Thank you.
Good afternoon. Bonjour.
My name is Ross Eastley, and I am present today to address the committee in my capacity as the managing director of the new Canadian Migration Institute, CMI.
I am here with Dawn Moore, who will be doing part of the presentation, as well. She is a board member of the Canadian Migration Institute and is chair of the institute's education and accreditation committee.
I would like to thank the chair and the committee for allowing us the time to speak about CMI and the importance of its work to the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, the members of CSIC, and the Canadian immigration system.
Today I will outline the context that led to the creation of CSIC and CMI and explain how the two organizations help address long-standing issues related to the immigration consulting industry. I'll make some recommendations for making them even more effective.
The Canadian Migration Institute is a wholly owned subsidiary of CSIC. CMI's mandate is to educate, advocate, and accredit. Let me expand on this. CMI operates independently of CSIC to provide educational and professional developmental opportunities in both of Canada's official languages for consultants working in Canada and abroad.
It conducts conferences and workshops for certified Canadian immigration consultants and other professionals who provide immigration-related advice who are looking for continuing professional development credits. One of the key benefits of creating CMI is the promotion of a wider range of professional development opportunities, including more professional development programs and workshops in French.
Additionally, CMI is undertaking the development of an online immigration practitioner program, which is the key part of the application process for membership in CSIC. The online immigration practitioner program will be available in both English and French. By having the program available online, access will be available to potential CSIC applicants from outside the major metropolitan areas.
The advocacy arm of CMI will promote the profession to interest groups and within the immigration council community. It will foster goodwill and greater understanding of the profession by advocating best practices and by building greater public awareness of industry-specific issues.
By entrusting the work to the new CMI organization, CSIC is now able to focus on its primary role as regulator, specifically as it relates to consumer protection and member accreditation. CSIC has accomplished much in this regard. CSIC has, for example, put in place membership standards, an ongoing requirement for continuing professional development, an enforceable code of conduct, a credible complaint and discipline mechanism, and an errors and omission insurance requirement for immigration consultants.
CSIC works from an established, comprehensive strategic plan and multi-year budget plan. The externally prepared audited financial statements are provided to the CSIC membership.
Even with the long history and level of effort it took to create CSIC and move forward on regulating immigration consultants, there remains much work to do. The creation of CMI will allow CSIC to focus exclusively on this work.
Governments have been considering the regulation of immigration consultants for more than 20 years. There has been a tremendous effort expended by courts, commissions, advisory committees, governments, and immigration consultants, all of which ultimately resulted in the self-regulatory model of CSIC.
In 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Law Society of British Columbia v. Mangat decision that the federal government has jurisdiction over matters related to immigration. The ruling came out the year following the Cory commission report prepared for the Attorney General of Ontario, and a similar report in Quebec, which recommended that paralegals be self-regulated. It should be noted that the law society did not wish to regulate paralegals at that stage.
In 2002 the third and fourth reports of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration recommended that regulation of immigration consultants be a priority. Recommendation 48 of the 4th report of the Standing Committee in 2002 reads:
Once...consultants are regulated and their marketing practices made subject to a professional code of conduct, they should be encouraged in their promotional activities.
That same year the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration created an advisory committee to identify the various problems within the immigration consulting industry and proposed recommendations on how to regulate and improve the industry. The committee comprised lawyers, immigration consultants, government representatives, members of the community groups and coalitions serving immigrants and refugees, and academics. After six months of work, the committee issued a report containing 37 recommendations, 36 of which were adopted—and again I have included a copy of the report.
As a result, the Government of Canada then made amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection regulations, which took effect in 2004. From that point on, all practising immigration consultants in Canada must be members in good standing of CSIC, a Canadian law society, or the Chambre des notaires du Québec in order to advise, represent, or consult for a fee on matters related to immigration.
Contrary to representation made to this committee earlier this month in Toronto, this means that membership in CSIC is not voluntary if an immigration consultant wishes to be an authorized representative.