Evidence of meeting #15 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cases.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Lesley Soper  Acting Director General, Enforcement and Intelligence Programs, Canada Border Services Agency
Geoffrey Leckey  Director General, Enforcement and Intelligence Operations Division, Canada Border Services Agency
Jean Cormier  Director, Federal Coordination Centres, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Melpa Kamateros  Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services
Siran Nahabedian  Social Worker for Female Victims of Conjugal Violence and of Domestic Violence, Athena's House, Shield of Athena Family Services
Richard Kurland  Policy Analyst and Lawyer, As an Individual
Deepa Mattoo  Staff Lawyer and Acting Executive Director, South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO)

4:40 p.m.

Policy Analyst and Lawyer, As an Individual

Richard Kurland

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a true pleasure to be here with everyone today.

There are three things: trends, justice, and processing time. I waded through the bank of immigration statistics. I focused on the period recently available, January to September 2013, to get a flavour of what we're really dealing with here on temporary entry. Temporary entry, that's our future.

The results are counterintuitive.

First, on our foreign-student flow, we're betting a good part of the bank on canvassing foreign students as our future immigrants to Canada. Well, between January and September 2013, we had about 50,000 males and 43,000 females. There are 22,000 males, as opposed to 18,000 females, with university education. That's not a terrible variation.

What is a variation of note is foreign workers. Heads-up. During the same period, we documented 125,000 males and 58,000 females. We are relying on the foreign worker flow as the window, the gateway, to our skilled worker programs, our PNP programs. Someone may want to look a little closer at how it is that significantly more males than females appear to qualify for work permits. If ever there was a gender variation, this is it.

In terms of processing times, remarkably no witness has commented on the impact of processing time reduction as it concerns women specifically. Because we have moved to an immigration processing system that is virtually just-in-time inventory, where processing times have cut from half-decades to half-years, in things such as family reunification the cascade of savings provincially remains uncounted.

When I was starting out in this field, three- to four-year delays on family reunification for temporary foreign workers, skilled immigrants, or live-in caregivers with their families were the norm. Well, guess what happens when you leave adolescents in the home country to fester their anger and resentment, splitting families? Impacts on the social support system provincially, impacts on our criminal justice system, and problems that arise due to immigration separation of families. Gone, because of the changes in immigration processing times of late.

Who's the beneficiary? The entire family. But more often than not, for example, in the live-in caregiver program, it was the woman in Canada working for years to access the gateway of permanent residency, leaving a family behind.... And when that family was reunited....Toronto is the example of what happens when you have angry adolescents with integration problems. I want to underline the impact of processing time reductions as it affects this issue.

Finally, on justice, what's going on here in the immigration field should not be considered in isolation of other programs, federal and provincial. We hear from the RCMP, the CBSA, and CIC that it's not enough. This issue is wider than a single silo.

It's an issue of justice. The Department of Justice should properly pick up the baton here and allocate resources, get the stakeholders around the table, and lead in the study of how women in particular are affected by these changes on immigration and other things. When you change an immigration rule, it has a ripple effect across several departments and agencies, federally and provincially. Only the Department of Justice at this point has a program definition that properly encapsulates the capability to study this issue further.

In that connection, my recommendation is this: Immigration Canada has to loosen up on its data policy. There is a written CIC data management policy that denies external departments such as Justice from accessing current information. Even this committee is denied access to current information. The written guideline says this committee shall not receive current data from CIC. Only the minister and CIC officials are entitled to that, which I find odd, given that the mandate of this committee is to oversee CIC. How can CIC withhold current information?

Leaving that aside, I hope CIC will allow for data sharing of the valuable information it possesses from information gleaned from the ground, the field, with other partners such as the CBSA or Justice or other interested parties.

Mr. Chair, my eight minutes.

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you very much.

Ms. Kamateros.

4:50 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

I'll try to give you notice if you're too long.

Thank you.

4:50 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Melpa Kamateros

Hello from Montreal. I will definitely try to be within my time, but I also have a lot of notes.

My presentation will be slightly different because we stress a lot of prevention at the organization. We have a network of services that provide services and activities in up to 15 languages presently in Montreal, Quebec, including two day centres, a shelter, and a community outreach department. We deal only with victims of conjugal and/or family violence.

I'd like to say that 85% of our clients come from various ethno-cultural backgrounds. Last year, 62% of the residents at the shelter were born outside of Canada, and on an average, between the centres and the shelter, we see over 700 cases annually. So this is quite a lot of cases.

My presentation today will be on what it is that we can do in terms of recommendations that have been given to me by both the caseworkers and our cultural intermediaries. Our cultural intermediaries are community workers who are trained in conjugal violence and who deal with matters coming from communities. They do interpretation, but they also provide us with a cultural insight as to how the communities work.

Now, on the issue of sponsorship as it applies to our daily work with victims, particularly regarding vulnerable clientele who present linguistic and other difficulties, last year at the shelter approximately 30% of the women who passed through were women who had been and who were in a vulnerable and precarious position because of their sponsorship or immigration status. Over half of these women had problems communicating in English or French. Their knowledge of basic information as well as their understanding of their immigration and sponsorship status were therefore extremely limited by these linguistic difficulties.

