Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 20th, 2016

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

What would you recommend? What can we do to overcome that issue?

[Lobat Sadrehashemi]

Solely relying on “He said this and you said that” in this particular interview is problematic. Look at all the evidence before you on a sponsorship application and don't put so much weight on the interviews.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Ms. Wells.

[Patricia Wells]

Probably more training of immigration officers would help. I get the feeling from immigration officers that they don't feel comfortable asking these questions. They don't really know how to judge the genuineness of a marriage in a lot of cases.

One simple fix that might eliminate the volume of the work is if the regulations or policy could be changed to where, if a marriage is clearly genuine, they not even engage in that kind of inquiry. For instance, just speaking arbitrarily, if the couple has been married for more than five years, if they've had children together, I don't know why it would even be necessary to embark on that.

It's a little off your topic, but I would go even further. In those situations where, for instance, there's a Canadian citizen sponsoring a spouse from overseas where the children are Canadian children by descent, if they want to reunite the family in Canada why even have a sponsorship of that non-Canadian spouse? I think that might free up some time. I don't have the stats on how many that would apply to, but it would certainly eliminate a lot of the angst for those families. The whole family can come to Canada as a right except the spouse who has to be sponsored.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

My next question is for Ms. Nunes. Your clients are largely immigrant women. As we have heard, they face their own unique challenges when it comes to integration in a new home and a new society. Based on your experiences, could you discuss the value on women's and mothers' experiences, especially their being able to reunite their families in Canada, in terms of emotional and material support and allowing for a more successful integration into the Canadian system?

[Anabela Nunes]

Sorry, what is the question? Can you rephrase it, please?

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

For women, and especially mothers reuniting their families, do you think that impacts on their emotional and material support in allowing them to successfully integrate into the Canadian system?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Ten seconds, please.

[Anabela Nunes]

I'm not sure if you're referring to if they want to sponsor their parents, for example. Of course, that would help with their integration into Canadian society, because usually parents and grandparents tend to help with the raising of their children. They help in times of health crises as well and with the overall emotional support for the family. So I think it should be a priority.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

I'd like to thank the witnesses who have appeared before our first panel today.

I will now suspend for a couple of minutes to allow the second group of witnesses to appear.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

The second part of our meeting will commence.

We're having some technical issues with the video conference section. Our specialist is still working on that. But looking at the time, I believe we should begin. The audio, I understand, is working. So we won't have the video part, but at least we'll have the audio part.

In the second panel we have with us the staff lawyer for Parkdale Community Legal Services, Ms. Toni Schweitzer.

Welcome.

And invisible to us, but I believe they can hear us, from the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants we have Deepak Kohli, vice-president, and Vilma Filici, representative.

Welcome to all.

And those by audio conference, at this point can you just acknowledge that you can hear us.

We don't in fact have audio connection, as yet, either, but as it's almost a quarter to, perhaps we can begin with the presentation from Ms. Schweitzer.

Seven minutes, please.

[Toni Schweitzer, Staff Lawyer, Parkdale Community Legal Services]

Thank you for inviting me.

I'm going to talk about three issues, two very briefly and the main one I'll save for the end.

I just wanted to very quickly pick up on something that the previous witnesses spoke about. They spoke about live-in caregivers. I want to add my voice to the concern about live-in caregivers, but add in one other area of concern. That has to do with the family members of protected persons. The reason I want to talk about both of those, or just make a comment about them, is that I know that the purpose of these meetings is for a study in relation to family sponsorship. Technically, live-in caregivers and the families of protected persons don't come to Canada under sponsorships, but it's still family reunification. I hope you will consider those types of cases as well and be specifically looking at processing times. You heard a lot about live-in caregivers and the amount of time it's taking for them to reunify with their families. The same exists for the families of protected persons.

The reason they're not family sponsorships is that there's a special way that both those categories of applicant are able to bring their families here. It's what's loosely called concurrent processing. The purpose of that was, in fact, to make it faster; you didn't have to wait until you were a permanent resident or a citizen yourself; you could apply for your family at the same time that you're applying for yourself. The problem is that it's nowhere near that fast. The families of refugees who have been found to meet the definition of a convention refugee or protected person in Canada can be waiting a very long time to get here. I would just like to say that, in relation to looking at processing times, in addition to live-in caregivers, please look at what are called DR2s or the family members of protected persons.

The second thing I want to mention, very quickly—and again it was touched on a little bit this morning, and I know you've had other people talk about it in previous meetings—has to do with the excessive-demand provision that says that a person can be refused on an application to immigrate to Canada because he or she is likely to use up too many health care dollars, basically. I know that when the minister was here, or his officials—I think it was the assistant deputy minister, Mr. Orr—he said that there is going to be a fundamental review of that provision. I just would like to say that, in the meantime, there are families who are being devastated by this; they are being refused on the basis that they have a disabled child. Although I understand that review may take some time, there are interim measures that could be taken, such as giving instructions to counsel, to your government counsel, that these cases should be consented to.

As you probably all know, there is the case of the professor from York University, Mr. Montoya. He was in that situation. His case was settled. He and his family will be able to immigrate permanently to Canada. I'm happy; that's the right decision for him. However it's not just him. He would totally agree with that. He never wanted an individual solution. I would just put out there that, in the meantime, while this whole issue is being looked at, there are interim measures that could be taken that would stop the devastation that's happening to families.

Now I want to move on to the main issue I want to talk about, and that has to do with something that's directly relevant to what you're looking at in terms of family sponsorship: what the test is for a genuine marriage. I know there was some discussion a little bit with the previous panel about this. I want to talk about the existing test that's set out in regulation 4. I don't know if anybody has spoken about it already, but the way it works now is that, obviously, if you are a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and you're married, you're allowed to bring your spouse, except if it is determined that the marriage was in bad faith. The definition of a bad-faith relationship is set out in regulation 4. There are two tests. The first one is whether the marriage was entered into primarily for the purpose of acquiring a benefit or privilege under the act. The second one is whether the marriage is genuine. Between those two clauses now is the disjunctive “or”. What that means is that, if it is found that your situation meets one of those, you're out. Your spouse can't come to Canada.

