Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 1st, 2014

[Prof. Christine Straehle]

Yes.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

So, all three of you. I just want to get on the record that all three of you just outright said that yes, the conditional PR should be abolished. Do any of you have anything you want to add?

Ms. Go, in the brief you sent in, you say that your organization believes that the proposals such as financial requirements to attack the issue of, of course, violence against women, “through the lens of immigration sponsorship while maybe well intended”—I'm reading from your brief actually—“is nevertheless wrong headed.” You also mentioned that it has a discriminatory impact. Could you go further into detail as to why?

Professor Straehle, if you want, please add to it as well.

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

In terms of the discriminatory impact, you can look at it from two ways.

First of all, if there is an income requirement, it means that only those who will meet the income requirement will be able to sponsor their wife. Up to this point, the spousal sponsorship so far has not been subject to this requirement, I think because the Canadian government recognizes that spouses and dependent children are an integral part of our families, so they do not want to make a distinction between people who are rich enough to sponsor and those who are not. Having this become a requirement will have that impact on affecting some people who will no longer be able to sponsor.

The other side of this discriminatory impact is the language and education requirements. By and large, at least from the stats that I can see, the sponsored spouse, like those who are being sponsored to Canada, tend to be more women than men. I think with more and more people coming in as temporary foreign workers—different classes of labour, who then transition into permanent residents—I think you will see more and more men coming in than women. If they are then to sponsor the spouse, then women will still be the ones sponsored. It will be those women who will not be able to meet the requirement if they don't have the language and education requirements. It will be women who are being affected by those requirements.

In both ways, both the income requirement on the sponsor and the language and education requirements on the sponsored, it will have a discriminatory impact.

On the other hand, I think we could look at increasing the age of consent, the age of marriage. I think that people in general would agree that this is a good idea. The only thing I would say is that we certainly don't want forced marriages, but I don't know who will be the best person to make that decision about whether it is an arranged marriage or a forced marriage and what kind of training the immigration officer will need to be able to distinguish between the two. I think that's something we will need to consider.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Professor Straehle.

[Prof. Christine Straehle]

Yes, I would just like to add one point concerning the conditional residency requirement, which is that in your questioning of the people from CIC, what struck me when reading the evidence was that David Manicom said that if it's a question of deterring marriage of convenience, marriage of convenience isn't supposed to come into Canada.

He was quite clear that it is the task of the immigration officer in the visa offices to actually look at the documentation and find whether or not a sponsorship application is based on a marriage of convenience. He didn't deny there may be some cases that come in, but as he said, it's very difficult to have any statistics on this.

I think that the problem with the conditional permanent residency is that it ultimately creates a two-class system of permanent residents. Again, as I said, civic integration and social cohesion is one of the concerns that Canada will have to face. Canada has done very well until now in this domain, but we don't know if this is going to be the case.

Finally, just to follow up, I don't know if you're aware that the age of consent in Denmark is now 25 if a Danish citizen wants to marry somebody from outside the EU, which has created a lot of controversy but which the Danish government has imposed because of the concern about forced marriage.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

If I remember, Ms. Straehle and Ms. Go, you both spoke about the financial requirements and the language and education requirements and how those are actually hindering women in their ability to be self-sustaining. We know that immigrant women who have been educated in Canada and can speak English also get violated and also are victims of violence in this country.

You spoke of the increased isolation of the women and the lack of integration because of some of the violence they go through. Do you want to expand on that a bit, please?

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

In our experience with respect to the isolation, we find that because they don't have a lot of family members in Canada, a lot of the time their family members are the spouse's family members or the spouse. That's the kind of isolation we see. That's why we think if there's a way of facilitating family sponsorship for those women who are victims of domestic violence, it will in fact allow them to have more family support.

