration application of some sort if it appears there is an immigration consultant behind it and the immigration consultant is not properly registered or not in good standing. That is a partial address to the problem but I hope the committee will look at this and look at ways to isolate and identify consultants who are not properly registered and not properly trained in the foreign country.

Most of us as MPs have people come to us only when the file is broken. If the file is going all right through the immigration department, they do not need the MP. It is really quite shocking when a member of Parliament or a staffer of a member of Parliament has people coming in saying that they have a problem with immigration after paying a guy $15,000 and that the file is all messed up. My staff are saying, “My goodness, $15,000 and we have to fix it. If you had come to us in the first place, it wouldn't have cost you anything and we would have done it correctly for you”. It is not that we do immigration work directly out of the office but we certainly do advise our constituents and we try to fix situations that have gone sideways.

I know my party will be supporting the bill at second reading, in principle, for the purposes of getting it to committee where I hope the committee will redouble its efforts. I know the committee has looked at this stuff before. Half measures will not work. If there was ever an area subject to loopholes, this is one of them. I encourage the committee to consult with the industry, with the professionals, to look for a consensus and to be bold, to hammer down and make any amendments to this bill that will make it effective. Do not be shy. Let us do it and do it right.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have taken the opportunity to look at the bill, and I note that it is entitled An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. As the member pointed out, clause 1 of the bill proposes a short title that would be cited as the Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act. With all due respect, to tar all those who are involved in the process of immigration and citizenship matters with this label is unfortunate.

The real issue here is whether the report of the citizenship and immigration committee from 2008 has been seriously considered, particularly with respect to establishing an independent regulatory body for immigration consultants that has the statutory powers to make it work.

The response of the government to that report and the response of this bill seems to indicate that we are going to do this by regulation. There is certainly no information to members of Parliament that the regulations enabled by this amendment would address the serious issues.

I wonder if the member would like to comment on the approach the government has used, and to the extent that he has time, on the role members of Parliament and their offices play, considering that MPs and their office staff get no training, no orientation, and no additional resources to discharge that work.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me start out by paying tribute to every assistant in every constituency office across the whole country. Some are new and some are a little bit more experienced, but inevitably, most constituency staff have to learn some immigration law and procedure in order to succeed. For members of all parties, that is a fact of life, and the member properly brings attention to that.

In terms of the people working in the field of consultants, most of us from the big cities know immigration lawyers, because their files have been referred to the constituency on some basis, or they know immigration consultants. Every once in a while, a mistake is made and it has to be fixed. Every once in a while, an inquiry has to be made about the progress of a file.

It is unfair for this bill to stigmatize consultants. These professionals will come as witnesses to the committee hearings on this bill, and when they walk into the room, they will hear that the name of the bill is an act to crack down on crooked immigration consultants. These people are not crooked immigration consultants. They are upstanding professionals. They are qualified professionals. I hope that one of them objects. I hope that some member of the committee will offer to propose to change the short title of the bill to get it back on track.

The committee, because of the attitude of the House, in which there appears to be general support, has an important job to do in going through this bill. I am confident that the committee will do it with a good attitude. I hope that there will be some leeway offered on both sides of the House to allow the committee to do a good and effective job consistent with what I hope will be rigorous consultation with the professionals in the field and with government officials, as well. We want to get the best possible set of regulations that will really bite down on the abuses and provide mechanisms for enforcement and firm regulation of this field. The professionals want that. They would prefer to have a set of good working regulations rather than to have the wild west, where future immigrants are prejudiced and victimized.

The committee has an important job to do, and I am confident that it will embark on it with good intentions.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Every member of Parliament is probably in a position to bring to this place his or her experience with some of the difficulties people have had with regard to these matters, whether it be sponsoring immigration, visas, or in fact, refugee files. Canadians probably are not aware that members of Parliament's offices probably do more work on immigration than they do on any other aspect of being a member of Parliament. There is a tremendous volume of activity. Some offices, in fact, have several staff members who are permanently dedicated to citizenship and immigration matters.

It is also probably pretty evident that Canadians at large often do not understand the difference between immigrants and refugees. We saw that with regard to the latest situation with the ship that arrived carrying Tamil refugee claimants.

The point I would like to make, first of all, is that we need to educate everyone who has a responsibility, interest, or stake in our system of immigration.

As I mentioned in the question to the previous speaker, the issue of providing resources from the department is critical. This bill does not propose additional resources for addressing the issues that have been raised.

