Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 20th, 2016

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you. Likewise on the issue that was raised around spousal sponsorship and particularly related to the two-year conditional aspect of it, I wonder whether or not you have some thoughts about that as well.

[Toni Schweitzer]

I would agree, again, with the earlier panel that it needs to be repealed, and I know the government has made a commitment to doing that. I think that's the right thing to do. I don't think there was a need to bring that provision in. It was brought in, it was part of a package, together with the issue that I was speaking about, the change in the test for a genuine marriage. They amended this regulation about genuine marriage. They brought in conditional and permanent residence. It was all part of the perceived epidemic of fraudulent marriages that were succeeding here in Canada.

I think that was a manufactured concern. I don't dispute there are some marriages of convenience that take place. I think the tools to catch them were there, and I also think that, if at the end of the day, the odd marriage that perhaps shouldn't have snuck through does, if that is the cost to make sure that genuine spouses are together, then that's what needs to done. Because as it stands right now, spouses in a marriage that the Federal Court has said is absolutely genuine are permanently barred from being reunited in Canada because a finding is made that at the time of the marriage, immigration was a motivating factor. And that's unfair.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you. I wonder whether or not in your practice you have had cases that have come in with refugees and folks who were trying to reunite with their families, but because of our definition of what's deemed to be family, which doesn't necessarily fit into their cultural expression of what's family, it has prevented them from being able to reunite with their family through the one-year “window of opportunity” programming.

I'm wondering whether or not you have had any experience with respect to that, and what your thoughts are about the definition of “family”.

[Toni Schweitzer]

We see that all the time. We cover an area of Toronto, the Parkdale neighbourhood, that has a very large Tibetan community. We see a lot of cases where people have sort of de facto adopted children, in part because that's a cultural practice and in part because, as diasporas living in India and Nepal, they don't have access to legal adoptions, so it's not an option to do a formal legal adoption.

In cases like that, those kids are not dependants, strictly, under our definition of family and so, again, the only way in which you can bring those kids to Canada is if you are successful on a humanitarian application—again, that's a discretionary decision, it is uncertain, and the only requirement that an officer needs to meet, in terms of making that decision, is that it be reasonable.

In the end, what can happen is that children who have been taken care of, taken in at a young age and cared by the people they see as parents, can be refused because they don't meet our definition of family.

So, there needs to be an understanding that family is a much more complex term than the nuclear family that we think of.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'm just going to go back to live-in care workers. I think you began with some comments about that, with respect to the delay, which is horrific.

I'm wondering whether or not, with the TFW stream related to live-in care workers, they should not just be immigrants.

[Toni Schweitzer]

Absolutely, they could be. Unfortunately, that's not the way that caregivers have—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 20 seconds.

[Toni Schweitzer]

—been able to come. Absolutely, they should be.

But if not, then certainly the program has to be much faster and more fair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you

Mr. Tabbara, you have seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Virani.

Thank you for being here, Ms. Schweitzer. We really appreciate all the information you've been providing this committee in our study on family reunification.

My first question is on immigration refugee protection regulation 117(9)(d), which states that people are not family members if they were not examined by a visa officer when the person sponsoring them immigrated to Canada. Since they are not considered a family member, they cannot be sponsored under the family class.

My question is, have you experienced any cases that fall under this category, and if so, could you provide us with some examples?

[Toni Schweitzer]

I have to say that in the immigrant communities I deal with, largely, in the work I do at Parkdale, we don't have a huge issue with regulation 117(9)(d).

I know there are many cases that are caught by it. The problem, as has already been discussed, is that those cases, then, are permanently barred from a sponsorship, and then it's only a humanitarian application, which is discretionary. As the earlier witnesses said, it's long, it's slow, and it's uncertain, and there may be very good explanations for why that child was left off the application.

So, I would agree with what was said earlier, that the solution is to do away with the provision.

