Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 25th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll start the meeting. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 28, on Monday, October 25, 2010. Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, September 23, 2010, we are reviewing Bill C-35, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Before we start, the clerk has passed to all of you a budget for the bill we are reviewing. I trust you've all received it. I would like someone to move a motion that this budget be adopted.

[An hon. member]

D'accord.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Merci, monsieur.

All those in favour?

(Motion agreed to)

We will now proceed with Bill C-35. We have two witnesses before us: Mr. Lorne Waldman, who is an immigration lawyer, and Maria Yvonne Javier.

Ms. Javier told me how to pronounce her name before the meeting started, and I appreciate that, because one of my many faults is that I have trouble pronouncing people's names. Thank you, Ms. Javier.

You each have up to seven minutes to make a presentation to the committee. Who would like to go first?

Ms. Javier, thank you for coming.

[Maria Yvonne Javier, As an Individual]

I will go first. It's my pleasure.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to speak before you today. My name is Maria Yvonne Javier. I was a programs director for Multicultural Helping House Society, a non-profit service provider for immigrant settlement and employment services. As an agency, we helped hundreds of immigrants settle in and adjust to their new lives in Canada. Those were the happy stories.

However, we also encountered immigrants and migrant workers who were deceived by what we now refer to as “ghost consultants”. Let me tell you how this happens.

There is immigrant or migrant worker A. That's me. I went to the website, downloaded the forms, filled them out, and submitted them. I'm here without any help from anyone. Then there's immigrant or migrant worker B, who needs an immigration consultant because they don't understand the forms, or they are rich and just want someone else to do it, or they are almost--but not quite--qualified, so they need a creative mind to help them.

A ghost consultant is defined as somebody who is not registered but is giving advice for a fee. The fees could run from $5,000 to $10,000--or even more, depending on how complex the case is. Bill C-35, as I understand it, hopes to eliminate this ghost consultant, who I would like to call “Casper”. He may be a ghost, but he's friendly; this is only business, and there is no swindling involved.

Now let me introduce you to immigrant or migrant worker C, who comes to Canada through a ghost consultant, not Casper, the friendly ghost, but a mean ghost, or a ghost recruiter with a ghost employer and ghost documents. This ghost is also a magician and can magically produce documents that look authentic enough to pass the scrutiny of Immigration and CBSA officers. Once immigrant C is outside the airport, the magician's assistant appears out of nowhere, gives him some Canadian dollars, retrieves all the ghost documents, and disappears into thin air. Immigrant C never sees this person again and doesn't even know the name of the person.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the new ghost: not Casper, the friendly ghost, but a real, live monster. This is not an unscrupulous consultant who charges exorbitant fees; this is a major swindler.

The registered immigration consultants and your so-called ghost consultants, my Casper, are all waiting in fear to see how the bill will affect them. But this new ghost I described doesn't even care what you do, because these new ghosts are nameless and faceless, and believe me, none of the victims will give them up. They will be ghosts as long as there are desperate people who will pay anything to get to Canada. They will be there because the recession has made Canadian employers bold enough to hire illegals and pay under the table.

I'm not expecting you to eliminate this new ghost: a single bill will not do this. These people are experts, with years of experience bringing illegal immigrants to the U.S. and Europe. I just want you to understand that we are not talking about $10,000 here. This is a multi-million-dollar scam. The people I encountered said that there were 10 of them and they were the pilot project. That was in 2009. This is now the end of 2010.

I wouldn't be surprised if by now they have brought in 100 people who have each paid $10,000. That's $1 million. Your fine is $50,000. These ghosts are making a mockery out of our immigration system and have made a fool out of every legal immigrant who had to go through the tedious process. Your jail term is two years. These are not unscrupulous consultants; let's not give them nice names. These are major swindlers. Call them what they really are: criminals.

This is not to say that you should not pass the bill. If you truly believe in your hearts that this bill will eliminate the Caspers of this world, then go right ahead and pass the bill, but understand that Casper is what we call a small fish, and don't forget the big sharks. I have seen far too many heartbroken fellow Filipinos innocently deceived by these new ghosts.

Although I no longer work for Multicultural Helping House, I remain an advocate for this cause. I have put up a company, 1-800-Godmother, with me being the godmother they can run to for help. I will no longer sit back and watch this happen.

While I cannot stop the ghosts myself, I can make sure that the victim recognizes a ghost when they see one. I may be a Canadian citizen now, but I am still a Filipino, and a lot of these victims are my countrymen.

I am here before you today to respectfully request you to please find it in your hearts to understand that these people are victims. If we cannot run after the ghosts, if the ghost documents are so good that our own immigration and CBSA officers cannot tell the difference between a ghost document and a real one, then let us not take it out on the victims and send them back home.

I cannot offer you a solution. This problem has existed for decades in the U.S. and Europe. Canada is the new dreamland, so it's Canada's turn. Maybe this is the price we have to pay for being a better dreamland than the U.S.

