I was the national chair during the passing of IRPA, so I've appeared in front of this committee a few times for different things over the years. I'm pleased this time to be in a situation where we actually applaud the government for the legislation. We think it has been long in coming. There was a gaping hole left in the previous scheme, where there was nothing to cover the unregulated consultants. We're very happy to see that the minister has acted and is proposing something that would close that hole.
Chantal has already said that what our consistent position has been over the years is that this is essentially giving legal services, and like any other area—criminal law, civil law, or family law—it should be restricted to those who are sufficiently trained in order to protect the public interest and the integrity of the immigration program. It should be restricted to lawyers and members of the Chambre des notaires du Québec.
In any event, it's possible that at this time the committee and the government are not willing to go that far. The government essentially has three choices: limit all immigration activity to lawyers; delineate which services should be done by lawyers and which could be done by consultants; or allow both consultants and lawyers to do the whole works.
If consultants are going to continue to be permitted to provide immigration services for remuneration, it's imperative that they be properly regulated. It is our submission that CSIC has not functioned to properly regulate and that the problems are inherently structural--they're not personality... But there are structural problems with the way it was set up and that needs to be corrected.
The main problem is a lack of accountability. The result is that the public interest is not protected. There isn't adequate enforcement of ethical, professional, and competence standards and something needs to be done about that.
We think there are some good mechanisms in the bill, but it doesn't go far enough.
The organization that is doing it--partly because of the structural problems--has become mired in allegations of financial impropriety, governance issues, and conflict within the organization. It needs oversight. It needs some kind of accountability to correct that.
The minister proposes to have the power to designate the organization, which is more or less what happened before. We're saying that there need to be some companion powers that go with that power to designate an organization in order to create effective accountability and oversight.
Specifically--and this is set out in more detail in our brief--there needs to be an explicit power to revoke that designation. We submit that there should be a regulatory power to create regulations setting out the conditions that should be considered and factored into such a decision to properly exercise that discretion.
We believe that CSIC brought up the concern about that power being used for political reasons, so they didn't want the minister to have that power. But we don't see an alternative to granting the minister not only that power, but more power. We see that it's likely they will end up in litigation, so you want to be very express about the power to revoke and the factors that must be considered, which would likely be the failure to protect the public interest or act in the public interest in their deliberations.
There are two powers given to the minister. One is the power to designate. The other is the power to compel the provision of information. There is no consequence for failing to provide that information, so we think that should be there.
We're also suggesting, as a companion to the power to revoke, that there should be a power to appoint a trustee to create a situation for the interim situation. Because you have quite a comprehensive structure right now. You have grandfathering provisions for transition. If things go awry with the board, you want to be able to send in a trustee to run the place and not necessarily throw out the baby with the bathwater.
You can have the structures remain in place at the same time as a trustee. We recommend who could be on that board and what kind of people could be trustees, as they could be right now for interim purposes.
Again, we applaud the government for this bill, but we think it doesn't go far enough.