Their situation of isolation was also very high since the women had taken a decision to leave the abusive relationship or were taken out by the police and transferred to our services. Many did not have the support of either their family or their community, and of course, all these factors impacted their vulnerability, making this clientele very prone to being diminished, unemployed, and effectively without recourse or choice of action.

Within our present statistical period—and again I revert to this because for us language is a very, very important issue here in Quebec—severe language difficulties are present in 45% of our new long-term files at the centres, to the extent that intervention has to be done in the language of origin.

In a study we did with McGill University on ex-residents who had left the shelter, we found that in most of the cases where the women were sponsored, it was the husband who was controlling their whole sponsorship and immigration process. We therefore feel it is important that the sponsored spouse be part of the ongoing immigration process from the beginning. A recommendation that we therefore have is that in order to break this isolation and to provide basic information regarding the impacts, obligations, and consequences of the sponsorship, such information should be given to women in the language of origin when the sponsorship or immigration process has begun.

Upon consultation both with our social workers, who work with the clientele, and with our cultural intermediaries, we have decided to give the following observations regarding when and how this should be done. Before the woman arrives in Canada, she should be informed on the Canadian legal system, gender equality, the time it takes to process her sponsorship—as the gentleman before me quite aptly said—her right to access the specialized organizations, her right to free language courses, and also her right to have her documents.

At the community level, because we work with victims and we work with communities, the same information should be largely posted and very visible in the language of origin, in areas that these messages could be reinforced.

When immigrants come to Canada, they should all receive a welcome package in the language of origin that includes the above information and other issues, such as a definition of what “conjugal and family violence” is, the police procedure, Canadian laws, and what resources are available. A potential victim who does not speak English or French would not understand the information given. We are therefore suggesting to have the information readily available in different languages.

This information should also be dispersed in the different community areas in Canada—in religious areas, community centres, and wherever the women and members of the community frequent, including the para-public clinics we have here in Quebec, the CSSSs.

Another solution, particularly for women who are illiterate, is to have this information relayed to them through an audio or a video tool that she would receive as part of a session with immigration.

If a case of conjugal and/or family violence is observed, then the worker should be mandated to immediately refer the woman to the appropriate resources, and help the woman to navigate through the system. This is for a number of reasons: so that she can know what to expect in her situation, to ease her fears, and to provide important information that she may not know, for example, that she has a right to have her important documents, such as her passport, her visa, her medicare card, or any other important papers she needs.

Once the sponsorship papers are withdrawn the immigration agent should question the measure for the withdrawal of the sponsorship papers by the spouse or partner if the violence is not evident. Then the agent should be able to ask more pertinent questions. We highly recommend that the agents be trained on conjugal violence and also on cultural sensitivity. It is also important to note that several types of violence, such as emotional or financial abuse, may not be immediately apparent and this is why the agents should be trained further. They can also refer to the appropriate resources where the agents and the social workers are already trained and can discern the presence of such abuse.

How can we provide better protection to vulnerable women so as to prevent them from being victimized by an abusive sponsor? Of course the training of the agent is very important and again, the agent should be able to refer to a multilingual, multicultural organization that specializes in this.

How can we empower the women?

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Ms. Kamateros, you have less than a minute.

4:55 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Melpa Kamateros

Yes, okay. I will go over the general recommendations that we have, then, because I will not be able to finish: equality of access to information on gender equality, legal system and Criminal Code in Canada in language of origin, mandatory language courses and integration programs, training of immigration agents, establishment of a screening and referral process for conjugal violence, application and procedure for standard humanitarian and compassionate grounds should be accelerated, and dissemination of information on these issues and others through either the ethnic media or community organizations in the language of origin.

Thank you.

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you. You've covered a lot of ground in eight minutes; well done.

Mr. Daniel is first.

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Joe Daniel Conservative Don Valley East, ON

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, witnesses, for being here, in both Montreal and here.

My question is to Madam Mattoo, of the South Asian Legal Clinic. You published a very interesting report titled, “The Incidence of Forced Marriage in Ontario”. You had several recommendations for the government, a few of direct interest to this committee. Recommendation 3 is, “Develop an appropriate risk assessment tool for service providers, which include guidelines on how to deal with forced marriage cases.”

By service providers, who do you actually mean? Are they the visa officers? Can you elaborate on this recommendation?

4:55 p.m.

Staff Lawyer and Acting Executive Director, South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO)

Deepa Mattoo

The service provider in the report is meant for service provision at all different levels: Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the CBSA, the consular officers through the department of foreign affairs and trade, and at the justice level from our different police officers.

For the purposes of the report and the risk assessment in particular, what we envision is that the tool will be consistent at all different levels, including the NGO sector, so that people are able to assess the risk uniformly.

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Joe Daniel Conservative Don Valley East, ON

Another of the recommendations that is of interest is, “Recommendation 7: Creation of a national database of forced marriage resources in Canada.”

Obviously this is important. Can you elaborate on this recommendation?

4:55 p.m.