It used to be the case, prior to 2010, that it was an “and”. You had to show both before a marriage could be found not to be genuine. My submission to you is that you need to amend the regulations back to the way they were prior to 2010, and I'm going to tell you why I think that's the case.

What happens now, obviously as I said, is if a marriage is found to meet either of those two prongs of the test the spouse will be refused. The first one, which is the primarily for the purposes clause, is understood to mean what was the intent of the parties at the time of the marriage, what was their motivation for getting married. The second one is the genuineness. They look at all kinds of factors and that's usually assessed at the time either that the application is assessed by the visa post or if it's refused and then it goes to the immigration appeal division at that time. So there are two different time periods that are being looked at, the time of the marriage and time of assessment.

The problem is that if a decision is made for whatever reason—perhaps with some legitimacy even—that immigration was a factor in the timing of the marriage so it was part of the intent of getting married, that is a decision that cannot be overcome because it is a past-tense assessment of what was the intention of the parties at the time.

There are cases, and in preparation for coming here I was doing some quick law research—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Twenty seconds, please.

[Toni Schweitzer]

There are numerous cases where the immigration appeal division and the Federal Court have said, this is definitely a genuine marriage, no question, there are even children, but a finding was made that the intent was primarily for the purposes, and the marriage was refused.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

We've had a request to suspend briefly to work out some of the technical difficulties.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Unfortunately, we haven't been able to work out the technical difficulties and we'll have to reschedule the panellists from the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants to appear at another time.

We will now continue with questions. First we have Ms. Zahid for seven minutes, please.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks a lot, Ms. Schweitzer, for providing your input. I think we will continue the discussion from where you left off regarding proving that the marriage is genuine. They have different criteria laid down and, in many cases the cultural sensitivities are not looked into by the people who are there to interview the spouses. That's what I hear a lot from my constituents. Just to give some examples, they ask for telephone bills. In this era of new technology people don't have home phones, they call through WhatsApp.

So what are your suggestions in regard to where there are cultural differences and so that things are changing to keep pace with the new technologies?

[Toni Schweitzer]

First of all, there has to be an understanding of different cultures on the part of officers. I understand that one of the measures that's being looked at or even being implemented at this time in terms of speeding up processing is moving things around to other visa posts that are less busy. While I appreciate that is helpful, there's a potential downside there that officers need to know the cultures of the people they're interviewing. If it is sort of a random selection of cases going to whichever office is the least busy there is the potential problem that those officers are not familiar with the particular culture.

That being said, I agree with you that there are problems in relation to things like wanting to see evidence of phone bills or even sometimes expecting that a spouse will know very small details about a person's life—

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I will give you a simple example. Sorry for you cutting you off.

In some cultures, like coming from some interior villages in Pakistan and India, some women don't take the name of their spouse. They call their spouses by the names of their kids.

[Toni Schweitzer]

No, no, and I see that.

I was in court not that long ago on a case of a Tibetan couple where one of the issues was that she didn't know where he was on a brief trip to Mexico to teach some Buddhist prayer thing. I had an argument with the lawyer from the Department of Justice, which we continued outside the courtroom, where he said, “My wife went to Italy and I knew where she was every minute of the day.” If that's the kind of assessment that people are going to do, it's a problem because you cannot assume that in all cultures everything is done the same.

For sure, one of the underlying assumptions has to be that you cannot apply a western paradigm; and I think that comes with training, frankly, and an openness to understand that not every marriage looks the same. That again comes through training.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Another area we are looking at is the parents and grandparents category. There certainly seems to be more demand in this category than could reasonably be fulfilled, but I am concerned about the process currently in place for the intake of those applications with people scrambling to get their application in during a very small window.

Could you discuss the experience you and your clients have had with this class from an application process perspective and share any recommendations for improving this process?

[Toni Schweitzer]

I have to tell you that actually none of our clients can do it because of the financial requirement. I work in a legal aid clinic, and our clients don't meet the low-income cutoff plus 30%, so I never do parent and grandparent applications.

That being said, I know that you have had some testimony about problems before at previous meetings. I am also familiar with problems from my conversations with other members of the immigration bar. It is a problem because there is a quota. You scramble to get your application in, and you have no idea where in the queue your application may end up.

I have no doubt there are problems there, but our clients don't ever have the opportunity to bring their parents and grandparents.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Another issue that I have heard a lot about from my constituents in Scarborough Centre is problems with medicals. Due to the delays in the application processing, medical clearances expire, and they are asked to obtain a new medical. This is often not an insubstantial cost for those families with larger family sizes, and getting to an approved doctor can be a challenge as well.

Do you have any advice on how the process can be changed so multiple medical clearances are not required?

[Toni Schweitzer]

It's not only medicals. We see it all the time with medicals, police clearances, and with requests for passports or travel documents. They're routinely asked for up front, at the beginning of a process, when in reality they're not needed until much later, certainly not until, if it's a marriage, a genuine assessment has been done.

It's only then that they would move to second-stage processing to look at admissibility. I can't see a reason why they could not hold off asking for those things until they're actually needed. Then there's a greater chance that they will not expire before processing could be completed. I think that would be an easy way to deal with it.

The visa posts have generic letters they send out with big long lists of stuff that they want everybody to come up with, including a medical, a copy of travel documents or passports, and a police clearance. They don't need it up front. They could just ask for them when they need them.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Your recommendation would be that medicals should be done after—