Thank you very much for this opportunity to address the committee.
I'd like to begin by commending Minister Chris Alexander for formally declaring in Parliament yesterday that his government does not have the intention of imposing either language requirements on spouses prior to sponsorship or minimum income requirements on sponsors. I think both of those declarations are commendable, in part because to the extent that these measures have been used in European countries they have demonstrably had no impact on the integration of women who are sponsored as spouses, but instead have only had the predictable impact of reducing family-based migration; that is to say, preventing and delaying family reunification. As the government and all Canadians put a high value on the intact family, it would certainly be a shame if policies were enacted by the government that had precisely the opposite effect on immigrant families.
In the time that I have, I would like to address areas that can appropriately be studied by this committee because they address the specific effect of immigration and citizenship laws on the vulnerability of women who migrate. Let me begin with immigration status.
We now have in Canada, of course, a two-year conditional status for spouses. A spouse who is sponsored must reside with his or her spouse for at least two years in order to confirm permanent resident status. A failure to reside together for those two years is taken as evidence that the relationship was not genuine, and the sponsored spouse is then liable to loss of status and removal from Canada.
What is the relationship between this and the vulnerability of immigrant women? What it does, for those women who are sponsored as spouses, is give their sponsors a new way in which to make the sponsored spouse vulnerable or exploitable. How does that work? Well, it gives the sponsor the possibility of threatening removal from Canada by withdrawing the sponsorship. Of course, what that has the effect of doing is to make the sponsored spouse intimidated, vulnerable, and afraid to do anything that would jeopardize her immigration status.
The link between that and the possibility of abuse is that if a sponsored spouse finds herself in a situation in which she is being abused, she may legitimately fear leaving the relationship, because the sponsor might claim that the sponsored spouse was in fact exploiting him and was not in a genuine relationship but in a mere marriage of convenience. Then she faces removal.
Our current guidelines on spousal sponsorship provide that when there is a relationship breakdown, it is possible for a sponsored spouse to seek a kind of humanitarian and compassionate consideration and not be removed in those two years even if she leaves the relationship. But there are a number of constraints on that provision.
The first is that she has to physically leave the house, leave the relationship. So she already has to initiate the separation—which could lead to her removal from Canada—without any assurance, of course, that she will be believed in her account of being abused.
Secondly, the requirements for demonstrating to the satisfaction of a Citizenship and Immigration Canada official that the woman is indeed subject to abuse are fairly strict and seem to rely heavily on forms of documentary evidence that may be difficult to obtain. I'll just read out some of them: court documents, protective orders, bail orders, letters from shelters or family services clinics, statements from medical doctors or health care professionals, sworn statements in the form of affidavits, police or incident reports, photos showing the victim with injuries, email messages, affidavits, and so on.
Here, the problem is that a woman may be in a very difficult situation and be unable to acquire and accumulate the kind of evidence that a Citizenship and Immigration officer demands of her. If she doesn't, then she may not be believed. If she isn't believed, then she is liable to removal from Canada instead of getting the kind of protection she needs.
Here, then, is an example of how the immigration laws in place do not alleviate, but rather exacerbate, the vulnerability of women to experiencing domestic violence.
As a matter of study, it might be useful for the committee to look at the practices of other countries around this matter and to ask two questions. First, to the extent that this conditional spousal sponsorship policy is meant to resolve the problem of so-called marriage fraud, or marriages of convenience, is there any evidence that conditional status actually achieves that objective? Second, what impact do these policies have on the vulnerability of women who are subject to them to domestic violence?
Let me turn now and say a few words about another dimension of citizenship and immigration policy, namely citizenship policy.
We have seen recently that there is increasing stringency around citizenship requirements, particularly as they relate to language. I'm sure it's clear and I'm sure everybody knows that citizenship is a very important kind of security that people have. They are assured, once they are citizens, that their status in Canada is stable. Accessing citizenship thus becomes a way of providing security, and withholding access to citizenship or making it more difficult exacerbates vulnerability.
Now, changes to the language requirements and the way in which those language requirements are evaluated may have an impact on access by women to citizenship. A study conducted by Professor Tracey Derwing of the University of Alberta for Citizenship and Immigration Canada in 2010 indicated that altering language benchmarks and increasing the stringency of testing will likely have a negative impact on two of the most vulnerable populations, namely refugees and sponsored women from east Asia and Southeast Asia, and may affect their ability to access citizenship. Again the committee might want to examine what impact more difficult and constrained access to citizenship has on the vulnerability of women.
Lastly, let me just reiterate to the committee that to the extent that we value family in Canada, any policies that deter or make more difficult or delay the ability of families to be reunited has both deleterious social consequences and also ultimately damaging economic consequences as well.
I would encourage the committee to study both of those matters in their deliberations.
Thank you very much.