—at South Ottawa Community Legal Services.
As I'm sure you probably know, in October 2012 Canada implemented a new conditional permanent residence regime for certain sponsored spouses and partners. That's for anyone whose sponsorship was submitted after October 25, 2012. The first two years of the person's sponsorship will be conditional if they have been married or lived common-law with their sponsor for less than two years before that sponsorship and they have no children in common.
Under the new law, if the sponsored person does not remain cohabiting in that conjugal relationship for the first two years—the conditional period—then their permanent residence may be revoked and they may find themselves at risk of deportation.
Now the government has enacted two exceptions to that conditional permanent residence for people it would normally affect, and that is for people whose sponsor dies during the conditional period or for people who are subjected to domestic violence by their sponsor or someone related to their sponsor during that two-year period.
My emphasis today is going to be on the domestic violence exemption during the two-year conditional period. Although we applaud the government for creating the domestic violence exemption, there's more that needs to be done to make it practically and meaningfully accessible to women in the situation who need to access that domestic violence exemption.
First I'm going to mention a few of the vulnerabilities of the women who may find themselves in that situation of needing to access the exemption, and then I'm going to talk about a few of the practical examples of how implementation of the exemption needs to be improved, and some of the barriers that we're seeing already. This is a very new procedure. Given that it only applies to sponsorships that have been submitted after October 25, 2012, we haven't seen tons of cases yet, but we have seen some that are starting to give us a picture already of what's happening.
I'd like to note that 59% of sponsored spouses are women. Those are the most recent statistics that we were able to access from 2012. It's important to consider situations of domestic violence because in the conditional permanent resident system, the conditionality of the two-year period gives an abusive sponsor an extra tool, an extra type of power that he can hold over the woman. And I'm saying “he” and “woman” because in the majority of these situations, I'm talking about a male sponsor and a female sponsored person. Now it could be a same-sex relationship, or it could be reversed as well. The sponsor is able to hold over the woman that basically if she doesn't obey, if she doesn't put up with the domestic violence and she leaves before the two years are up, she can find herself without status. He can also split up with her and cause her to not have status, or he can give tips to Immigration saying that she entered into the marriage fraudulently, even if she didn't.
So what are some of the barriers that these women face who are experiencing domestic violence? I'm sure you've heard many of them before, everything from language barriers to isolation and not knowing about their options for help to not having financial resources, fear of homelessness, lack of a support network in Canada, being afraid of the police and the authorities here because in many countries the police are organs of repression themselves, and as well fear of leaving the abusive sponsor because that may also affect their children. If a mother arrives with conditional permanent residence and she has children from a previous relationship she has brought with her, if she doesn't stay in the conditional situation for two years, the children's status is also at risk.
Given this situation, given the vulnerability of women who are experiencing domestic violence, for women to be able to come forward to CIC and say, “I'm in a domestic violence situation, I need to be exempted from fulfilling the two-year conditional period”, it's important that the exemption is really functional for women.
And so I'm going to mention just four points of problems that we're seeing or things that we think can be improved. The first is having a designated CIC phone number that's actually staffed by a real person. And that may seem self-evident, but if you've ever tried to call the CIC call centre, as we have many, many times, usually you don't reach anyone or you stay on line for a very long time, and then the phone hangs up on you. Now if a women is in a domestic violence situation and she needs to call CIC, explain her situation, often she's not able to stay by a phone for hours to keep trying to call. Even if she does reach an agent at the CIC call centre, she then has to be transferred to another department, and an officer has to call her back.
This is a problem, because there isn't necessarily a number where the woman can be called back all the time. Women need to be able to access a phone number where they can reach a person who can actually initiate the process with them.
As well, it would be helpful for particularly non-government organizations and lawyers who are assisting these women to be able to submit an exemption request either electronically or by mail rather than having to do everything only by phone, which is currently the only permitted option. We're aware of cases, in one case, for example, a woman has been calling CIC since November. Even when her case gets transferred to the client relations department, there is no voice mail at that department. She doesn't reach anyone. Someone eventually calls her back but she's not there. They've just gone in circles since November. It's important that they can reach someone.
The second issue is the need for telephone interpretation. A lot of women do not have strong enough English or French, particularly if they've just recently arrived. CIC would be very helpful if they provided telephone interpretation in these kinds of circumstances, much as Legal Aid Ontario does with their 1-800 number for requesting legal aid certificates. It's a model that exists with other organizations. It would be extremely helpful for women to be able to speak directly to the CIC agent themselves.
The third issue is better training for CIC officers. Currently we're seeing issues like officers, despite there being an operational bulletin on the domestic violence exemption, not being aware of the correct information, and saying that they don't know the procedure; that a woman has to wait the two years of conditional permanent residence before she can apply; or that they can't talk to a woman who's using an interpreter because the interpreter is not an authorized representative. There are problems like that.