Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 6th, 2016

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much.

To our presenters in Vancouver, I'm a little disturbed to hear that it takes an extra five years to process in Beijing. I know that's probably an average.

Is this for everyone, or is this just in some cases, or in all cases? Could you just give me a better idea about that?

Then I want to move to spousal sponsorship.

[Zaixin Ma]

Not necessarily everybody will face this five-year-plus period. Maybe some people will go through faster, but generally speaking the examples we receive usually take eight to 10 years. A minority will go through faster.

We mean to ask IRCC why it's this long, because many friends have put in their applications, but they have to wait for a long time. Sometimes they make mistakes in their application form, but sometimes they wait for no reason. We would like to ask this question of the department. Why, in some cases, do they have to face such a long delay?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

On the spousal issue, I'd love to ask a lot more questions on the rejections. What would be your recommendation around that? Is it just an issue of providing more training for IRCC officials? What would be your recommendation on how we can address that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

A five-second answer, please.

[Huda Bukhari]

Yes, we strongly recommend training of IRCC officers—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

[Huda Bukhari]

—so they will know more about—sorry, Mr. Chairman—the culture that they are dealing with, and more about the people that will be brought over.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Saroya, for five minutes, please.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you to all the presenters. It's good to see you again. Thank you so much for coming and for your good presentations.

What sort of questions would you like to see? If I heard correctly earlier, sometimes they don't know the husband's proper name, the date of birth, or what he does. I think those are the security check questions they use to make sure that the wrong people don't come to the country.

What would you suggest so we can balance both sides and the wrong people don't come here at the same time that the correct people are coming in?

[Zena Al Hamdan]

As Huda said, the officers at the embassy who are assessing and doing the interviews have to have some cultural context of the person they are interviewing, not only from that country but also within the different classes of that country. Some people and some classes are more aware of the western way of living.

For example, there are things to do with how the spouse lives in Canada and the details of that. They have some context of what life in Canada looks like. Other spouses in different classes don't really....

The officer who is interviewing should have a bit of context of what constitutes a legitimate marriage in that culture, specifically. Yes, there are a lot of ways to scam the system, but the reality of the matter is that most of the cases that are deemed not credible are not decided in malice, but because the questions are a standard set of questions, yes or no.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Okay. Anything—

[Huda Bukhari]

To mitigate, for example, the security check, we have full confidence in the Canadian government to go through the security screening. In terms of the cases that we are seeing and that are coming to our office at the moment, just this past week we had two cases that were deemed not credible for spousal applications, because, for example, a wife who is already here did not tell her husband there that she's suffering from stress. Had she told him that, then he would have thought that “stressed” meant that she was mad within the culture, which would have caused more problems. So she didn't tell him, but she did write it in the application that she was stressed, amongst other things. He told the officer all the other things, but because he didn't mention the term “stressed”, he was deemed to be ineligible.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Are there any issues in Vancouver for the same line?

[Zaixin Ma]

I partially agree with the witnesses in Toronto. For example, kinship is emphasized in Chinese communities and families. We're not as so-called independent as in the traditional western concept. We would like to live close by, together in the same building. We can look after each other, keep the kinship. In the Caucasian concept, the officials of Caucasian background may not understand this. Why do you need to get your parents and grandparents over here to live altogether? I'd like to think that our officers working with these applicants should understand the cultural background of the particular community more.

After the parents arrive in Canada, they are not burdens to Canadian society. Not only do they bring their income, their pension, but they also bring their knowledge and their other contributions to this society to help alleviate the hardship in the family by looking after their grandchildren. The working couples can be more liberated and released from the domestic work after a heavy day of work at their job.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Ma.

Mr. Tabbara, for five minutes, please.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you all for being here as we conduct our study on family reunification. I know that both parties have been doing a tremendous job in helping families come together and integrate into our society.

My question will be for Ms. Al Hamdan and Ms. Bukhari. I'm sorry for the mispronunciation.

I have a question based on the following experience that I hear about. I'll give you an example that I've seen of a constituent of mine. They came from overseas: the mother, the father, and a son came over. But on a separate application there was a daughter who was, I think, under the age of 19. I think she was 17 or 18 and she was married, so she had to apply under a second bracket with her husband.

Can you tell us maybe some of the experiences you've seen that have caused some hardships? Maybe part of the family came over to Canada, but the second part of the family is still back in a country overseas.

[Huda Bukhari]

I'll start, and then Zena will add to it.

Over the past almost two years, we've begun to see that the Syrian newcomers who have come in are younger parents. They are parents who are 15-year-olds or 16-year-olds who have two or three children. They may not have been with the file of their parents, and yet their parents are here. As our colleagues in Vancouver said, kinship is very important. It then becomes very difficult for the parents to sponsor their 16-year-old daughter who has a husband—who may be 18—and three kids. That's a family unit in Canada.

That is why, when we started this presentation, I said that maybe Canada needs to look at the concept of family, because that is their daughter, and those are their grandchildren, yet because she is deemed to be married, he is a separate file. It becomes very difficult.

That is not the only case we've seen with this. We have a client who is also Syrian, and she didn't come with this last wave of newcomers. She has been here for a while, almost three years. Her two children were able to escape from Syria and are now in Turkey. One of them is 23, and the other is 17. She cannot bring them. She has been having such a horrible time trying to bring her children, only because she has remarried. These are the laws in Canada here. She has remarried another man and not their father. Their father is still in Syria. The 17-year-old is deemed a minor and will need to go back to Syria or get some documentation from his father in Syria—whom he can't get a hold of because they don't know whether he is alive—to be able to be sponsored.

His older sister is 23, so her mother cannot sponsor her. She is in Turkey, looking after her younger brother, and the mother is in our office in tears. Those are the cases that we see, not only from Syria but from all over the Middle East.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I just want to continue on this theme.

My next question will be to Mr. Wang and Mr. Ma. You spoke a lot about parents and grandparents. As you know, the current government has increased parent and grandparent sponsorship from 5,000 to 10,000. Could you elaborate on the cultural background you mentioned, how grandparents can play a pivotal role in helping a young family raise their children? In your first testimony, you mentioned a restaurant and how some elders—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 20 seconds.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

—would be working in that restaurant. Can you elaborate on that very quickly?

[Zaixin Ma]

First of all, we would like to thank IRCC. They increased the quota to 10,000, but our recommendation.... According to our realities, 10,000 is not enough to satisfy our needs. The witnesses from Toronto recommended 30,000, and we agree with that.

In our Chinese tradition, our emphasis on kinship is very different from that in western culture.

Xiexie.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Ma.

Mr. Tilson, you have five minutes.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

The minimum age to sponsor a spouse is 18 years old. Is that appropriate?

[Huda Bukhari]

This may not be appropriate within Canada, but within the Middle East....

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Well, the sponsors are in Canada. Obviously, one of their roles is financial. Another role is maturity. The question is, does an average 18-year-old have the financial resources and the maturity to receive parents and grandparents?