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

Do you agree that, when certain individuals are filling out their applications, they're not understanding the consequences if they left something out—

[Toni Schweitzer]

Absolutely. Not only do they not necessarily understand, but they are, on occasion, getting bad advice too, from people who say, “If you're not planning on bringing them now, don't worry. Leave them off. You can deal with them later”. We hear stories like that all the time.

The other thing is—and this is going back to Ms. Kwan's question around definition of “family”—that we will see cases where people will indicate that they have children. For immigration purposes, that means your biological children or your legally adopted children. When we have a case of a child who is a de facto adopted child and he or she has been indicated on the forms as a child, that seemed to be an untruth. I have yet to run across a client who did that intentionally. It's that, in their view, in their eyes, this is their child. They don't know that when you write “child” on an immigration form, that means technically your biological child or legally adopted child. And so there are real problems around that.

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

Thank you.

I'll turn it over to my colleague.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you for being here, Ms. Schweitzer. It's great to see you again. I prefer calling you Toni, but I want to be a bit more formal.

I want to say at the outset that the work you do at the Parkdale legal clinic is obviously well received and well respected. My understanding is that it was the first legal clinic in Toronto, if not in Ontario. For all of the work you're doing, I commend you and the clinic.

I want to ask you about two things that you raised, one right at the outset and one secondarily.

Your work in the Tibetan community is invaluable, and I thank you for it.

I'll ask both questions at once, because time is always short.

Perhaps you could touch on what you called “D-2s”, the concurrently processed individuals who are coming in under a refugee stream as protected persons. You indicated that it was meant to be concurrent to make it occur faster, and this has not actually been borne out by the facts.

Could you tell us a bit about how long it's actually taking, particularly for your Tibetan clients, as opposed to, if you have some comparison, how long it's taking for others who are generally in the family sponsorship category, and what you would suggest as a solution to rectify it? Is it to eliminate concurrent processing altogether and shift everything into family processing, or is it to enhance what is meant to be a quicker system currently?

I'll put the second question out there now. You talked about the visa posts abroad and the fact that they give you a grocery list of all of the things you require, showing what could be done incrementally or in stages. You might not need the medical up front; you could wait for it until after you've determined the marriage.

I presume you deal mostly with South Asian visa processing centres, but do you have any basis to inform the committee as to whether there are any visa offices that you know of, even anecdotally, anywhere in the world doing exactly what you say, and whether that's working better? I'd be curious to know about that.

[Toni Schweitzer]

I'll answer the second question first.

I don't know whether there are visa posts that are doing it differently. We work largely with clients whose families are in India and Nepal, so we're dealing with the Canadian high commission in New Delhi. Their practice, as I said, is to send out these form letters.

That being said, I recently—in fact, just earlier this week—received notification that one of our files had been moved from India to Hong Kong. I think it was about processing more quickly, moving things around. The problem is that the Hong Kong office sent out their generic letter, including the request for the household registration document, the hukou.

It's a Chinese document. Our client is in India. Obviously I know that, and I can tell our client, you don't need to get that. But there has to be some common sense used when moving files around. You can't just be sending out generic letters asking for a whole bunch of documents that don't apply to the particular clients. While I appreciate that this is an effort to speed up processing, there are some complications there.

I don't know whether there are visa posts that do it the way I've suggested, but I can't see why it wouldn't make sense and why it isn't possible. There's no reason to see a medical result or even a police clearance before determining whether this person is a member of the family class.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

There remain 20 seconds.

[Toni Schweitzer]

I now forget your first question. I'm sorry.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

It was about the Tibetan processing times and the concurrent processing, and how they compare—

[Toni Schweitzer]

I'm not sure I could give you an estimate off the top of my head.

It's true that we see the complicated cases. Maybe there are straightforward cases that move quickly, but we have cases in our office in which the person in Canada becomes a citizen before their family gets here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. Schweitzer, for appearing before our committee today.

We will now be moving in camera to deal with some committee business.

Once again, thank you so much for providing evidence to us.

[Proceedings continue in camera]