Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 4th, 2014

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you so much and thank you for your brevity.

To continue, your organization recently had a conference that brought together government and service provider organizations to raise awareness on the issues of south Asians in Canada. You developed a tool kit for service providers, and there was extensive training on the topic. What would you recommend the federal government do to better protect permanent residents and Canadian citizens in the context of forced marriages?

[Deepa Mattoo]

As I said in my submission, I think the key is the exception to the rule that is there right now for the condition of permanent resident. That has to be expanded explicitly for victims or survivors of forced marriages. That's number one. Number two is that, in case a person actually discloses, at the time of the sponsorship assessment of the file, that this is a forced marriage, there should be protection extended to them as per the international conventions. Right now there is a lack of reporting, and this was very apparent from the report like the survey report that we collected as well. The reason for lack of reporting is that people are afraid that they will actually get punished for reporting.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Right. Do you know of any best practices from other countries that you think Canada should consider?

[Deepa Mattoo]

Most definitely. There are some European countries including the U.K. that have some good practices. But I say that with a word of caution because some of those jurisdictions have also criminalized forced marriages. That is not necessarily the route that Canada can actually afford to take at this point because of the lack of understanding and knowledge of the issue.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you. We're doing great for timing. We'll switch gears to resources and options for women in these situations.

In your opinion are sponsored wives and, I guess, immigrant women in general less likely to report abuse and neglect than native-born Canadians?

[Deepa Mattoo]

Absolutely. One reason is the lack of knowledge and the second, as I said in my submissions—again I refer back to my notes—is the families actually hold them at ransom saying that they will actually get them deported. That's the language used, and it has only become more serious with the condition of permanent resident because now that is a reality. The people who are sponsoring them have better access to the resources. They are better connected to the communities. They know the media well. They know who their MP is. They can actually garner a lot more support in their favour as compared to the person who is sponsored.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Yes, I've actually met many women who were in that situation in my community so I totally understand what you're saying.

What options do the sponsors' spouses, who are facing abuse, have available to them from CIC right now?

[Deepa Mattoo]

Currently there can be a breakdown of the relationship and they are expected to give a stack of documentation of cohabitation, experience of abuse, how the abuse was experienced. “How did you experience this abuse? If there was no reporting, who did you report to?” We basically have to put together an information binder for the officer to look at for this experience. At the end of the day, in spite of submitting all of that, there might be a negative report coming her way because the person being complained against, in retaliation for her reporting, is also submitting documentation.

So in our submission, what we are trying to say is that, once she says that she has been abused, the burden of proof should be relaxed a bit. She should not be expected to prove that abuse in so many evidentiary formats. The cohabitation right now for us has been a problem. If she is saying she is living there but her family didn't let her have access to any paperwork, her family didn't let her open a bank account, didn't let her actually have the PR card when it came to her, how would she prove that she was cohabiting?

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Right. When you meant abuse, you're talking about physical domestic abuse. But if she doesn't have access to a bank account, that's financial abuse.

[Deepa Mattoo]

Absolutely.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I'm sure there's lots of psychological and other stuff continuing.

I'm going to open the floor for both of you, either Mr. Kurland or Ms. Mattoo.

In your opinion what can the government and Citizen and Immigration do to help sponsored spouses integrate and break down some of the barriers that cause these types of isolation that are common? I'm going to throw in another one and then give the rest of my time to you guys. What can we do to help these immigrant women enter the workforce or to improve their education?

[Deepa Mattoo]

My Christmas list says please give the funding back to the agencies from where the funding was taken away. That's the big ticket item I can ask for, but the reason I say that is that my legal clinic is receiving a lot more questions around settlement from the women facing abuse, because they don't have those resources allocated to them anymore. Those resources were taken away, without putting them back into the system. Where do these women go then?

They have to call somewhere, and they will call a legal clinic, which probably can do the least for them to find a job. In terms of the job situation, we need to think about them as the currency of this country. They can work, and they have a human capital. They are not—sorry for my unparliamentary language—dead meat, right?

They can be very useful, but we don't provide them with those opportunities. We don't provide them with those spaces where they can get themselves the right kind of job, and the right kind of training.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Mattoo.

Mr. McCallum.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

One quick question to Richard Kurland on statistics, and then I want to get to what I think is the core issue.

