I want to thank our officials for being here today.
This is a very sensitive issue. It's a very serious matter, something which the committee felt was very important to study, as you can appreciate. The use of our immigration system, or an immigration stream within our immigration system, to promote illicit activities and abuse of spouses, I believe is something we can do a fair bit about by at least trying to, if not eliminate it, severely reduce what is happening.
Over the years, we have heard of many cases of women who come here who are very vulnerable. They often come here from poor countries. They come here for a better life and once they get here, unfortunately, some of them don't anticipate the violence and the abuse that the person who is sponsoring them imposes on them. It's quite sad.
More recently, in the Ottawa area we heard of a case of a woman who sponsored a man who came over here and ended up beating her up. It was front page news, I believe. That's another sad situation. People come over here for the wrong reasons.
I'm really pleased that we're studying this. I thank all members on all sides of this house because I believe this is one study that, because of the fundamental unfairness of the whole thing, we can be united on a lot more areas than perhaps we normally have been in the past.
I'd like you to elaborate if you can, Mr. Orr, or any of the officials, on what measures CIC has taken in the past to address some of these issues, where there are forced marriages, spousal sponsorship abuse, or even polygamy.