Evidence of meeting #16 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 women.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Ted Hsu Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Okay.
A different question that I have is inspired by Ms. Taub's opening remarks that you had seen about 1,000 clients and you had rejected about—please correct me if I'm wrong—20% of potential clients, based on a suspicion of marriage of convenience—
Immigration and Refugee Lawyer and former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
Yes. Simply because I was involved with this lawsuit, thereafter, for some reason, I seem to have a lot of people, duped sponsors call me from across Canada with their cases. It has been continuous. I get about two to three dozen cases a year of duped sponsors. So I know what the red flags are. They sort of alert me: this isn't a genuine marriage, and this woman or this man doesn't know what they're doing. I'll spend an hour, an hour and a half, explaining to them, either trying to dissuade them, if they're not married, from proceeding with a marriage or trying to dissuade them, if they're married, from doing a sponsorship.
But I certainly will not do it, even if they ask me.
Liberal
Ted Hsu Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Okay. My question is, do you think that we can quantify or systematize or institutionalize the intuition that you seem to have developed? And does anybody keep good statistics that could help CIC or some other immigration officer make decisions?
Obviously you've developed some sort of intuition, and maybe this can be systematized.
Immigration and Refugee Lawyer and former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
I think we saw the stats when we were doing our class action. It was about 20%. CIC was turning down marriages, turning down sponsorships on the belief they might be—
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Mr. Hsu, I have to stop you for a minute.
The bells are ringing. You can't hear them, but they're ringing, I can assure you. To continue past the time I need unanimous consent to continue to 5:30. Do I have unanimous consent?
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
I'm just the chairman, folks. Order, please. I'm just the chairman and following rules. The meeting, unfortunately, is over.
The three of you have given us great legal perspective on the problems that we're having with this study. On behalf of the committee, I thank you for coming. Thank you.
This meeting is adjourned.
