Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 25th, 2010

The difficulty I have with the legislation as it's currently drafted is that it doesn't have sufficient requirements to deal with the problems that have arisen with the previous regulator.

In other words, the previous regulator, for example, hasn't had a meeting of its members in several years. It has tried and it hasn't had a quorum--

Conservative

Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON

But you haven't answered my question. Do you think it will offer additional protection?

Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual

I don't see any major improvements.

Maybe the only additional thing I see, from the point of view of the regulator itself, is that the minister will give himself the power to demand certain documents. At the present time, the minister can't ask for, has no power to acquire, anything from CSIC, which is deeply disturbing. I mean, they can't even ask for an audited set of financial statements.

So that is one power, but it doesn't go far enough.

Conservative

Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON

Thank you.

Can you tell us about the vulnerability of potential immigrants to ghost consultants? I'm assuming you've worked with some people in the past. Maybe you could tell us of one or two situations where people have really been taken advantage of or have been in a bad situation due to ghost consultants.

Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual

Yes. I saw a group of Koreans--it doesn't really matter, but they just happened to be Koreans--who showed up in my office. They'd paid a consultant who wasn't regulated something like $50,000 to submit papers. They thought he had submitted them. When we went to check, nothing had been submitted. We went to check on him and he wasn't licensed as a consultant, wo we reported it to the RCMP. They basically said that they didn't have the resources to conduct an investigation because it wasn't big enough.

The problem is that there are huge amounts of fraud, but given the limited enforcement ability that's available and the limited resources, a lot of this fraud is not investigated. Because unless you're talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, it's just not worth the energy.

Conservative

Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON

Chair, I'd like to share my time with Mr. Dykstra, if I may.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Mr. Dykstra.

Conservative

Rick Dykstra Conservative St. Catharines, ON

I'd like to extend that, Mr. Waldman, because one of the things the bill sets out very clearly is that it extends the prohibition to “represent or advise” for a fee to all stages of the application and proceeding. You're still speaking to this as if someone doing some initial consulting work actually is going to be free of not having to be licensed or free of not having to be potentially investigated for his or her work if it is not legal work.

I want to make sure you understand that the bill itself now extends...it's not just once an application has been filed. This bill gives the regulator the right and the privilege to be able to make sure and ensure that the individual or company representing a particular client now has to register, even, obviously, prior to the actual submission of the application.

Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual

Yes, I'm aware of that. I think that undoubtedly is an improvement, but at the end of the day, the extent to which it's going to make a difference is going to depend on the effectiveness of the regulator, and that's where I have a lot of concerns--

Conservative

Rick Dykstra Conservative St. Catharines, ON

Mr. Waldman, you're very much speaking to a number of issues that the regulator will have to deal with under regulation. I understand your concerns. I think some of them are extremely valid. From a regulatory perspective, once the bill has passed, a number of these issues are going to need to be addressed in terms of the rights and privileges and exactly what the responsibilities of the organization will be, but we can't set out in legislation....

We had this discussion at our last committee meeting. where one of our witnesses was upset, because potentially there wasn't enough money for the new organization to work with. It was asked if we are supposed to set a fee within the legislation. No. That work is done once the legislation is passed. The ministry will go into its work in terms of how the regulatory framework will set itself up around the legislation.

So I do think--and I hope you would agree--that a number of your concerns from that specific perspective will indeed be addressed at that stage.

Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual

The problem with the legislation as currently drafted--and it could be fixed by amendment, I would think--is that it doesn't give the minister the power to impose any governance requirements on the regulatory body. It allows for the minister to require documents, but doesn't allow for the minister to.... And for sure, those would be done by regulation, but if you don't have the power to create a regulation that requires the body to have annual meetings, then you can't create that power by regulation--

Conservative

Rick Dykstra Conservative St. Catharines, ON

So it's that part. If we were to--

Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual

You'd have to amend the legislation to increase the power--

Conservative

Rick Dykstra Conservative St. Catharines, ON

So if we were to take a look at that from a clause-by-clause perspective, you're saying this bill would be sound.

Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual

Well, it would be a significant improvement. Remember: there are two concerns. One is the governance concern, which means that you have to make sure that any--

Conservative

Rick Dykstra Conservative St. Catharines, ON

We have no governance now. There's no governance model now--

Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual

Yes, that's right.

Conservative

Rick Dykstra Conservative St. Catharines, ON

--so this is a vast improvement over something that doesn't actually exist.

Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual

Right.

Conservative

Rick Dykstra Conservative St. Catharines, ON

Okay. Thank you.

Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual

I agree with you that it's an improvement, but you need to amend the legislation to allow the minister to acquire specific governance minimal standards that exist with all other regulatory bodies but don't exist here.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you.

Mr. Trudeau.

Liberal

Justin Trudeau Liberal Papineau, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You made a comment, Mr. Waldman, about how dealing with ghost immigration consultants should only be left to enforcement officials. The name of this bill is the “Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act”. Do you feel that this bill does crack down on crooked immigration consultants?

Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual

To the extent that it extends the jurisdiction of the regulatory body to earlier steps in the process, it allows for some level of protection. Having said that, the reality is that my experience with ghost consultants is that to a very large extent they operate outside the law.

On almost a daily basis in my office, I see people who have been helped by and have paid money to people, but when I look to see if their consultant is regulated, he or she is not. At that point, the only recourse is to call the police or the RCMP, or CSIC. As far as I'm aware, CSIC has not been able to effectively do anything about the problem of ghost consultants. That's why I firmly believe that the answer is to clearly delineate when a person must be a consultant. The bill extends that, so that's one improvement I acknowledge.

Once you've done that, the only way of protecting the consumer and the integrity of the system from ghost consultants is by injecting a large amount of money into the enforcement stream.