Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 26th, 2014

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

So the immigration officers are the ones with the discretionary powers to decide whether the wife must go back to her country or not on the grounds that the marriage was not legitimate, for example.

[Robert Orr]

Yes, that is correct.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I have another question about the funding for settlement services. Is the money distributed to the provinces proportionately to the number of new arrivals or do you also take into consideration the movement of newcomers after their arrival?

For instance, you can calculate the number of newcomers who arrive in British Columbia, but do you consider the number or percentage of newcomers who move to Toronto after six months or one year, because they found jobs there? What are the criteria for the funding?

[Ryhan Mansour]

I can answer that question.

We actually have a program formula. According to this formula, we calculate the average of arrivals in every province over a three-year period. We give additional weight for the number of refugees each province receives.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

So it is based on arrivals.

[Ryhan Mansour]

Yes, on arrivals, not on secondary moves.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Sorry, but on a question Ms. Blanchette-Lamothe asked, it seems to me it could happen that there would be a conflict between immigration law and matrimonial law where you could end up in a dispute between a man and a woman over a breakup. I don't know how often that happens, but it seems to me it could happen frequently.

[Robert Orr]

Mr. Chair, I think you raise an important point here. I think what CIC is trying to do is deal with the immigration issues, and if there are other factors that need to be considered, we would be referring those to the experts in those particular areas so that we are dealing with the immigration side of it.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

It would just be an awful thing if there was a genuine issue involving matrimonial law and yet under immigration law he or she is sent back.

[Robert Orr]

I understand your point. I think the immigration officers, and especially from the guidelines, would be very sensitive to that sort of situation and would not pre-empt the legal situation for an immigration solution. I think—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Who has jurisdiction? What I'm saying is there clearly could be a conflict between immigration law and matrimonial law.

[David Manicom]

The conditional provision was put into place to help deal with issues of marriage of convenience. There are provisions to deal with situations where a spouse, often a woman, is in a situation of abuse or neglect, but it is the case that it is a conditional status. If the marriage ends, the reason for which the person came to Canada, then their conditional status would lapse and they would be asked to leave Canada. The relationship was the reason they came to Canada, so in that situation, if the person doesn't qualify for other immigration programs, they would be asked to return to the country they came from where normally they have most of their family support. The family support that brought them to Canada has now ended.

That is the conditional status that was brought into place by the government.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

If my colleagues could just allow me, and this is my personal view, not the government's, but it doesn't quite seem fair. If you had a situation of abuse, which is what this study is all about, or one of the things it's all about, if the husband is abusive towards the woman, there could be a situation under matrimonial law, yet under immigration law, if I have interpreted what you said correctly, would she be sent back?

[David Manicom]

No. There are clear exemptions written into the legislation, supplemented by guidelines, such that when the cohabitation requirement is not met because of a situation of abuse or neglect, covering the gamut from violent neglect, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, financial abuse, for these reasons, as documented by the individual to demonstrate that they should not have to return to their home country, they have left the relationship because of an abusive situation, and therefore, they are given reprieve from the conditional status provision.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

We're back to the seven-minute rounds.

Mr. Shory.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Mr. Orr, in your presentation you talked about some 27,500 women who came as principal applicants. Out of that, 15,559 were skilled workers. Obviously, they were educated and skilled women.

We're talking about all kinds of sponsorship abuse. I understand that our government for sure has tripled the funding for settlement services, and we push or encourage it on language ability, etc. When we were talking, it came to mind that there is a group of those who can communicate in one of our official languages, English or French, and there could be some who need our help to improve their language skills after coming to Canada. I wonder if there is any data to differentiate between these two groups and in which group there is more abuse. Do you have any percentages on that?

[Robert Orr]

Mr. Chair, I don't think we have the level of detail to make that correlation at all. I don't think it's possible at the moment.

One point I made in the opening presentation, though, was about the number of women who are accessing our settlement services, and particularly the number who are accessing our language training. I think this is quite encouraging in the broad scheme of things, that it is reaching out to a need. Many women who are arriving in Canada are taking advantage of those programs.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

I'm not a pessimistic man, but let me tell you that I have heard there is abuse of those services as well. Some people simply enrol to get the financial benefit of those services. We'll talk about this some other day.

Let me get into the forced marriage issue. Mr. Manicom said it is different from arranged marriages. Of course it is different.

I want you to tell us about instances of forced marriage. How often do you estimate they occur? What are some of the challenges in identifying cases of forced marriage? Is the department looking at any additional measures to address the problem?

[David Manicom]

I'll start, and Mr. Orr may wish to add something.

Forced marriages are something very difficult to quantify. The known incidence of forced marriages in the immigration system is quite small, and the instances tend to be anecdotal. We are certainly looking now more systematically to track cases when we have reason to believe there was a forced marriage.

A forced marriage will not all that often come to the attention of a visa officer. The victim is normally not going to tell the visa officer that it was a forced marriage, because as the victim, she is fearful that if it became known that had she told a government official it was a forced marriage, she would be put at risk.

There are some numerical indicators. DFAIT'S consular services have dealt with about 100 cases of forced marriage over the last few years. Bob mentioned that the Immigration and Refugee Board sees cases in which forced marriages are one of the reasons for the claim. There have been some studies. One by the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario gave some numbers. I don't have them in my hands, but there were 200 cases, I think, of forced marriages that they had dealt with in the South Asian community in Ontario, but let us remind ourselves that not all of these involved an immigration component; they could have been second-generation persons.

Quantifying it is very difficult. We know it occurs. We know from working closely with other countries that they have these issues as well. Forced marriage indeed is very hard to quantify because it is normally hidden. Sometimes it comes to our attention through tips, through written information, and visa officers can probe. In a small number of cases, the visa officer will feel that it is a forced marriage situation.

Then they have to work very closely with Foreign Affairs or with the CBSA to try to deal with the case in a way that won't further victimize the victim. If we issued a refusal letter saying, “You're refused because your sponsor forced you to marry”, we would be putting the victim at risk, because then the forcer would understand that the person had revealed the situation to a government official. Most of this is about trying to protect the victims and not further victimize them when we come across such situations.

We are looking at a number of possible ways to work more closely with Foreign Affairs, making sure that we have good information sharing. Should Canada look broadly at practices in other countries, if they have a dedicated forced marriage unit? These are all good questions. We're examining every angle we can to see how to ensure that we're doing all we can through the immigration system to prevent forced marriages.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

I want to go back to my first question. I was wondering whether education makes any difference, whether the sponsored spouse, in this case a woman, who has an educational level permitting communication in one of the official languages is less prone to abuse or not. That's what I was trying to get to.

Maybe the department would want to look into this from that angle.

[David Manicom]

I certainly think that's a very good point. We need to make sure we have, through our outreach and settlement services, special community situations, places people can go.

It is always more of a challenge for individuals without good official language skills. I think the translation of materials we're working on and the large increase in settlement funding to enable more outreach activities are probably the most important things we can do.

To be in the communities to deal with these situations pre-arrival is very challenging. We think we can do some more there, but it's in the communities here, with our service providers who are on the ground, that we can make the most progress.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Blanchette-Lamothe.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a few final questions about the conditional permanent residence status.

Could you forward to the committee the criteria used by immigration officers to determine whether a marriage is illegitimate and whether a person should be sent back if the marriage ends?

[Robert Orr]

The operational bulletin that explains this is Operational Bulletin 480, and it's readily available on the CIC website. We can certainly make it available to the clerk as well.