Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 12th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

The meeting will come to order.

We are here today to consider order in council appointments of Berto Volpentesta, Benjamin Dolin, and Dominique Setton-LeMar. Welcome here today. We also have Krista Daley, director general of operations.

We will examine the appointments between 3:30 and 5 o'clock, if that's okay with committee members. I'm allowing a half hour at the end here because we have a couple of things we want to do, and we also will consider the report of the chair on our planned committee travel. I went to the subcommittee on budgets yesterday, so I think we should have a chat about that.

For the benefit of the appointees and the committee members, I will read from Marleau and Montpetit, pages 875, 876, and 877. It says:

The scope of a committee’s examination of Order-in-Council appointees or nominees is strictly limited to the qualifications and competence to perform the duties of the post. Questioning by members of the committee may be interrupted by the Chair, if it attempts to deal with matters considered irrelevant to the committee’s inquiry. Among the areas usually considered to be outside the scope of the committee’s study are the political affiliation of the appointee or nominee, contributions to political parties and the nature of the nomination process itself. Any question may be permitted if it can be shown that it relates directly to the appointee’s or nominee’s ability to do the job. A committee has no power to revoke an appointment or nomination and may only report that they have examined the appointee or nominee and give their judgment as to whether the candidate has the qualifications and competence to perform the duties of the post to which he or she has been appointed or nominated.

I will now go to the nominees. Is there a general statement by the nominees, first of all? Okay, I'll pass it over to you.

[Dominique Setton-Lemar, Member, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada]

I can go first.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members. My name if Dominique Setton-LeMar.

I'll give you a little bit of a brief background. When I was an infant, I immigrated to Montreal with my parents in the early 1950s. I was raised in Montreal and attended elementary, high school, and CEGEP at Sir George Williams before the CEGEPs were even built, and then attended McGill, where I obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English. I then attended the Faculté de droit de l'Université de Montréal, because I knew I needed to improve my French, so I decided to do the law degree in French. I graduated in 1978.

While I was there I got married and I became a mom. So I decided to write my bar exams a little bit later. Then I had twins, and “later” occurred 17 years later, in 1994. In the interim, I went into financial services, where I learned about business and financial services, etc. I returned to law in 1994, when the twins were 12 or 13 years old. I wrote my Barreau exams and did upgrades in the Faculté de droit. They called it des cours de rafraîchissement. I articled in Montreal and was finally sworn to the Barreau du Québec in 1997.

I returned to Ottawa, where I was living at the time, and started a solo practice in Hull. At the time it was called Hull; I think it's now called Gatineau. I practised in family law and immigration, and that is how it started. I love the immigration part of my practice. I love the people, the issues; I was instantly drawn to it. However, I found it hard to be solely in private practice, so I looked for contracts or other projects to make a little bit of extra money. I wound up working in many areas, either on contract or however it worked out, in maritime law, trademarks, and aboriginal law. Finally I found myself in Hamilton as a compliance manager for TransUnion Canada, which is a credit bureau. Two years ago I was hired as an investigator for CSIC in Toronto. Since then I have worked in administrative law in the complaints and discipline department, investigating members of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, in the context of immigration.

At the CSIC conference last spring, a speaker mentioned that were 40-plus openings at the Immigration and Refugee Board. I made a note of it, and later on that weekend I went on the website and I decided to apply.

So here I am.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Mr. Volpentesta.

[Berto Volpentesta, Member, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada]

My name is Berto Volpentesta. I'm a first-generation Canadian. My parents emigrated from Italy in the early 1950s with their two infant daughters. My father was a skilled craftsman and was self-employed as a construction renovations repair worker of homes. My mother managed the household and raised the children, as well as working in a factory to make ends meet.

I was born and raised in one of the more ethnically diverse areas of Toronto. I have in fact been living the multicultural experience all my life. I attended high school along with adults and youth, and I think there were about 140 countries represented at the high school I attended. I made mention of that in my valedictory speech, where I pointed out that diversity might in fact be the strength we could draw upon as we moved forward in our lives.

