I probably won't take the full seven minutes. Lorne and I think alike on a lot of these issues, and I agree with everything Lorne has said.
There are three points I want to add with respect to this proposed legislation.
One is that the proposed changes to section 11 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act will allow a visa officer.... Instead of it being mandatory to give the visa, it will now be permissive, which leaves open the door for visa officers to say, “Fine, I don't like you”—for whatever reason—“so even though you may qualify for a visa, I'm not going to give it to you.”
That fits in with the provision for a new section--proposed section 87.3--which allows the minister to give instructions--under proposed paragraph 87.3(3)(d)--to provide “for the disposition of applications and requests”. Disposition of an application for landing is the decision, so the minister can give instructions about the decision.
In my experience, there are individuals who make applications for landing, who qualify, who meet the requirement, and who are not inadmissible, but, for one reason or another, a visa officer doesn't like them because of the job they held. One of my clients had a job for his government. A fairly high-level job doesn't make him inadmissible, on security grounds, doesn't make him inadmissible on criminality, or anything like that, but they don't like him. They're nervous about letting him in.
This gives them the power to refuse that man's landing in Canada for no reason--other than they don't like him because they think they wouldn't have worked for that government. It's a moralistic kind of position.
That's the kind of problem that can be created with it being permissive and with the minister being allowed to have the authority to decide on the disposition of applications, notwithstanding that people apply.
The other problem with the legislation, in terms of the kinds of cases we see, is with the proposed amendments to section 25, which say that if the person's in Canada and they make a humanitarian and compassionate application, it “shall” be considered. If they're outside of Canada, it “may” be considered. So my understanding, from the proposed change to that section, is that the minister intends to say that they will not receive certain humanitarian applications.
Have they come before you and said, “We're inundated with humanitarian applications--we have too many, we can't handle them, and that's why we need this power”? I haven't seen any statistics on an overload of humanitarian applications, but I can tell you what those humanitarian applications are now.
Parliament, in its wisdom, gave the Governor in Council the power to pass regulations about who gets in and who doesn't in the family class, so if you misrepresented about, say, a spouse.... I'll give you the kind of example we see all the time.
Parents are sponsored to Canada, and there are three kids included in the application. The son's in Canada and is the landed sponsor of the parents and the kids. They get their visa five years later. The eldest of the kids, who's still in school, gets married after he gets his visa. He had put off having the marriage—he had to be unmarried in order to come to Canada as a sponsored dependant—and he thought he had to be unmarried until the visa was issued.
So he gets married, flies to Canada the next day, and goes back to sponsor his spouse. He misrepresented. He wasn't allowed to get married after the visa was issued and before he landed in Canada. He didn't know that.
His wife is not a member of the family class. The immigration officer in Canada says to him, “We're not going to take any steps against you, because it was understandable that you didn't understand the law. You didn't do this deliberately.”
So he goes to sponsor his wife and it has to be a humanitarian application. She's not his wife under our regulations. Even though we're not taking any steps against him, his wife cannot come to Canada. As a member of the family class, she can't be sponsored.
And you would not believe how many parents' children are refused landing—6-year-olds, 7-year-olds, 12-year-olds, 15-year-olds—because the parents, in one way or another, misrepresented. Or else their spouses are not allowed to come.
This gives the minister the power to say, “You can't even make the application. We're not going to receive it.” Those are the H and C applications that are outstanding now. To give the minister the power to say “We're not even going to receive those applications” is inhumane.
Now, the minister will say, “Oh, we'll never use it for that purpose”, but you know, we've heard enough times over the years that they won't apply it in one way or another. So for....
I'm not going to go off on side issues, but there are a number of cases where the government said, “We'll never use it that way.” Well, you know, it is used that way, and in the end it hurts people.
Why can't we have transparent laws? Let them act in a transparent fashion, and let them establish to the satisfaction of the Canadian public that we need certain regulations in place at different points in time. They shouldn't have the power to do it all behind closed doors by fiat, and that's what this legislation gives them.
Thank you.