Evidence of meeting #157 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was consultants.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Member, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
No. Except the minister—I mean, it's going two ways.
Member, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
The minister can decide when the industry's mature enough. Let's make the majority of directives. It can be decided, but that's in the future.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
I have another question. The legislation currently lists three titles that uncertified individuals may not use to describe themselves as immigration professionals. Over time, new titles may arise from these individuals. They're using these names to advertise themselves. As the legislation stands, will the board or college have the power to add to the list of titles and names that may not be used by those not recognized by the college as qualified immigration professionals now?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
Yes, that is correct. In the section you mentioned, it lists those titles, and says, “or equivalent other titles”.
Conservative
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
They will be going further. I don't want to give them more examples, if they're listening to me, but if they start using “adviser”, “immigration adviser”, “immigration agent” or whatever, these can be added to that list, as per the current section you mentioned under the bill.
Conservative
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
No. French is my first language, and in French, "consultant" is relative to conseiller, but even in Quebec law, they use the word “consultant”. Why? This word has been anchored in Canadian history of immigration for at least 50 years, I would say, if not more. Everywhere in the world, it is “consultant”. It is not easy to tell the public right now that it will become “immigration adviser”.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
A lot of the discussion is focused on the international nature of the complaints. Mr. Jade, I'm wondering if you could describe what the situation is for the regulation of immigration consultants in other countries, both in the developed world and the developing world, so we can get a sense of who is regulated and how.
You just said the word has been used internationally for the last 50 years. In what countries are there consultants and how are they regulated?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
Good question. Thank you.
Let me bring two things forward.
Canada has a self-regulatory framework across the board. This is based on the Constitution and the way most of the provincial governments have decided to regulate their professions. Almost everywhere you will find self-regulation. This is a Canadian pride kind of thing.
In the case of other countries, most of them in the regulation industry are government regulated.
In other professions, self-regulation is not common everywhere outside of Canada. I'm not sure if that answers really the question.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Maybe you could give some examples. Maybe you can tell us about France, the U.K., China, the U.S. and India.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
I would prefer staying in the developed countries because they look more like us. New Zealand, Australia and the U.K. have mostly government regulated groups.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
In the United States, it is the law society that regulates the lawyers.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
In India, it is more complex. India and China, in particular, are a little bit nuanced. However, they are very close in terms of regulating their own to work with immigration with outside.... Those are countries that send their people outside. Philippines is another example. It means that the inside individuals who want to work for or with external countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the U.S. have to be regulated. They are regulated by the government.
As individuals—for example, Canadians being regulated in Canada—if they tried to go and do business in those countries, they cannot. They need to make a deal with a regulated internal citizen of that country or organization.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
By establishing the college, would their be a possibility then for the college to have charter members in China or in India, so that there would be some property right in those country, so that their own internal sub-consultants or associate consultants would be able to protect against unlawful use within their own countries? This is like patent agents and associate agents.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
I would address that issue a little bit differently, if you don't mind.
I would think there should be something that is more under the international law. Because the college is anchored under Canadian statute and federal statute in particular, the college should, in my humble opinion, be able to have MOUs with either the same level of college, or even government to government, or college to government. As well, they could have agreements to say if one of your regulated members works with one of ours, then this kind of framework can apply.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves.
One thing we noticed yesterday, and maybe a little bit today, is that many of the complaints that people have with the act as it stands are because they want us to be at phase three already. I would say that phase one might have been the establishment of the not-for-profit by the Conservative government. It got us so far. We ran into some roadblocks. We're now at phase two. We're going to empower the organization in some limited fashion.
My first question then is to Mr. Gagnon.
Are we confident enough in the current organization to give it the authority to enforce the regulations? Are we at that stage now?
Conservative
As an Individual
Yes, we have to start somewhere, build on what we have done and make progress. Before 2011, there was almost nothing to keep. I often tell my former colleagues, who were immigration officers and who had a negative view because of their experience, that the best way to improve things is to provide more training and information, and instill ethics everywhere. That takes time and develops over time, but you must be prepared to devote the necessary time and resources. In my opinion, the situation has improved a great deal.
Conservative
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you, Madam Chair. I may split some time with my colleague.
Mr. Damitz and Mr. Jade, I just wanted to go back to the IRCC call centre helpline. You have a lot of members. A huge number of the clients that those members have are coming to you because the present system is broken, basically, and the helpline doesn't answer their needs. It doesn't even answer yours when you're calling, by the sounds of it.
How do you see this new system making a change that's going to help improve that?