When I was 16, my father suffered a serious illness, so I had to work while finishing high school and my two university degrees. I graduated from York University in 1988 with a specialized degree in public policy and administration. I focused on international relations, national policy, and defence. When I graduated there were few opportunities to enter that particular field, so I tried to gain some work experience. I worked for the Canadian Cancer Society as a fundraiser and a coordinator.

Around the same time, I was volunteering my time coaching a youth hockey team, and in that particular year we went to the finals. I could see the excitement on the kids' faces and I sensed their sense of accomplishment. This was in part what drew me towards teaching. I took employment as a curriculum coordinator with a youth newspaper. I became a mentor for the adult literacy program in a library close to where I lived. I also took volunteer positions as a teaching assistant in some of the schools around where I lived.

When I applied to teachers' college, I was selected as one of the 10,000 applicants who had applied during that year. I graduated in 1991 with a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Toronto. I was on the dean's list, and I was certified to teach politics and social sciences, and later I picked up law and English as a second language as my other teachable subjects.

As I graduated from teachers' college, a friend from university days, who was working for a social service agency helping immigrants and newcomers to settle in Canada, mentioned something about a backlog and the plight of some of the people in that backlog. He said it would fit the background I had in public policy and that I could help a lot of people; he thought it would be a good thing for me to do. It sounded very interesting, and that's how I started in the immigration business. Seventeen years later, I'm still practising immigration, and during that time I have found ways to combine my education with my business.

I became involved with the professional organizations that were around at that time, including the Organization of Professional Immigration Consultants, then later the Association of Immigration Counsel of Canada and, finally, when they merged, the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants. I participated on a voluntary basis in those organizations as a committee member for education, as a chair of the education committee, and as second vice-president responsible for national education. I became the first ever secretary of the merged association, and I became the first ever paid executive director of the new Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants. I also served in the industry, volunteering with the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, the regulator of the consulting industry, as a member of the exam review committee. I was also served on the disciplinary council of the society.

In March 2001, I was blessed with the birth of my daughter. By early 2002 my business partner was saying that he didn't want to do immigration anymore. It was a good time for me to re-evaluate where I wanted to go. I thought that being an IRB member would be a good thing to do, considering my experience and my goals, and all of those things.

So I reviewed the IRB website and then applied in August 2002. I went through the whole process at that time and made it to the list of those waiting to be appointed. But the term expired, and I reapplied in December 2006. I followed the application again on the IRB website, and by July 2007 I had received a notice that I had to be re-examined under a new process. I complied with all of that.

In late January or early February 2008, I received a phone call asking me if I wanted a position on the IRB. Of course I said yes, and I started turning my attention to how long I would need to wrap up my affairs. So I start my appointment on May 1, 2008.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Mr. Dolin.

[Benjamin Dolin, Member, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, members, for this opportunity to appear before your committee.

As you perhaps know, I held the position of analyst at the Library of Parliament from 2001 to 2006, and I worked with this committee during that time.

Before coming to work on the Hill, I was a lawyer in private practice in Victoria, British Columbia, where I was called to the bar. I did a fair amount of litigation, but about a third of my files involved immigration and refugee matters. I did everything from refugee claims and deportation appeals to bringing in temporary workers for local high tech employers. In my time in British Columbia I appeared before all three divisions of the IRB's Vancouver office.

I came to Ottawa in early 2000 as a result of my wife's employment and soon found contract work with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, where I prepared staff training materials on the principles of administrative law. I was hired by the Library of Parliament in May 2001.

I joined this committee just in time for the clause-by-clause consideration of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and I was the analyst responsible for assisting the committee in its subsequent study of the immigration and refugee protection regulations. I've also assisted the committee in studies on border security, overseas immigration processing, the Safe Third Country Agreement, the provincial nominee program, settlement and integration, a proposed national identity card, and Canada's citizenship laws, among other topics. So I'm excited to be back here today on the other side of the table, as it were.

In my time with the Library of Parliament I also worked for other committees, but my main assignment, apart from this committee, was as a senior analyst for the Senate Special Committee on the Anti-terrorism Act. I was with that committee for its initial study of the bill in the fall of 2001, and then again when the committee was reconstituted for the review of the legislation, beginning in 2004.