I share the concern of other members about the title. If it is a bill to make improvements in terms of the regulations guiding those who provide consulting information and assistance, that is fine, but I note that in the speech of the minister himself, when he moved the bill, he made the broad statement that people do not have to go to consultants. I do not know where exactly they would go, other than maybe to an MP's office, but I do know that there is not a spot they can go to in the department to have their questions answered in a way that is helpful to them.

I note that in the report from the committee in 2008, three of the recommendations popped out. One of them is recommendation number eight. Keep in mind that this is a standing committee of members of Parliament. It recommends that the government revise all of its websites at Canadian embassies and missions abroad so that they include consistent, clear, and prominent information about immigration consultants.

One would think that our missions abroad would have all the boilerplate information necessary to guide people. One would think that the departmental website would have all the information to guide people through the processes, whether it be for immigration, sponsorship, applying for permanent residency, or visas. Also, from our experience, some files are very quick and could take maybe a couple of years, but most of them take three or four years. I have files that are seven years old. I do not think Canadians understand that the system is such that there are people in the hopper who have waited for a determination, waited for answers, for several years. It is tough to get into this country, but it does not have to be.

I also note that in the minister's speech, he spent a lot of time talking about these terrible consultants and the forged documents, forged marriage certificates, and forged bank statements and all of these things. He never once mentioned the applicants themselves and the role they play in terms of making application with documents that they know, or ought to know, are not proper.

It is a tough country to get into, very tough. A lot of people have talked about the dream of getting into this country. The dream of getting into this country is self-evident. There is an understanding that one has to be true, full, and plain in terms of the representations made. Members will assure those who come to their offices after they have problems that if they have filed documents that are inaccurate, contradictory, or forged or that contain untruths or omissions, it is very likely that they are going to fail in their efforts to get into Canada.

In our offices abroad and in our embassies, those providing information could tell people, “Here is our experience. These are the characteristics of applications that are in good shape, are accepted, and are handled within a reasonable period of time. The ones that are not accepted, the ones that have the problems, have these typical problems. Here are the reasons you will not get in”.

Then what happens? Most members will tell you that people who run afoul of the process all of a sudden start going to members of Parliament thinking that for some odd reason, the member of Parliament will have some pull and will be able to fix a problem that has to do with providing incorrect, inaccurate, and fraudulent information. It is not just the consultants. The applicants have to take some responsibility for that as well.

One has to understand that people wanting the opportunity to come to Canada will probably take whatever advice they can get from whomever, especially if somebody is charging an exorbitant fee. That is why I agree with the second recommendation in the committee's report from 2008, which is that there be an independent body established, arm's length from the department, to regulate immigration consultants. Give it the tools, the authorization, and the statutory power to control a very important resource and address the problem of people getting bad, wrong, or illegal advice. The government did not take heed of that recommendation.

When our committees make these kinds of recommendations, one would expect that the government's response, whether it be a written response to a committee report or legislation brought forward, would respond to the situation it is trying to address and would provide the best possible solution that makes sense, given all the facts.

What we have in Bill C-35 is an effort to provide penalties for people who are found to have caused problems and who have acted unethically as immigration consultants. However, the tool that is being established is going to be established by regulation. Basically, the government is going to provide the mechanism to police immigration consultants, and it will be regulation.

The problem is that we are debating a bill and will vote at second reading on whether we want it to go to committee. It will go to committee, where there will be witnesses. They will discuss all the possibilities. They will make some recommendations and possibly propose some amendments to the bill. It will then come back to the chamber at report stage. Possibly there may be further amendments by members who were not involved at committee, and then it will go to third reading.

We have this process, but what the process does not have, in terms of House activities, are the regulations. If we do not know the regulations specifically proposed, how can we trust or have confidence that the establishment of some regulatory regime is going to, in fact, do the job? That is the problem.

One recommendation I would have for the committee would be that it ask the government to table and file with the committee the proposed regulations prior to their being gazetted and promulgated.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleague for raising some very good issues. Also, I know the minister has come back from a number of meetings he has had in other countries hat are faced by unscrupulous immigration consultants. In particular, I believe he was in Australia and India.

I had a chance to meet with the prime minister of India during his visit to Canada. I also had a chance to raise the issue of fraudulent immigration consultants who take advantage of very vulnerable people. In my riding, which is one of the largest multicultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious ridings in the country, a number of very vulnerable individuals have been impacted and affected by these fraudulent immigration consultants.

I also wrote to the prime minister of India, hence the basis for my question. When I wrote to him, I also asked him to work with foreign governments such as Canada to ensure that they had legislation in place so these unscrupulous immigration consultants would not take advantage of vulnerable people and provide individuals with a false sense of hope for them to come to countries like Canada.

