In your presentations, you both underscored the deficiencies in the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants. That's not new. Everywhere during our trip, people have made extremely troubling presentations to us on problems of governance, democracy and participation. I would even say a general lack of professionalism. Ms. Gauthier, you mentioned problems of data confidentiality. These are comments that were made to us.
I often told people who came to speak to us that this professional regulating body was probably not in the right place. Mr. Ajmera said at the start of his presentation that it is normally the provinces that regulate the professions. That's the provinces' area of jurisdiction. In French, you even used the expression “champ de compétence”. I particularly like that expression because it contains the word “compétence”. The provinces are used to governing the professions because they have done it for years. They have a very big regulatory framework.
The Office des professions du Québec, for example, controls each of the professions. There is an imposing regulatory framework, whereas the regulatory framework that gives the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants a monopoly is only a few paragraphs long. There's no comparison.
Would it be more effective if the provinces controlled the consulting profession through the existing professional control structures? That would avoid the problems of governance, democracy and dubious or debatable ethical strategy. What do you think of that?