When you talk about processing times and not getting recent data, I agree with your sentiment except I have numbers from the department, and the latest period is—perhaps not the very latest—the 12 months ending March 2013. The first year available is 2007, and it shows processing time is way up. Families from 13 months to 40, spouses from 11 to 17, live-in caregivers from 23 to 38.

I agree with your sentiments on processing times, but given the department's own numbers, I can't see why you're saying they're down.

[Richard Kurland]

I used the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

That's what I'm using.

[Richard Kurland]

The data sets are from Statistics Canada, and I'm pleased to share current data that's extracted. The word “families” might be compounding parents and grandparents into the spousal category for a seven-year period. Anyway, those are details.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I have the numbers, which maybe are not the latest, but they're up to March 2013, which is quite recent, showing major increases for families, also for spouses, also for parents and grandparents, but that's not the main topic of the day.

The main topic I got, and Ms. Mattoo mentioned it, is there's a huge dilemma here. If a woman is abused or in some sense hurt, if she brings this forward she risks deportation because this proves the marriage is not genuine, whether it's forced or a marriage of convenience or whatever the terminology might be.

I want each of the three of you to respond. First is a legal question.

If the woman can prove abuse, but the marriage originally was genuine, then she would not be deported, I assume. Under what circumstances is there a true risk of deportation because of a marriage that for whatever reason has gone bad?

Second, and more importantly, what can the government do about it? We are the committee that is supposed to make recommendations, so to me the crucial question of the hour is, what can we do to help in this critical dilemma that these women face?

[Deepa Mattoo]

I don't want to confuse forced marriages with abusive marriages. There are two distinct categories.

One category is where the marriage is void or voidable ab initio because it was performed without consent. This will be a pure forced marriage. The risk is that if she comes forward and says this was void ab initio, the officer will have to say this whole sponsorship needs to go out the window.

Then her option would be to make an application on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, in which there is no assessment of the risk. My recommendation is government should assess risk for these victims or survivors of the forced marriages when that stage comes.

For the situations where the marriage started as a genuine marriage, but became a situation of abuse, right now she can report it. In more cases than less, what happens is before she can report it to Citizenship and Immigration, she makes a 911 call, or somehow reaches a social service agency, which involves the justice system or not, depending on her situation. She might be very shameful; her community might not support her if she goes to the police, so she chooses not to do anything about it, or do something about it.

In either situation, Citizenship and Immigration Canada runs an A44(1) report on her, looking into whether she used the system, or if she was a genuine, sponsored person. In those cases, as I mentioned before, the burden of proof on the women is very high. They're supposed to prove too many things for the abuse they have experienced, and that burden of proof can be lowered—

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

There is less than a minute and the other two haven't spoken. Can you please tell us what you think we should do? There isn't much time for anything else.

[Richard Kurland]

When I hear sponsorship, there are two flavours, chocolate and vanilla, overseas and inland. I assume we're not extending Canadian resources to protect the overseas sponsor. If it's just inland, inland processing times are about 18 months to 24 months. It's case-by-case adjudication.

The solution is extending the current policy solution of the two-year conditional landing. The same mechanisms that we are using now to combat marriage spousal abuse can be extended to this category. The government has already provided a solution. The policy is to consider an extension of it to this deserving group.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Kamateros, the time is up but we'll give you a minute.

[Melpa Kamateros]

We feel that there should be more leniency regarding the cases if there is a case concerned with conjugal violence, there should be an exemption for the victim, and she should be able to stay in Canada and not be deported.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Leung has some questions.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Again, it's always a pleasure to hear Richard Kurland share with us his analysis in such a succinct way.

I was looking at trends, justice, and processing times, but I also want to comment that in a lot of these marriages that essentially end up in abuse, the precise reason that happened is because the family wants to have control over the woman, over her case. A lot of them are precisely in a situation where the family wants to keep them from having access to that information. I heard a lot of suggestions that we should provide this information, but if access is not available for this woman to even get out of the house, how can that be of any help?

I want to start with Richard first on this. Can we take that extra step and look at these women coming in who have a potential for being abused and say why don't we raise the age of consent? Why don't we have a certain linguistic ability? Why don't we have a certain level of literacy in their native language or in one of our official languages? Would that help?