I'm looking at it from that perspective.
We found at that time that of the 500 victims of marriage of convenience, the majority were immigrants themselves. They were the sponsors who were duped and virtually they have no recourse, and to this date they have no recourse. And many of them, perhaps the majority of these duped immigrant sponsors, were women. And although they made written complaints to the CBSA and to CIC that they had been duped, that their sponsored spouse arrives in Canada and is gone within a few days, within a few months, there's no recourse. The CBSA and CIC does not have the personnel, does not have the means to deal with these allegations. So there is a subgroup of immigrant women who have been abused, and really abused. They may be stuck with enormous debt to pay back social services if their spouse or their former spouse decides to go on welfare within the three years of their financial obligation. Then they have to hire a family lawyer if the spouse goes after them in Family Court for support or division of property.
There is one category of immigrant women who do suffer abuse from another point of view that I would like to bring to your attention as well, because they seem to be left out of this whole equation of abused immigrant women. Now before I came here, I did a consultation with a criminal law firm of Addelman Baum Gilbert in Ottawa. Richard Addelman, the senior lawyer, has been a criminal lawyer since the 1970s. So a report of domestic abuse, as you all know, is not necessarily a real case of abuse. And as they explained to me, there are thousands upon thousands of false allegations of domestic abuse made, particularly in separation cases, divorce cases, custody cases. However, all the spouse has to say is that he abused me yesterday, last year, whenever, the crown has no discretion. They must arrest the accused. They must take him down to the police station, they must proceed with trial, even if the crown knows, even if both are aware there's hardly any evidence or it will not stand, they must proceed to trial.
Now with this new loophole, just because a sponsored spouse says she's been abused, unless it's clearly evident, until there is a trial, how do we know that is not a false allegation of abuse simply to get around the new conditional residency requirement? How do we know how many of these cases are false allegations where a Canadian sponsor will have to hire a criminal lawyer, will have to go to trial, and by the way, it takes a minimum of one year to go to trial, and there are absolutely no consequences for false allegations. Nothing. A judge can tear into the complainant during the criminal trial and tear her testimony to pieces. She will not be charged with perjury. She will not be charged with anything. But a sponsor who was falsely accused of domestic abuse because the sponsored spouse doesn't feel like hanging around for two years and just wants to become a permanent resident, he has to hire a criminal lawyer. His life is destroyed, and it goes on for a year.
I am speaking first-hand of one of my cases, at which I'll be testifying at a criminal trial. I helped a female immigrant, a failed refugee claimant from one of the Scandinavian countries. She came to me when there was a removal order in place against her. I wasn't involved with her refugee claim. She came to me to stop the removal order. She had two children and she had sort of joint custody with her Canadian husband who had withdrawn the sponsorship and their allegations of abuse.
I succeeded, for various reasons, in stopping this removal order. She would disappear for six or seven months at a time. She was having a lot of emotional issues and breakdowns.
Two years later, in 2012, she came back to me, after an absence of about a year, with a new Canadian husband and another child to do an in-Canada spousal sponsorship, and I was really happy for her. And I did, and I proceeded, and we did it. Everything got going. I submitted it. Then in January 2013, I got an email from her, on a particular date, stating, “I'm just terrible at choosing husbands. My marriage has broken down. As usual, I picked the wrong man”—something to that effect—“and he's been abusive, not physically, but he won't give me money to spend as I wish”. It was something like that. She said he was psychologically abusive.
Two days later, I got a call from the husband. These were joint clients I had in the past. He said, “The marriage has failed. I've taken our child. She's had another breakdown and we just can't continue. What am I supposed to do? What are my rights?” I said, “Well, if you're no longer together, just withdraw the spousal sponsorship.” I imagine that's what he did, because a week later I got another email from her stating that she had been sexually assaulted by her husband on a date prior to her first email.
So clearly when she was in a position that there was going to be a removal order issued against her, we went from psychological abuse to sexual assault. That's an abuse of the system, and I'm afraid that might happen in these cases.
Just because someone says they've been a victim of domestic abuse, unless it's clearly evident, until you go to trial, you really don't know. Just as when someone says they're a refugee claimant, until they've had their hearing, we don't know if they really are a refugee.