Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. It's a privilege to appear before the committee.
Like two of the other speakers, I'm here to talk briefly about the immigration measures, but one thing I want to make clear is that I'm not here to enter into a debate about immigration policy with people like Mr. Grady. I'm here to address what I believe is a simple moral issue, and it's simply this: I think the government has a duty to keep its promises and has a duty to speak in a clear way to all the people it deals with, and to be transparent in its dealings with those it deals with. I'm sure this is a principle that people on both sides of the House would agree with. I believe it should apply to all people Canada deals with, including those who are outside of Canada.
If we talk about the backlog, these people were encouraged to apply and were told they would be processed. Many of the people have received numerous communications since that time and were continuously led to believe that they would be processed.
I understand the government's dilemma. They believe they have a better selection process. As a passing remark, I should say that I've heard that one before. In my 30 years, I think this must be about the seventh or eighth different selection process the government has invented, and it's always the best one, but eventually, a few years later, it's scrapped for something else. But that's not the issue here.
The issue here is that, in my view, the government.... This is where, with all due respect, I disagree with my dear friend Mr. Kurland, in that I believe that the government has a duty to be transparent and clear, and they failed to do so in this case. Because of that, what they're doing is wrong.
I thought the best way to illustrate this would be to tell the story of one of my clients. She sent me an e-mail and gave me permission to read it. This will take me a minute or two to read. I thought it would just illustrate this. She says as follows:
Until today, I can still remember vividly that date of November 17, 2007, even though it was almost four and a half years ago. It was on that date that our family of three—at that time, my son was still in primary school—went to the post office and sent out our application forms, together with the payment, with a great hope for the future. On the way back, we discussed excitedly the new adventure we were going to have in Canada, the new school life, the animals playing around the house, possibly the new member of the family.
I remember that she was from China. Under their one-child policy, she couldn't have a second child in China, so she was hoping to come to Canada so she could have that second child. She had other choices, but she chose Canada. She says:
On November 26, 2007, we got the acknowledgement from the visa office confirming receipt, informing us of the next step, and telling us to start our preparation for moving to Canada. So we were excited and thought that our new life was about to emerge.
We started the preparation. We got to know other applicants through the Internet, we improved our language capacity, and we invested in getting certificates that we knew would help us in our job opportunities in Canada.
Two years from that time, another milestone was reached. On December 4, 2009, we got the request letter from the visa office in Beijing asking us to submit our full package of documents. To us, this is one step closer to the dream come true. We spent enormous time and effort—
—for which they will of course not be compensated, I note.
—in preparing the needed documents. We had to schedule the exams for an English test, travel to different cities to get documents, and we had to ask relatives and friends for support in hard places to reach due to the time constraints.
That's because they're only given a short period of time to get the documents. She continues:
Different from the past two years, where we had kept the application confidential, we had to tell our supervisors and the human resources teams about the move so that they could help us to improve our work experience, and of course that impacted negatively on our career development because companies were no longer willing to invest in our future knowing that we were going to be leaving soon.
Again, we, the family of three, went to the post office and mailed off this package full of joy and full of expectation that soon we would be in Canada. At this time my son was in middle school. We waited and waited and waited, confident in our result, not only because of the waves of affirmation and correspondence we received from the visa office, but also because of the justice and fairness we valued—because that's why we chose Canada as our destination.
I have always trusted that Canada would eventually welcome us, like what the visa office shared with us. It was just a matter of time. Because of that trust, we gave up opportunities to go to other countries, and we could have applied under new streams, but we saw no reason to do so. No one suggested to us that we should. We waited our time in the queue—