Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 9th, 2008

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Let me raise it first.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes. A point of order.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I hesitate to do that, because we've been drifting astray on Bill C-50 quite a bit. We're here to deal with immigration consultants. In fairness to them, that's where the question is directed, not to Bill C-50. It's the governance and the operation of that. Mr. Karygiannis has gone way afield, I think, and it's inappropriate at this hearing. There will be a hearing for Bill C-50, and he can get witnesses to come in; he can question them about that then. This is not that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes, I allowed some latitude yesterday, and of course that's the danger when you allow latitude. You're getting into the realm now of talking about Bill C-50, when we're really into three items: immigration consultants, temporary farm workers, and--

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

But that's my question, Mr. Chair. It has to deal with it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

And I would discourage that. I'm hoping members won't get into Bill C-50. If they do, of course the chair will have to rule it out of order. But we got on the periphery of this yesterday.

It's not a point of order. Yes, I should correct myself there. It is a point of order, but I want individuals to police themselves on that, please.

So one last question, Mr. Karygiannis.

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

Thank you, Chair.

This will create two streams. Therefore, the backlog will get even longer. The lawyers have said that Bill C-50 will not stand the court challenge. As you are the regulator, and we're looking to engage you further on, do you foresee that what the lawyers are saying will be correct, or do you have another opinion?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I'm going on now to the next questioner.

Mr. Carrier, please.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to this meeting. We are here to gather information from you. My colleague has asked some quite relevant questions. The reason for all that is that we think you are considerably important in the operation of the immigration system. It's not that we have anything against you, but, as you are so important, we at least want to ensure that your organization works well.

Earlier you mentioned that your society didn't operate in Quebec as a result of an agreement. I'd like to have an explanation on that subject.

[Rivka Augenfeld]

It's not that we don't operate in Quebec. We have members there, and, in practical terms, they are subject to regulation by the various federal agencies, such as CIC, the IRB, the agency and so on. As regards cases handled through Immigration-Québec, such as sponsorship or the investor program in Quebec, they are the responsibility of Quebec's department of immigration and cultural communities, and that isn't regulated for the moment.

We've discussed that and we're still discussing it, but it's not being done for the moment. We would like it to be done because that would complete the picture in Canada. To date, the other provinces have undertaken to respect the fact that a person can be or not be an authorized representative. We have good hopes that Quebec will consider it important to do the same thing.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Letters have been sent to the Minister of Immigration. One of your members who met with us last week told us about problems raised earlier about which she had not received an answer from the minister.

Among my documents, I also have a letter from the Canadian Bar Association addressed to the same minister concerning the doubts raised by her about your ability to protect the public, as the mandate requires. Are you aware of those letters. Has the minister requested an explanation concerning those doubts expressed about your organization?

[Rivka Augenfeld]

We are aware of some letters, but we don't know about all of them, since the minister does not inform us of all the letters she receives. I think that's the reason why we're giving you all the documentation we have. There are a lot of perceptions and impressions about what our society does. I urge you to visit our Internet site, which was created with the highest degree of transparency possible, including codes of ethics and so on.

As my colleague Mr. Ryan said, the problem lies in an inability to prosecute unauthorized persons. In our submission, we ask that this problem be solved, that penalties, harsher sanctions be imposed by the government. In my opinion, consideration should nevertheless be given as well to the limits that are those of any professional body and that all these accusations should be reviewed in detail. As your colleague said, we have been in existence for four years, and we are doing more and more things.

[John Ryan]

Quite frankly, Mr. Carrier, there is a process within our bylaws, which is democratic, for this member to voice her concerns and share them with other members. If the members agree with her, then the members will do the needful and vote for different boards of directors.