Staff Lawyer and Acting Executive Director, South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO)

Deepa Mattoo

Currently what happens with the situation of a forced marriage, especially in the cases of repatriation where clients are stuck abroad, or in a situation where a client contacts the clinic in a sponsorship situation and says that they are being sponsored to Canada but this is a forced marriage for them, the help is very band-aid-like in the sense that I will try to connect them to an NGO abroad or an NGO here in Canada on the basis of what I know and what I have taught myself over the last seven or eight years of my work, or what my agency knows.

We don't have any national database that actually has names of all the different agencies and stakeholders interested in this issue. We basically are looking at a one-stop shop that would have all different names of consular services, officers, and agencies that have an interest in these clients and would be able to assist the clients.

We made this recommendation to the department of foreign affairs and to Citizenship Canada at the bureaucratic level as well.

5 p.m.

Conservative

Joe Daniel Conservative Don Valley East, ON

Thank you.

Let me now turn to the Shield of Athena. In your respective organization, do you receive requests for assistance from individuals who are in forced marriages, and if so, what steps do you tell them to take?

5 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Melpa Kamateros

Thank you very much for asking me that question, because I had a whole section on forced marriages that I couldn't get to.

5 p.m.

Conservative

Joe Daniel Conservative Don Valley East, ON

So please go ahead.

5 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Melpa Kamateros

Thank you very much.

Yes, we do have requests with regard to forced marriages. Actually, we are embarking on year two of a project that we've done on honour-based violence. Forced marriage is part of this issue. When we do get requests, they are usually, because of the project we have developed, either through the schools or through the Direction de la protection de la jeunesse, or Batshaw, the youth protection services here in Montreal, Quebec.

We also get clients from the police directly, and we deal with them in the appropriate manner. We have modified our laws for entry to the shelter because of the fact that so many young women—young women without their mothers, who are underage, who cannot, through the rules of youth protection here in Quebec, be allowed admittance to shelters—will go there.

This is one of the things we have done regarding the adaptation of services that exist already in Montreal, Quebec, but it is a relatively new field. We are trying to adapt as many of the services as possible.

I don't know if the social worker, Siran, would like to add anything to that.

5 p.m.

Social Worker for Female Victims of Conjugal Violence and of Domestic Violence, Athena's House, Shield of Athena Family Services

Siran Nahabedian

As Ms. Kamateros said, we've started to work a lot with young girls who are victims of honour-based violence and forced marriage. Often they come through the school system, so they're extremely vulnerable. They're very young and they're very scared. I work mainly at the shelter. We would refer them to the shelter, if that's what they want, and from there we work a lot on the violence they've been through.

Often what we have to do is really reshape their lives. At a very young age, they have to start thinking of being independent, in a way. That involves finding housing and changing their school so that they're safe. Through all that, we continue to give them a lot of support, which can last for many, many months. They are very young, and they are not to be left alone in all of this.

5 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Melpa Kamateros

As well, upon consultation with our community workers, our cultural intermediaries, we have to say that the issue of forced marriages is something that comes up more and more. I revert back to the issue of language; when there is no linguistic access, no information can get through to communities. The less information they have on such issues as forced marriage, the less possibility we have of changing perceptions on such issues.

We find, through our cultural intermediaries, that there are two types of forced marriage that young girls are forced at times to embark on, as opposed to arranged marriage—

5 p.m.

Conservative

Joe Daniel Conservative Don Valley East, ON

Let me just cut you off a little bit there, because I have another question that is related to this.

Are those who face forced marriage situations aware of their rights with respect to forced marriage?

March 4th, 2014 / 5 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Melpa Kamateros

Of course not. This is a field that's just being developed here in Quebec, largely through a project that we have been applying for the...I think it's year two now. Through the project we have enacted what we call legal clinics within certain communities, where information on items such as sponsorship fraud, the laws of Canada, and forced marriages are given in the languages of origin and with very, very positive, positive results.

I would just like to take—

5:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you, Ms. Kamateros.

5:05 p.m.

Executive Director, Shield of Athena Family Services

Melpa Kamateros

Okay. Thank you.

5:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Ms. Sitsabaiesan.

5:05 p.m.

NDP

Rathika Sitsabaiesan NDP Scarborough—Rouge River, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to let everyone know that I have seven minutes for this whole thing, so I'm going to go really quickly.

First, to Ms. Mattoo, I know that the South Asian Legal Clinic is doing amazing work. That includes your report, which Mr. Daniel mentioned.

The first topic I want to touch on is forced marriage. To start off, with your ground knowledge and expertise on the subject, can you explain the difference to us between arranged marriage and forced marriage?

5:05 p.m.

Staff Lawyer and Acting Executive Director, South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO)

Deepa Mattoo

In terms of the two topics of concern, there are a lot of people who confuse them. The way we explain it is that it's an end of a spectrum; one side is arranged marriage and one side is forced marriage. Sometimes there might be an overlap. A situation might start where a young person is enthusiastic about the relationship at the beginning of the conversation but might lose interest because of the coercion or the emotional abuse that might start in between. So, they are very distinct. There has to be enthusiastic consent, which is in an arranged marriage, and there is a lack of complete consent or a grey area of consent in the case of a forced marriage.