Thank you.
Good afternoon. Thank you, Chairman and members of the committee. As you said, I'm Sylvia Cox-Duquette and I'm the senior general counsel for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. I want to thank you for your invitation to appear before you today.
I thought I would talk about the IRB's policy for handling complaints regarding unauthorized paid representatives--in other words, those persons who are targeted by this new bill.
This is the third time I've appeared before the committee, and of course following my opening remarks I'd be pleased to try to answer any questions you may have.
By way of background, and I think most of you here have heard this before, here are some background stats. The IRB is Canada's largest administrative tribunal. Our members make anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 decisions annually, and our mission, as you know, is to resolve immigration refugee cases efficiently, fairly, and in accordance with the law. We fulfill our functions presently through three divisions: the immigration division; the immigration appeal division; and the refugee protection division.
I'd like to speak specifically about the proposed legislation, Bill C-35. As this committee knows, the IRB has no role in policy-making. This is the responsibility of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. But I did want to assure the committee that the IRB will of course implement any resulting legislation professionally and effectively that falls within its responsibilities.
I think it would be important to begin by explaining how we categorize counsel who represent individuals who appear before the IRB. You'll recall that on April 13, 2004, regulations were introduced that defined who may for a fee represent, advise, or consult with an individual who is the subject of any application or proceeding related to their immigration or refugee status.
Obviously, the current immigration and refugee protection regulations require that a person must be an authorized representative, someone who is a member in good standing of the bar in any province, or a member of the Chambre des notaires du Québec, or a member of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, CSIC. But it's important to remember that under the current act—and this will continue under the new Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act--that hasn't been changed. Any individual can represent or advise a person with respect to their IRB proceedings pro bono, for free. If a fee is to be charged, then the person must be a member of either the applicable law society, Chambre des notaires or CSIC, or whatever body is designated to regulate non-lawyers and non-notaries.
Obviously, the legislation is designed to protect claimants, appellants, and persons concerned who typically may be vulnerable--for example, newcomers to Canada who may not have a support system, who may not know the language or understand the immigration and refugee system. We want to protect those persons from unscrupulous or incompetent people as advisors.
I won't go through the definitions further. I'll skip right to how we deal with and how we control our proceedings before the board in order to do the best we can to preserve the integrity of our proceedings, and to prevent unscrupulous or incompetent counsel from appearing before the board, be they lawyers or immigration consultants.
We have a policy. It's been in place since April 10, 2008, and is called the policy for the handling of IRB complaints regarding unauthorized paid representatives. This policy was introduced to address specific concerns regarding the charging of fees by counsel who had declared themselves to be unpaid. Under this policy, the chairperson of the IRB or his delegate may prohibit counsel from appearing before any division of the board, and it provides the board with a mechanism for ensuring that only those representatives who meet the criteria outlined in the regulations may appear before it.
This policy sets out, obviously, the IRB's approach to the treatment of complaints against unauthorized representatives who may be charging a fee for their services. While it's not the primary responsibility of the IRB to monitor compliance with the provisions of the regulations that govern counsel, we don't overlook contraventions of the regulations.
One of the things we do, which I can get into in greater detail later, to prevent unauthorized representatives who are charging a fee from appearing before the board is that when a claimant commences proceedings before the board, he's asked to say whether he will be represented and to say who he will be represented by. It's then determined whether the person he's chosen to represent him or her is either legal counsel, a member in good standing of the provincial law society or Chambre des notaires, or a member in good standing of CSIC.
If the person is proposing to have someone else represent them—in other words, an unauthorized representative—then both counsel and the claimant must sign a declaration indicating that the services of the counsel are being provided for free. It doesn't stop there, because of course someone can sign a declaration and we may get information or we may learn during the course of a hearing that we have some doubts as to whether the person is being paid, despite their declaration to the contrary. At that point, we will question the counsel and the complainant or we will look into any information received from another source on that to ensure that the person is not charging a fee.
If for some reason we're not satisfied with the explanations we are given, then at that point we go full blast into our policy. We do an investigation. If it turns out we determine the person is charging a fee for that service, then they will be prohibited from appearing before the board.