It will help in many ways. I have seen personally, in my previous life as an immigration lawyer, cases where people would come at the tail end—after being out of pocket for thousands and thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars—and say, “This consultant didn't even file my application. They took money from me and they didn't even do what was supposed to be done.” Those days are over. Those folks will have access to a compensation fund.
The misinformation will be tackled head on. Some of the money that is allocated in budget 2019 will go toward more outreach officers in some of our key source countries for both permanent and temporary immigration, to proactively inform people about the proper way to apply and also which credible immigration consultants to use.
The new college will also have the power to go to court to get injunctions against unauthorized consultants, to prevent them from practising and preying on people.
Many, many times we see that people who are in violation of the immigration system are themselves victims of these unauthorized immigration consultants. We see international students who are taken advantage of, who are promised things that are simply not true. We see visitors and others, and they are not only disadvantaged by losing a lot of money; sometimes they are disadvantaged because their applications are not even filed.
These new measures will result in much stronger oversight, but also much stronger enforcement and investigations and an ability—when the worst happens, when these people are taken advantage of and lose a lot of money—for them to recoup some, if not all, of that money for the first time, by setting up a compensation fund that will help them out.