I think having family support is important for someone who is being abused. If you at least have your siblings or your parents to go to, you can go to their house. You have someone to talk to. You have someone who is standing there with you by your side to facilitate your fleeing the abuse, right? A lot of these women don't have any family member other than the spouse.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

What else do you recommend?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Go.

I'm sorry, Ms. Sitsabaiesan. We'll have to move on to Mr. McCallum.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Welcome, all of you.

On this question of language test requirements for spouses, I made the point in the House on Wednesday that this was Orwellian and an unacceptable intrusion of government into the decisions of individuals on marriage. On Wednesday the minister didn't say much. On Thursday he said the government wouldn't do it. I think we can assume it's off the table unless he changes his mind. I didn't raise the subject of tests based on income or education, but I think that if he's ruled out language, one can assume that he has agreed that it's not the role of the state to dictate who one marries, except for issues of criminality or age.

On the question of the conditional permanent residence, I'm glad that all three of you have opposed this. The previous six witnesses—I asked all of them—all opposed it as well, so we're at nine out of nine, which is better than three out of three.

I think for me the big issue coming down in front of us is what we can do in a practical way about women being abused, and in an asymmetrical relationship, where the woman could be deported if she claims abuse or claims the marriage is not real or whatever. I think one idea is to get rid of this conditional permanent residence, because I think that puts power in the hands of the husband, shall we say.

The second thing is that I really liked your idea, Professor Straehle, of the forced marriage unit changing the terms of the onus on the person versus...not on the woman.

Last time, we also had a discussion about trying to expedite the process whereby a woman could become a landed immigrant if she was estranged from the marriage. I understand that right now the process is long and potentially expensive, and many of these women don't necessarily have the money, the resources, or the support to go through a lengthy process.

All of that is a bit of a preamble.

I'll start with Professor Straehle.

What do you think would be the primary tools that a government has in order to address this issue of asymmetrical power? Maybe that's the primary difference. You say that there is domestic abuse and there's immigrant abuse. Maybe the main difference is the asymmetrical power on the immigrant side, but not on the domestic side.

[Prof. Christine Straehle]

Thanks for the question.

Yes, I agree. I think it is problematic enough if a woman finds herself in an abusive relationship, but as I tried to make clear in my comments, I think it becomes even more problematic if their whole life in Canada is threatened because of the relationship and because of the vulnerability in the relationship. Anything we can do to address that is going to make a huge difference. This is why I think women should have independent access to the possibility of entering the labour force.

They also should be supported. But as many of your witnesses said, sometimes they deal with women who are so isolated they don't even know how to board a bus. There's a lot of work to be done.

I think this is exactly what we need to do. We need to give them the security of knowing that they are welcome in Canada, and if they want to become productive members of society, they should be allowed to do so, instead of their trying to prove that they are innocent and shouldn't be deported.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Ms. Go, are there ways to expedite this legal or bureaucratic process whereby a woman can achieve the right to permanent residence?

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

Let's say we get rid of conditional permanent residence. The women who are coming in as a sponsored spouse will be a permanent resident the minute they land, right? The only situation, I think, where a woman is in a spousal relationship and their status is conditional upon the marriage or somehow tied to the sponsor is when they're applying from within Canada. They are here under some kind of status, maybe as a visitor or a refugee, and their spouse, as a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, is sponsoring them. It's in those situations, I think, where they are the most vulnerable.

I think, yes, it's definitely facilitating the faster processing of these cases. But more importantly, when the sponsorship breaks down, don't automatically send the women back to wherever they come from. I guess somehow they still have the problem of proving that there is abuse. Unfortunately, I don't know if you can get around that. But if there are ways of showing that the sponsorship breaks down because of the abuse, then they should be landed, no matter what. I think that's where we see the system becoming problematic. Even where the women are able to prove there's abuse they are still being deported.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Shory, you have a little under five minutes.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

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?

[Mohammad Khan]

First of all, I do understand there is a main culture of arranged marriages, which is common in India and Pakistan and the Southeast Asian region, so I do not call those arranged marriages forced marriages. What I'm referring to is forced marriages.

