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.