In 2006 I was successful in a competition at the Department of Justice and joined them in May of that year as legal counsel with the security, terrorism, and governance team in the criminal law policy section here in Ottawa. I was at Justice until January 7 of this year, when I began my duties as a member of the immigration appeal division of the Immigration and Refugee Board in Toronto.

I have a BA in political science from McGill, a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Manitoba, and a Master's degree in international law from the University of Ottawa. For my LL.M. program my major research paper was entitled “The Harmonization of Asylum Policy in the European Union: Lessons for North America”. Incidentally, that was turned into a Library of Parliament publication that, although perhaps a bit dated now, should still be available.

I've also written or co-written other Library of Parliament publications, including background papers on Canada's immigration system and the refugee determination process. I also have some volunteer experience related to my long-standing interest in immigration issues. I was a board member of the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society for over three years. VIRCS is a non-profit centre that provides ESL, job training, and other settlement services to newcomers.

After moving to Ottawa I also took part in the Catholic Immigration Centre's host program, where Canadians are matched with new immigrants to help with the acclimatization process. It's an excellent program and one that I highly recommend.

As I mentioned, I've now been with the immigration appeal division for just over two months. My time on the board began with three weeks of full-time training. After that I began sitting on three-member panels with a more senior member presiding. I was soon given the opportunity to preside over three-member panels myself. After a couple of times doing that, I began to sit and hear appeals on my own. I've been doing that for just over a month now.

As you may know, the bulk of the IAD's caseload involves sponsorship appeals, removal order appeals--for the most part criminal removals, and appeals by permanent residents who have been found not to meet their residency obligations. There are also ministers' appeals of immigration division admissibility decisions, but those are apparently quite rare. I haven't seen one yet.

I'd be happy to respond to any questions you may have about my experience as it relates to my appointment or about the process by which I came to be on the IRB.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you to all three of you. Very impressive.

We have a list of people who want to do some questioning, so I'll go first to Mr. Karygiannis for seven minutes. It's a seven-minute round.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you all for coming.

I know leaving one's practice and going to join the IRB is certainly something that has to be considered very quickly. At some point in time when you move from one practice where you make x amount of dollars and there's an opportunity to make $112,000, I believe it is, certainly one jumps into it.

Mr. Volpentesta, sir, are you still a member of CSIC?

[Berto Volpentesta]

I'm currently in communication with CSIC on how to either resign my membership or to put it on leave, as it were, depending on the circumstances.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

If I were to go to the website of CSIC, would I find you listed, sir, as a member?

[Berto Volpentesta]

I would think at this time probably yes, because I haven't resigned. There's a process to go through. It includes making sure your files are given to an authorized representative; it includes settling your client accounts.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

How long does that process take, sir?

[Berto Volpentesta]

It depends on your practice. It could take a matter of weeks, but they want you to do it, I think, within a month or so.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

So you got this appointment, what, a week ago, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, five weeks ago?

[Berto Volpentesta]

I received a phone call in late January, I believe it was, early February.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

So, it's about a month and a half, six or seven weeks. If I were to go on the website, sir, and I were to look at consultant ID M041214, would I be able to send you an e-mail?

[Berto Volpentesta]

I believe CSIC has a system for doing that, yes.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

If I were to send you an e-mail, sir, would it get to you?

[Berto Volpentesta]

I think so, yes.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Okay. If it were to get to you, have you made any representations to CSIC to say, “Look, it's been six weeks. I want you to do something about it. Take my name off the list”? It's not very hard to do. Just go on the website, go down, strike your name off.

[Berto Volpentesta]

Well, certainly, there are a number of things I have to turn my mind to, and that's certainly one of them. The first thing I had to look at was in the interest of the clients and consumer protection, as my regulator has these procedures to follow to make sure the clients were taken care of first. To do that effectively, I needed to find alternative authorized representatives, and that took some time. All these things are going to be taken care of, for sure.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Have you not found new authorized representatives?

[Berto Volpentesta]

I have now, yes.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Okay.

I understand that you said your partner wanted to go out of immigration.

[Berto Volpentesta]

Yes, in 2002, that's right.