Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank you and the committee for allowing us to appear before you today.
My name is John Ryan. I am the chair and also the acting CEO of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, which is the national regulator of immigration consultants that has come as a result of recommendations this committee made in 2003 to the minister and as a result of a Supreme Court decision and a number of other things.
I want to limit my remarks today to what we are seeing as a regulator in the foreign worker unit in terms of the actual complaints and problems we're seeing at the regulator level.
I will begin talking today about an initiative taken by the Government of Manitoba in which we're seeing great promise. The Minister of Labour and Immigration has announced a new initiative through which they're going to be changing their act, the Employment Services Act, to better regulate temporary worker recruitment agencies within the province.
We think this model can be followed by other provincial jurisdictions, but we would like to call on the federal government to consider its role on a national level to ensure there is one standard, not a patchwork of standards, for controlling the activities of individuals who appear before the federal government's tribunals and in front of HRSDC and the various agencies involved with temporary workers.
The proposed provincial amendment will require all third-party recruiters to be licensed by the province and to be members in good standing of the law society of the province, or other law societies in Canada, and of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants.
We think this is a good thing, because essentially immigration consultants and immigration lawyers deal with foreign nationals who choose individuals to represent them before government for a fee.
We believe that the federal government, unfortunately, is hampered by a number of issues. First of all, the immigration refugee protection regulations stipulate in subsection 13.1(1) that if a person is going to represent someone for a fee--advise, represent, or consult for a fee--they must be a representative of one of three organizations: a provincial or territorial bar, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, or the Chambre des notaires du Québec, and they can only advise and represent and consult on applications before the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, which means there is a problem in that there is absolutely no control on employment agents, human recruiting agents, who are representing people on the LMO process. It's a loophole that needs to be closed.
I share my colleague Mr. Zaifman's concern that there needs to be a coagulation of efforts among government departments to deal with this.
Section 124 is the penalty provision under the IRPA, the general provisions, which is the only provision the Government of Canada can use to enforce unauthorized practice against unscrupulous agents. It's severely limited. It's handicapped. To date, to our knowledge, it has not been enforced. We're concerned about that.
Recommendation 31 of the minister's advisory committee on the regulation of immigration consultants--which is also in keeping with the recommendation of this committee to the minister in its last report on immigration consultants--recommended a specific provision to include a penalty provision within the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to specifically deal with unauthorized practice.
What we're seeing at the regulator is a problem between CIC and CBSA in determining who is actually charged with the enforcement and what measures they can bring to bear to actually control criminally the acts of unauthorized representatives.
We are seeing increasing numbers of temporary workers being abused. They are vulnerable and unsophisticated. We need to have the government look at its HRSDC process and we need the minister to see what can be done in that regard.
I will turn it over to my colleague Wenda Woodman, our manager for complaints and discipline, who can give you more accurate statistics.