We have a lot of cases in the U.K., and it's the second or third immigrant generation living in the U.K. They are born there, and their parents are taking those girls back home and forcing them to marry, bringing along their brothers, sons, relatives, and others. There is no consent or understanding between husband and wife. They force the girl not to open her mouth until he gets the landed papers.

I'm not referring to those kinds of arranged marriages, but the forced marriages are a problem. Honour killing is a problem, and fraudulent marriages. I have come across some cases where, if I have three sons, I arrange the marriage. I bring my nieces.... But that's not a real marriage. Once they are here, they get the paper. They divorce them. Then those girls get married again and sponsor others. These kinds of things are happening.

The thing is if you impose conditional residency on the women, it makes women further vulnerable, because it makes them more dependent on the sponsor spouse. I don't think it's right to see—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm sorry I had to cut you off, but there are time limits.

I want to thank the three of you for taking the time. I'm sorry we have to cut it short, but we're going to have to vote. On behalf of the committee, I thank you for coming and giving us your views on this very important subject.

We will suspend.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm going to call the meeting to order.

One of our guests is not here.

We have with us Talat Muinuddin who is president of the Reh'ma Community Services here in Ottawa. Good afternoon to you. We have Shirin Mandani who is the executive director. Good afternoon to you, too.

All the way from Burnaby, British Columbia, we have Katie Rosenberger who is the manager of counselling services of the DIVERSEcity Community Resources Society. We also have Swarandeep Virk who is a counsellor and she is with you.

Ms. Rosenberger, I'm going to let you go first. You have up to eight minutes.

[Katie Rosenberger, Manager, Counselling Services, DIVERSEcity Community Resources Society]

Good afternoon. My name is Katie Rosenberger and I'm presenting with my colleague Swarandeep Virk. I'm the manager of counselling services at DIVERSEcity Community Resources Society and I'm an active member of the Network to Eliminate Violence in Relationships.

Swarandeep is a counsellor for programs that address violence against women as well as children who witness the abuse.

We work primarily with immigrant families. I oversee all programs related to violence in relationships, which are facilitated by counsellors in our clients' first language.

The perspective that we will share today is through our work with clients from many countries, including India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Colombia, Mexico, Korea, Vietnam, China, and Afghanistan. Our information is based primarily on client testimony of their experience, as well as our work with offenders in our court-mandated offender program.

I will speak to the issues as we see them. The issue of forced marriage still plays a dominant role in violent relationships. In many cases women report they are not aware of who they are marrying and many details remain unknown about their future spouses until after the marriage. In some cases women do not know that their spouses have issues, such as mental health concerns, alcoholism, anger issues, and financial debts. The women report that in some cases once the marriage has happened, their in-laws and spouse will keep secrets and ensure the woman's isolation to prevent her from leaving and accessing support.

Isolation can lead to the most severe cases of violence as the women have no support, no way of leaving the house, and have little to no understanding of the laws and supports available to them. Leaving the house or making a phone call can cause severe beatings. The very presence of the woman in the home is often unknown to neighbours.

This type of isolation is often done with the consent and participation of the spouse and his family, including the mother and sisters-in-law. Isolation may include being accompanied to all appointments, such as the doctor, grocery store, and even educational programming. These women will not be allowed to work nor will they have access to a phone. If they are working, it's often in the family business or within constant view of another family member.

There are also issues around adoption and forced marriage. Some women report that they were adopted from India or other countries at a young age, only to come to Canada to provide domestic services to the adopted family. Sometimes they are used for the purposes of marriage to enhance the family's status by marrying the young woman to someone wishing to be sponsored for monetary gain.

The marriage may end quickly and they are expected to remarry another man in order to sponsor him. The adopted child is required to marry as dictated by the adopting family. If these women disagree, their families in India are often threatened; the woman is humiliated and disowned by her village and extended family, so the option of returning is no longer there.