In regard to this legislation, we have spoken about having statutory powers for a regulatory body. What other initiatives does my colleague think Canada needs to put in place to also ensure we work with foreign governments, with countries like India, to ensure they can also put forward legislation to prevent immigration consultants who act unscrupulously from taking advantage of individuals?

Many of these people actually sell their homes, or mortgage their houses or sell off any assets they have because of a false hope they have been given by immigration consultants. What legislation does he think the government needs to put in place to build upon this to ensure there is also the help and collaboration of foreign governments?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to hearken back to the minister's statement. He said that our system was not complex and that we did not need immigration consultants because our process was straightforward. That is not true. It is a complex process. There are circumstances where people do in fact get drawn in.

If the minister is correct, why do our embassies and offices abroad do not tell people, when they want to make inquiries about becoming potential immigrants to Canada, that they do not need to get an immigration consultant, that they have no powers to influence the success of an application, that all they have to do is tell the truth, submit the requested documents as laid out in the process? Is that out there? This is a communications exercise.

This has been going on for years. Do people not realize there are failed applications constantly? Have governments abroad not told people who apply for immigration that they have to provide documents and that anything submitted better not be fraudulent documents, misinformation, incorrect or contradictory information because it would not take very much for the application to be quashed?

I do not think we have to legislate being truthful. All we have to do is tell people that it is tough to get into Canada. The recommendations of the committee relate to a body to regulate those who will convince them that they need to spend money to have the assistance for their applications. This has nothing to do with sponsors, but those who sponsor those who want to immigrate to Canada also have a responsibility, and they are not mentioned in this process.

The offices of members of Parliament are involved in this process as well. Yet new members of Parliament and their staff, which turns over from time to time, receive absolutely no training, no orientation and no resources to provide the services. I believe the ministry should take on the responsibility to establish that body which will give the guidance to those who want to be sponsors or whatever and take it away from the offices of members of Parliament so there can be consistent service to those—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Brampton—Springdale.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure and honour to speak to a very important issue and to follow up some of the points that my colleague has raised.

The issue of fraudulent consultants is a very important issue that impacts constituencies like mine, not only in the area of Brampton—Springdale but in many constituencies. It impacts many new Canadians and many individuals who have a desire to come to Canada.

We have all heard and read about the many horror stories where vulnerable people have been taken advantage of. I know there have been reports of a Mexican family that has been taken advantage of by a fraudulent immigration consultant who created a fake refugee claim only for the family to arrive in Toronto and be given the name and number of a stranger and instructions to a hotel. This phony immigration consultant had apparently collected thousands of dollars. The family had sold off all of their assets, such as their home and their cars.

There was another report of a Korean truck driver who was told, again by a crooked immigration consultant, to use his life savings to help him come to Canada in the hope of getting a guaranteed job. Once again, he emptied his pockets. He was given all of these false promises and upon arrival here in Canada, he was left in limbo.

The stories are many, and we have all heard them. That is why I want to take the opportunity to commend the minister. It is very encouraging to see the government take action to ensure that we can provide a sense of hope to these vulnerable people, that they can go through the protocols we have established within the Canadian government and have those procedures followed to ensure crooked immigration consultants are pushed to the wayside and their businesses stopped.

It is encouraging to see the government is taking action. I know there has been urging from all parties. The start of a new fall session is a great opportunity for all parties in the House to co-operate and collaborate to send the bill to committee so it can hear, first-hand, witnesses and stakeholders.

We have all agreed that the report on regulating immigration consultants in June 2008 made some great recommendations. One of the major recommendations was that there needed to be the establishment of a regulatory body and that it be given statutory powers. In talking to individuals and stakeholders about the legislation the minister and the government has brought forward this continues to remain a major concern.

We must ensure that the regulatory body has the power to investigate any of these types of crooked immigration consultants and that the watchdog has the statutory powers to do its job to enable it to persecute any individuals who operate underhandedly.

The bill is a step in that direction. However, we must ensure that we do more. As I said previously, during the G20 a number of prime ministers and leaders throughout the world were present. Upon their arrival, I had the fortunate opportunity to meet with the prime minister from India and discuss some of the concerns of the Indo-Canadian community. One of the issues I raised was the issue of fraudulent immigration consultants.

The minister must have seen this in his travels as well. I believe he has just come back from both New Delhi and Chandigarh. Countries like India have a great source of these unscrupulous immigration consultants who provide false hope to vulnerable people.