We were kind of surprised that she would bring this committee into the affairs of what is an arm's-length body, which has a process approved by the industry ministry, and have you involved in the internal affairs of our organization. We certainly are not against giving you answers and being hands-open, but on the other side of it, there is a democratic process--and the standing committee is not it--within our bylaws.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

I have another question on the conduct of your meetings. Earlier you said that there was no quorum and that was the reason why members were unable to speak. According to your by-laws, 20% of members are required for there to be a quorum. Since last week, we've travelled across Canada and seen the size of the country. For Canadian society, it is really difficult, virtually impossible, to obtain such a quorum. Professional associations usually require much less than 20% to ensure that members interested in the operation of their society can at least legally take part in a meeting.

Have you considered reducing that percentage or amending that by-law?

[Rivka Augenfeld]

Thank you for your question, Mr. Carrier.

As we said earlier, the annual meeting is held online. So if you were a member of our society, you could log on to your computer at home and take part in the meeting. You wouldn't have to travel or spend a cent to do so.

We're also convinced that 20% is not an extreme figure. It enables members who are in Dubai, Hong Kong or anywhere to take part. Some will have to get up in the middle of the night, but that's not as bad as having to travel physically. We are convinced that, when the meeting is held electronically, 20% is not excessive. If people choose not to participate, they can hardly then complain that they were unable to speak. If there had been a quorum, we would have held a duly constituted meeting. We would then have seen what that looks like.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Carrier, we'll give you another question, because the answers were unusually long.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

I would like to add a comment.

Your explanation shows that you have tried to facilitate participation, but if it doesn't meet your requirements, you can consider lowering those requirements. You do business with human beings who are not all equally inclined to take part, and that victimizes those who are convinced they want to do so.

[Rivka Augenfeld]

We're obviously examining what must be done. We have a process to follow and members to make decisions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

We have about five minutes left, and this will complete our five-minute round.

I'll go to Ms. Grewal, who is sharing her time with Mr. Khan.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I would like to thank all of you for coming here. Thank you so much for your presentations. We really appreciate them.

I have very simple questions for you. The first one is, what steps should one take to check for the consultants' legitimacy and reputation?

[Imran Qayyum]

That's an excellent question.

I think the first step is to go to the CSIC website and ensure that they are an authorized representative. The membership list was constructed specifically for that. It was an authentication tool that, from the beginning, we realized we had to make available to anybody, 24/7, 365 days a year, no matter where they are. It's not possible and it's not logical to expect someone to wait until 9 a.m. Toronto time to call up the CSIC office and say, “Is Imran Qayyum a member or not?” You go to our website. Our list is there, and it's updated in real time.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

How should one hire an immigration consultant?

[John Ryan]

I think certainly by doing due diligence. I think anyone who's going to hire an immigration consultant or hire someone to prepare their taxes has to first be aware and actually go to the government website or CSIC's website to see what the law is.

Obviously, for an authorized representative, we have gone through steps to verify the veracity and the competency and have provided insurance and mechanisms of protection for the client. But in the final analysis, it's the client who's going to decide who they're going to hire, whether they do it themselves or whether they hire a representative.

I think we need to make many efforts at the front end to get information into that consumer's hands to empower them to make that informed choice, because then it just remedies a whole bunch of pain later.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

The last question is, what steps, if any, should we take to encourage victims to report abuse?

[John Ryan]

We see a lot of things in our complaints and discipline model. We see, depending on the culture, that some people are hesitant to come forward to us. When they do come forward to us, they want to be anonymous. They don't want to have their evidence publicly displayed at a tribunal. We have a number of challenges there. We have looked internally at our policies for how to accommodate that.

We encourage the public to tell us about problems, and not only problems with our members, but also problems of unauthorized practice, people who aren't our members, because we're tracking them. We're building an intelligence base. We're trying to get harder figures to go to our government partners, to the committee here, to tell how many non-jurisdictional and what kind of non-jurisdictional complaints we're getting. And we do pass on these non-jurisdictional complaints to the policing agencies, and we follow up.

Just because you aren't a member of CSIC doesn't mean that we're not going to get involved. We are.