In most cases, women have little or no access to finances or banking. The women report that in some cases they are financially abused through debts and lines of credit taken out in their names and used for the abuser's benefit. In other cases, the spouse will put everything under his parent's name and show no income or property.

The women feel trapped as they have no means to support their children or themselves if they were to leave. Some women report that their abusers will have extramarital affairs on a continual basis. In some cases the women report that their abusers will have a common-law partner living in the home at the same time.

Some women report that their partners have additional relationships in their home country. The women report that their partner will maintain both marriages and abuse will occur when this notion is challenged and if the woman tries to leave.

Women report that once arriving in Canada, despite being educated in their country of origin, their spouses do not encourage them to pursue their education or career. These women report that they are encouraged to seek labour-related jobs or often are not even allowed to work. Many women become pregnant shortly after marriage or are forced to become pregnant in order to ensure a quick immigration process. Women who become pregnant feel trapped as they worry about their child's future and their own inability to care for the needs of their child.

Some women report that they are forced to work in menial conditions and then hand over their paycheques to the spouses. Some workers reported that they were at risk in the workplace for sexual harassment and abuse from their employers.

Women report being sexually assaulted by their employer, and due to financial constraint, shame, and lack of support from their spouse, they do not report the assault. Live-in caregivers have been reporting that they are being abused and sexually assaulted by their employers, but will not report the abuse or leave the home because they don't want to lose their job.

I will now turn to our recommendations.

Our experience with our clients is that they are not given the information they need when they arrive in Canada.To validate this feedback, we did a brief survey of our staff, who are mostly educated immigrant women, and learned that only 30% were given sufficient information regarding domestic violence when they arrived in Canada. Many clients are not aware of their rights and they do not have faith that their complaints will be taken seriously because of past experiences with police and law enforcement in their own countries. Although there are services, women with children or women in isolation are riddled with fear based on their past experiences and then the lies that are told to them by their spouses and the extended family. Finances and loss of parental rights are two of the most common concerns reported.

The other issue is that when violence is not extreme, and even sometimes when it is, some families do not want to be forcibly separated. Women will stay in an abusive marriage because they want the marriage to work. They want their spouse to stop the violence, but not to leave altogether. This is where there is some serious work that needs to be done, as supports that do currently exist are mostly there once an altercation has occurred.

Women will come to see us, Swarandeep and others, for counselling on stopping the violence, their children will come for children who witness abuse counselling, or the men will come for court-ordered relationship violence prevention and counselling, which are all services that take place after the fact.

We do have a family counselling program for couples who wish to address the issues before they result in violence, but the funds are so limited and the wait-list is so long that many do not even make it for a session before the tensions take over, and then there's violence in the family. Wait-lists for services are causing a lack of trust among the community, as they've been told that there are options, that there are things they can do in order to seek help, but then they have to sit on a wait-list and indefinitely wait for it.

Our view is that prevention is the key to successfully reducing violence in all relationships. The difference is that our immigrant families sometimes do not share the Canadian value or cultural systems and don't know what constitutes violence or abuse in Canada. To many of our client offenders, their behaviour would not have been questioned in their home country, and they claim that had they known they were breaking Canadian law, they would not have abused their wives. That's the claim.

Many women feel that the abuse they face is normal and it is not something to share outside the home. We are nervous of challenging the cultures of newcomers to Canada to protect our own values of multiculturalism, but in that process we're not challenging the elements of newcomers' cultural values that must be challenged in order to protect women and children.

We believe there should be a mandatory service, such as workshops, training sessions, and counselling sessions, where all immigrants are expected to attend a compulsory orientation regarding the laws, the services, and their rights in Canada. This service could also involve screening or supportive services to identify abused women prior to entry into Canada or once they arrive here.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Rosenberger, I'm afraid your time has expired. Perhaps you could wind up, please, maybe move to the last—

[Katie Rosenberger]

I could. Let me just get to my last point then.

