Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to the witnesses. This chair is very tough, so I'd like short answers.
First I want to clarify one thing. In my riding office in Calgary Northeast, I have quite a few files dealing with this breach of spousal sponsorship. What that means is the sponsored spouse, in some of the cases, did not tell their sponsoring spouse that they got the visa and they were coming to Canada. I have some cases where they did not even land in the city where the sponsoring spouse lives. I have cases where they just waited for the permanent resident card. The moment that PR card was in their hands, within hours they left the family. Those are the spousal sponsorship abuses. I believe that was the reason this conditional permanent residence provision was introduced, to counter those spousal abuses.
In my belief, I would say the elimination of this conditional permanent residence is not a true solution, because how would we deal with those files?
Mr. Khan, I would like you to make some comments on my question.
All of us know that many cultures have a history of arranged marriages. When we talk about these marriages of convenience, forced marriages, I want to stress that we are not referring to arranged marriages. We should be very careful not to stigmatize that.
Of course, some marriages of convenience do occur under the guise of arranged marriages. We know that. From the point of view of your organization, Mr. Khan, what can be done to stem the flow of fraudulent marriages without damaging the image of legitimate arranged marriages?