Ladies and gentlemen, the future of these ghost consultants and their victims is in your hands. All I can ask at this point is for you to show a little compassion to the victims and show no mercy to the criminal ghost consultants.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Javier. You have a wonderful way of expressing yourself. Thank you for your presentation.

Mr. Waldman, it's your turn. You have up to seven minutes.

[Lorne Waldman, Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I certainly empathize with everything the previous speaker said; however, I think most of what she said are issues that are beyond the scope of this legislation. I agree that it's important not to penalize the victims and to go after the criminals, but having said that, we're now here considering a piece of legislation that is designed to regulate a profession.

I have to make a disclosure in my brief opening remarks; that is, I have represented clients who are in litigation against the current regulator, CSIC. Interestingly enough, one of the issues that arose in that case was whether the Federal Court or any court had jurisdiction, or which court had jurisdiction over CSIC. As a result of our litigation, it's now clear that CSIC, the current regulator, is a federal board and tribunal and therefore subject to review by the Federal Court.

It took a year to be resolved. Now it's clear. I'm in the middle of this litigation. So my knowledge of the current regulator and my concerns about the bill and about this regulatory model are based upon my experience both in the litigation and also with other consultants who I have spoken to.

I firmly believe that regulation of consultants is essential. This comes from my experience in many years of seeing what the previous speaker spoke about: the victims of unscrupulous consultants, many of whom are not regulated and who charged large amounts of money and didn't do any work. In many cases, if they did do work, they did incompetent work that prejudiced the opportunity that some people might have had to go through the system legally.

The victims of unscrupulous and unregulated consultants are many, so it's vital that if the government enters into the field of regulating consultants, they do it properly. There is an urgent need for a good regulatory body, one that provides good standards, educational standards that ensure continuing legal education, because we now have one bill passed last June, another bill currently before the House, and a third bill, all affecting immigration. Regulatory changes are frequent. It's impossible to be a competent lawyer or consultant in this field unless you engage in continuing education, so it's vital that any regulatory body require that its consultants engage in proper education.

The difficulties with the current regulatory body, I think, are in the way it was set up. I know that it was set up under the former government, but the current government plans to continue with the same regulatory model, which I think is highly problematic.

I'm sure you are aware that there are three possible models. One would be self-regulatory. That has been rejected. The other would be a government regulator. That apparently has been rejected. So we are left with this third model, which is a private corporation that gets its power because only members of the corporation can appear for money before the Immigration and Refugee Board or before consultants.

The difficulty with this model as it was set up was that it really left the government powerless to control the regulatory body once it was created. So what we now have is a regulatory body gone rogue, I would suggest; it's a body that the government created but has no power to control. The government can't demand that the body hold annual general meetings. It can't demand copies of the audited financial records. It can't demand that the body create a power so that members can demand a meeting if a certain percentage pass a petition.

These are basic rights that exist in most self-regulatory bodies. The current system does not allow the government to hold the regulatory body accountable at all. That's a huge problem.

The other major problem with the current body is that it doesn't have effective powers to be able to undertake its function. Any body that is a disciplined body has to have the power to subpoena and call witnesses; it has to have broad investigatory powers. The current CSIC does not have that power and I can tell you why that's a problem.

I was involved in a case where I was representing the people who were subject to a complaint by CSIC against them, based on a newspaper article. A newspaper reporter went to the consultant, pretended to be someone, and got the consultant to say things, and there was the suggestion the consultant had acted improperly.

We argued that CSIC couldn't effectively prosecute them because they had no power to subpoena the reporter to come forward and testify before CSIC. Without having the person who is the actual “victim”--and I'll put that in quotation marks--it was impossible, in my view, to have an effective disciplinary action.

On the one hand, you have a body that is not accountable to the government or to the public because it's a private corporation. It's only accountable as far as the bylaws require accountability, and the current bylaws don't have sufficient accountability. On the other hand, you have a body that is charged with engaging in discipline of members but that doesn't have sufficient powers to be able to discipline the members.

So the current model is not one that's working effectively. That's independent of all the difficulties with how it's being run by the current board of directors and all the difficulties I've heard from people and the concerns raised.

The legislation does not really go far enough to address these problems. It gives the minister the power to require certain documents, but it doesn't give the minister the power to impose certain basic governance requirements on the governing body.

So you have a situation now where new bodies are applying, pursuant to the order in council. One concern I have, quite frankly, given the complex nature of creating a regulatory body from scratch, is that I wonder whether the government has really created a situation where the only qualified body will be the current body.

So then you will have gone through this whole process of asking for submissions, looking for a new regulatory body, and sort of being stuck with the current body as being the only qualified bidder, in which case people are going to ask why you went through the process if you thought this current body wasn't satisfactory. So you're seeking another body, and you've created a system where you didn't create the conditions to allow for another qualified body to come forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Perhaps you could wind up, Mr. Waldman.