We recently completed a focus group to address why immigrant women do not reach out to the police. Some suggestions included that there be a centralized phone number, something similar to 911, that women can call to reach someone who can advocate for them. These women also suggested having insurance or mandatory contributions on a regular basis to an account from people who are sponsoring and that those women could have access to that money should there be a breakdown in the sponsorship.

I think we can leave it at that.

We thank you for allowing us to share our experience.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you for your presentation.

Our second speaker is from Espace féminin arabe. Khadija Darid is the director general. Thank you for coming. You have up to eight minutes to make a presentation.

[Khadija Darid, Director General, Espace féminin arabe]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon. ladies and gentlemen.

I represent Espace féminin arabe, an organization whose mission is the social and economic integration of immigrant women of Arab origin.

Our mandate is to support women from the Maghreb, the Near East and the Middle East, whatever their religion, be they Muslim, Christian or Jewish. We try to offer a space where women can talk and help each other out. Basically, we want to help women join the work force because we consider that depriving them of the possibility of working with dignity is an act of social violence against women.

The current statistics indicate a high rate of unemployment in the Arab community, at 33%. It seems to us that steps need to be taken urgently to counter this problem. Women of Arab origin are one of the two ethnocultural groups that have particular trouble finding employment because of direct discrimination. I'm referring here to Muslim Arabs and black persons. This is a conclusion taken from a study done by the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes.

The discrimination against them takes the following forms: people refuse to accept the resumes of persons of Arab origin, or those of Islamic people; there are threats and negative comments about symbols of Islam, such as the headscarf, for instance; people are fired for having expressed a political opinion, most often on some issue regarding the Middle East, or for having refused to remove some article of clothing that is a visible sign of their religion.

And yet, when they arrive, the women are looking forward to the opportunities for social and economic advancement promised by Quebec society, a feeling that is reinforced by a society that promotes values of equality between men and women, democratic openness and multiculturalism. The ensuing frustration is very acute and they have a burning desire to have their own work. To deprive them of the opportunity to work and earn a living with dignity is a serious instance of violence against women.

Indeed, in the heading of my presentation I included a quote from Simone de Beauvoir, taken from her book The Second Sex: she says this: “It is through work that women have in large measure bridged the gap that separated them from men; only work can guarantee their concrete freedom.”

And yet, these women have work experience. Often they are criticized for their attitude regarding the workplace. They are considered docile and passive. Even when immigrant women, especially of Arab origin, have a job, a sort of sexual imagination means that they are perceived as sexual objects, even by people in the host society. They are considered docile and ignorant. They are victims of harassment from employers and colleagues. Even in mixed marriages, the immigrant man or woman, the spouse of a Canadian man or woman, is considered minor, and abused.

Moreover, intervenors generally do not understand the issues these women are dealing with. They make it their mission to liberate them, with a very feminist vision in mind, rather than working with them from an intercultural perspective. Women of Arab origin reject this perspective intervenors have, one that puts them in a miserable, abused light. They feel strong. They were often the ones who initiated immigration. They are independent and ambitious. They have real employment possibilities in some sectors, basically in the service and support fields. They have to meet the needs of their families, especially when their husband is looking for a job that corresponds to his training, because the women will often accept jobs that are more menial than the ones that their training and skills would qualify them for.

This leads them to experience the same difficulties that men do in integrating the workplace, and leads to a critical perspective on the intervention, and the same goes for men as well. Many intervenors adopt a negative representation of these women. To them, their unemployment is proof that they cannot adapt to the workplace, and they conclude that the women are responsible for the fact that they don't have jobs.

There is thus a considerable disconnect in the representation of the characteristics and needs of both the male and female clientele. This influences both the perception of these women who are looking for a job, and the explanations about their issues around joining the workforce; and one has to wonder about the relevance of the feminist approach systematically adopted by intervenors, to the detriment of an intercultural approach. That approach adds to the discrimination against these women.