In my meeting, and also in a subsequent letter to him, I asked the prime minister to encourage foreign governments, like the government of India, to put in place legislation which would provide the creation of licensing bodies, or regulatory bodies, regulations and statutory powers for these immigration consultants.

It is a great opportunity for countries like Canada to co-operate and collaborate with some of these foreign governments to ensure that not only in Canada but in countries in other parts of the world also put in place mechanisms which will put a stop to these unscrupulous immigration consultants.

Many individuals operate as ghost consultants. They promise people high-paying jobs and fast-tracked visas. It is often too late when these unfortunate individuals find out they have been scammed.

If passed, the bill will be an opportunity to make it a crime for a person who is not a lawyer, a notary, or a member of a recognized association of immigration consultants to accept any sort of fee.

Recently an individual was charged by the RCMP in Montreal for providing unscrupulous services and making false promises. The individual had issued fraudulent IDs. With the hope of coming to Canada, a number of individuals provide fraudulent documentation and false information on their applications. I agree with my colleague who spoke earlier that we must ensure that Canada puts in place a zero tolerance policy for people who provide falsifies documents, whether it be false birth certificates or false school records, and that they not be allowed to re-apply to the Canadian system.

Another issue I hear about, not only as a female parliamentarian, but from the many events that I attend in my constituency is the issue of fraud marriages. Many individuals marry Canadians simply for the hope of coming to Canada. This exists in many countries in the world. I believe the minister held a forum in my adjacent riding a few weeks back on this issue. He mentioned that Hong Kong had one of the highest rates right now of individuals wanting to come to Canada on the basis of fraud marriages. He mentioned the statistic which was approximately 60% of the applications in Hong Kong right now were being denied for spousal applications because they were based on these networks and rings. Some of the information, even for fraud marriages, is coming from immigration consultants who are providing false advice in the hopes of taking money and trying to get people into Canada as soon as possible without following appropriate timelines, procedures and protocols.

This legislation will be a step in the right direction. I hope when it goes to committee, it will be a great opportunity to hear from stakeholders, witnesses and individuals who have been impacted.

I have a story that happened last month in my riding. A young who was born and raised in Canada entered into a marriage. She is a polio victim in a wheelchair. The person she married in India was fully aware of this. The case, upon going into the embassy, was denied. The woman spent all of her and her family's savings to bring her spouse to Canada. When he received the visa to come to Canada, he did not even bother to call her. There are many of those type of stories when individuals get their visas and do not even call upon arrival at the airport. If they do come, I have seen many instances of the spouses being abused. These stories are heart-rending. There are no words to really describe the pain that these families and individuals go through.

Whether it is on the issue of fraud marriages or whether it is on the issue of unscrupulous immigration consultants, the bill is a step in the right direction. It is a great opportunity for all parties to work together in collaboration and co-operation to come up with solutions that will help put a stop to these crooked consultants and to the issue of fraud marriages.

I look forward to working with the stakeholders involved to develop solutions that will work, so, once and for all, we can ensure that these unscrupulous and crooked immigration consultants are put out of work and that all people operate above board, following the proper policies and procedures for people to come to Canada in hope for a better future and a better life.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member for Brampton—Springdale has a lot of issues in that area. I have listened to all the presentations that have taken place today and the debate really focuses around the broken immigration system.

I am sure the member will agree that the waiting line is too long for spousal immigration, economic immigration, family reunification. The crackdown on the consultants really is a microcosm of the major problem, which is the breakdown of the system.

Could she give her thoughts on that?

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has done a great job and I want to congratulate her on her new position as deputy whip for our party and also bringing to light the fact that the system is broken in many ways and does need to be fixed.

I am sure many of my colleagues can attest to the fact of the high volume of constituents coming into our offices with frustration and sometimes even the anger they have at the cases, whether it is trying to bring in family reunification, of being reunited with parents or brothers or sisters, or whether trying to bring in a spouse, and also for people wanting to come here for economic reasons and also other individuals from all parts of the world just wanting to come here simply to experience Canada.

The refusal rates are extremely high. We must work toward a system which is going to facilitate the people who want to come in, the people who are going to return, upon the expiration of their visas, back home to their particular countries, that they will be afforded that opportunity, but the system definitely needs to be fixed.

The bill is a step in that direction, but I hope that we can all work together in collaboration and cooperation among all political parties as we did for the refugee reform that the minister brought through to really get concrete solutions that will work for the people to fix this system and reduce the refusal rates that are going on in embassies throughout the world.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

(Bill read the second time and referred to a committee)