Mr. Chair, there are a number of areas that I would like to outline. They fall into legislative changes, and there have been a number of those. Then there have been a number of other activities that have been undertaken, which have been useful.
If we go back to Bill C-10, which received royal assent on March 13, 2012, it gave the CIC minister discretionary authority to instruct officers not to issue work permits to those whose situation could make them vulnerable to abuse or exploitation, including sexual exploitation or human trafficking. It was a major change for us that I think was very positive.
Bill C-43, the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, limited the reviews mechanisms for certain foreign nationals on grounds of serious criminality.
Regulation 4(1) was amended in 2010 to deal with bad faith relationships and gave officers more discretion, more room to move on ways that they could refuse applications. Previously, it had to be that the applicant was entering into the marriage both for immigration purposes and the marriage was not genuine. That level of proof changed.
Also there was an expanded and strengthened spousal sponsorship bar, which changed, and I made reference to that in my opening remarks, that anyone convicted of an indictable offence involving use of violence would be barred from sponsorship.
In October 2012, there was the introduction of the conditional permanent resident status for certain sponsored spouses.
All of these have been significant changes.
On top of that, we've had a lot of work to do with the settlement program and greater awareness of those who are working with new arrivals in Canada so that they are better prepared to deal with some of the issues that come about. There have been major outreach activities as well. I've mentioned the “Welcome to Canada” and “Discover Canada” guides, which are very well used and are quite explicit about some of the issues there.
We have assistance for victims of human trafficking and special means to deal with that. We have special programs for refugees, for women at risk in the refugee program. We've done quite a bit of training with our staff as well, so they are more sensitized to these types of issues and are better prepared to deal with them.