The government has to act quickly to put an end to this social violence toward Arab communities, and respond to the imminent labour shortage in this country.

I would also like to remind you that the unemployment rate in populations from Arab countries is 33%, whereas it is 40% among women from Arab countries. These are very high numbers.

Nor should we forget the consequences of unemployment and the non-employability of women. This causes family tensions and mental health problems. After the elderly, immigrant populations are the most affected by mental health issues.

The women from Arab countries are highly educated, as compared to the host society.

Moreover, there is family violence, but also social violence. I talked about social violence. We have to find ways of giving women back their dignity because that is where the solution lies. When they do not have an income, it is the spouse who holds all the economic power and can demand certain behaviours from them. There are some quite significant consequences on the health of these women and on their suffering. They come here with high hopes of living in a country where equality between men and women is a given. They think that they will be able to express themselves here and realize their potential freely and with dignity.

I am going to go from soup to nuts, and I apologize. I wonder about young veiled girls and young Hasidic Jewish boys who wear very visible religious symbols—conspicuous is the word that is very popular in Quebec right now. Would it be possible to prohibit wearing these religious symbols before the age of 16? Is that realistic? To my mind, this is equivalent to mistreating minors.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Last but not least, we have Ms. Mandani who is going to give an eight-minute speech. Thank you for coming.

[Shirin Mandani, Executive Director, Reh'ma Community Services]

Mr. Chair, and honourable members of the committee, thank you for inviting us today.

We would like to focus on two aspects. We would like to highlight the common barriers faced by newcomer women, and I'm sure many witnesses have mentioned similar aspects, and present recommendations for protecting spousal sponsored women.

Reh'ma Community Services was established in 1999 to provide linguistically and culturally relevant services for seniors, women, and newcomers. Over the past decade, we have done many projects on domestic violence that inform our position for this submission. I will briefly mention specific areas that are relevant.

We have realized that to assist women to come out of domestic violence, it is equally important to empower them to become financially independent. Through our skills training program, Reh'ma Food Enterprises, a one-year certification program, we focused on culinary skills development and business management, enabling many women to break the barriers of employment and join the workforce.

However, we find there are continuous challenges which many of our clients face. These include language barriers. Women do not find employment because of language barriers. Most of our clients shared that ESL and LINC classes are not sufficient for employment. They fear using public transportation, which can restrict their mobility and access to resources and services, making them socially isolated. The language barrier brings greater dependency on their sponsors. Women with good spoken English interact well with others and have greater understanding about their rights and the services available.

In a foreign land without English, they may become vulnerable to abuse. We recommend that specialized English classes that are tailored to immigrants' vocations are needed. Publications, web-based portals, and a helpline number on reporting abuse and where to seek assistance should be in diverse languages. With the help of ethnic print and television media, women should be given information about their rights.

Next are economic barriers. Newcomer women find it difficult to get employment because of lack of accreditation and lack of Canadian education and work experience. The skills they come with are not enough or relevant to the labour market needs. Without employment, they are financially dependent on their sponsors. Women who have sponsored their husbands may face further vulnerability if their husbands leave them and seek social assistance.

We recommend that before their arrival, they be given information on skills and jobs that are in demand. We also recommend that after they arrive, they be given information and access to skills development programs that are in accord with labour market needs.

There are also settlement difficulties. Women find it very hard to settle down if they do not have a family or a support system. There is an ongoing need to give them relevant information and referral services. Newcomer women find it difficult to live in a legal limbo as they are often worried about their permanent residence status. Family separation brings several emotional problems.

We recommend that settlement funding for organizations should be reconsidered. Free access to legal services with interpretations should be available for them, and the focus should be towards family unification with less processing time.

I would like our president, Mrs. Talat Muinuddin, to brief the committee about cultural barriers.