[Lorne Waldman]

Yes, I'll be more than glad to answer any questions. Those are the key points I wanted to make.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I didn't mean to cut you off.

[Lorne Waldman]

No, that's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I was just trying to warn you.

Okay. We will now go in rounds of each caucus.

Mr. Waldman and Ms. Javier, each caucus has up to seven minutes.

Mr. Oliphant is first.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to both of you for being here.

I'm going to start with a couple of questions for Mr. Waldman and then I have some for Ms. Javier.

So that we separate this from the structural problems of the regulatory body versus the personnel, or the people, or the effect of that creation, I want to do the structural part. We'll leave the other part out.

It seems to me that we've had a confusing set of witnesses from the government side. We thought this piece of legislation was primarily about consumer protection, but the senior officials from the department said it was really about the integrity of the immigration system. Now, those two are related, I understand that, but I'm trying to clarify your thoughts: if this is truly consumer protection, what is missing?

Obviously, I think the department is responsible, with CBSA and other agencies, for the integrity of the system. Consumer protection, it seems to me, requires accountability mechanisms for licensing, for complaints and discipline, etc., and penalties and appropriate abilities to effect that accountability.

On the integrity of the system side, you need independence from the body that these people are appearing from. It would seem to me you need resources to do your work, whether those are legal resources, such as the power to subpoena at a discipline hearing, or resources in terms of going out to the bad guys out there, who are not the ghost consultants, as we are calling them, but the really bad ones. You need resources to do that.

Is this legislation, in your mind, primarily consumer protection or is it about the integrity of the system? What can we do to try to improve both of those things, the consumer protection and the integrity of the system?

[Lorne Waldman]

I think it has to be about both, because the regulation of consultants has a dual aspect.

On the one hand, you have the immigration officials, who are struggling with precisely the problems the other witness described. You have people who are unscrupulous and who don't care about presenting false documents. Their only objective is to make money. They have no sense of any obligation or duty to the system and aren't accountable because they operate outside the law. They operate secretly. I mean, if a lawyer presents a false document, at a certain point that's going to come back and the lawyer's going to be disciplined--and that's aside from the whole issue, hopefully, that lawyers act with integrity.

Independently of that, a lawyer would know that consequences are going to flow, so lawyers have to be careful. If consultants are part of a regulatory body, they have to be careful. So there is the issue of the integrity of the system that's involved, and that's why the bill attempts, in some ways, to deal with ghost consultants. Really, I think the reality is that dealing with ghost consultants is something that has to be left to enforcement and the police, because anything short of that is not going to be really effective.

On the other hand, from the point of view of the users, this bill has to be about consumer protection. It has to be about ensuring we get a regulatory body that serves a dual function, one of ensuring the integrity of the people who operate as consultants, but also one of ensuring integrity vis-à-vis the client, the person who is the user.

There has to be an element of consumer protection, so we have to ensure that the regulatory body, the people who are the consultants, are acting in the public interest, on the one hand--that's the issue that concerns CBSA--but also in the interests of the users. There's a dual aspect. I don't think there's any contradiction between the two. Obviously when you focus on one, you're interested in certain things, and when you're focusing on the other, you're interested in other things.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Before I was on it, this committee recommended a different model. It recommended a regulatory body similar to a law society or to any of the professional organizations that I'm used to in Ontario: stand-alone with a piece of legislation, appointments by order in council, and powers that generate from that. Would that have been your preferred model for this?

[Lorne Waldman]

Absolutely. I think that a regulatory body would have been accountable and would have solved all of the issues in terms of accountability and governance. Also, any regulatory body has all of the effective powers in order to be able to effectively discipline its members, so I think that would be the best solution, without any doubt.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Ms. Javier, I want to ask about your business, 1-800-Godmother. Could you be assumed by some people to be an immigration consultant in that firm?

[Maria Yvonne Javier]

No, I am not.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

But could someone think you were, if you were giving advice to immigrants?

[Maria Yvonne Javier]

No, because I don't give any advice at all. We actually have immigration consultants.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

You have immigration consultants who are licensed, but your business would not have to be licensed. I say that because in the funeral business, which I keep bringing up, the funeral home has to have a licence and is accountable to the body, and the funeral directors have to be licensed and are accountable.

I worry about your business. I'm not questioning it whatsoever, but I'm worried that someone could actually think you were breaking the law because they might think you're giving immigration advice.

[Maria Yvonne Javier]

The licence I have is a recruitment licence, so when people come to me it's because they're looking for a job and they need a new work permit for the new job. That's why I partner with immigration consultants and they handle the work permit side. We handle only the search for employment.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

So it's the employment side. I guess I'm trying to make sure that well-meaning people who are simply walking with somebody are not targeted in this legislation, but that we really go after the bad guys.

[Maria Yvonne Javier]

The bad guys, yes, that's--

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I think we're on the same line here, because there are people who give advice, casual advice--

[Maria Yvonne Javier]

That's true.