Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 27th, 2016

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Great.

[Vilma Filici]

—in the last six months.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

We're perfect?

[Vilma Filici]

No, you're not perfect yet.

There was a suggestion earlier—I think it was from the Canadian Bar Association—that as we're moving forward with technology and with processing applications online.... Right now, we're only doing temporary status online, but I think it's coming that in the future everything is going to be done online, so we will see processing times reduced.

The suggestion that CAPIC has, I believe, has to do with making the family sponsorships part of the electronic processing.

[Deepak Kohli]

If I may quickly add to that, CAPIC does believe that we should look at online processing to make the best use of technology going forward. IRCC has tried that and has been successful, I believe. That's the sense we get. That would lead to savings in terms of costs as well as processing times. I believe that would address that situation.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

That would be great. Thank you.

Professor Sweetman, I wonder if you could elaborate on one of the points you made.

You talked about the need for settlement services depending on the different family class. Keeping in mind that we're focusing on trying to improve the whole process around family reunification, in light of that, can you elaborate a bit on your comments on settlement services?

[Prof. Arthur Sweetman]

At the moment, I think many settlement agencies attempt to provide services depending on the needs of the individual. However, I don't think we have a lot of experience with understanding what works for different types of immigrants in different situations.

For example, I don't think we know a lot about the way to deliver language training to people who are principal applicants—skilled workers—compared to family class immigration. In many larger centres, there are certainly large enough groups where you could have targeted classes for different types of immigrants to serve their needs particularly well, or at least better than we do now.

We also need to think about people who are not particularly focused on the labour market but are still interested in social inclusion. Many of the language training classes we have now are very focused on the labour market. We could have many more, especially in the family class, where we're interested not so much in labour market integration but in social integration.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

You did make the point, and my ears did perk up on this, where you were talking about how we don't have adequate language training. How do you know that? Are there studies? Is there something you could share with us on that?

[Prof. Arthur Sweetman]

There have been a number of studies looking at language training. The truth is, not very many look at the impacts of language training. We simply don't have good data on it. But we do have—

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Sorry, to interrupt, but I'm looking for language training from settlement services, that specific.

[Prof. Arthur Sweetman]

I'm focusing exclusively on settlement services. Right now we only go up to a limited benchmark. It's the same benchmark for all individuals, regardless of their profession. For many professions, especially people who are professionals, they would need much higher language training, much more in-depth language training, than we provide at the moment.

We still have debates, whether it's better for people to start working first and learn language second, or learn language first and work second. I don't think we know the answer to many questions in that area.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay, thanks. That's very helpful.

Mr. Karas, you spent a bit of time talking to us about how other countries are dealing with marriages of convenience. Here's where my concern is. I'm concerned always about putting laws into place to deal with things like a marriage of convenience, or trying to stop that here in Canada. What I want to do is to find a recommendation that is not going to impede our desire, or at least my desire, to have good family reunification. I don't want to try to deal with the 1% by having a big hammer that's going to sort of, you know, really hurt a lot more people than we're really trying to deal with.

What would be your specific recommendation for Canada in trying to minimize these marriages of convenience, but not hurting our desire to sort of process and allow for family reunification?

[Sergio Karas]

It's not a question of hurting Canada's desire for family reunification. It's a question of enforcing the law. What you're going to have to do is give CBSA the proper tools and proper budget in order to be able to investigate complaints from people who complain about being duped, or being forced into arranged marriages that they didn't want, just for the purpose of immigration, etc.

The problem right now is that there are no resources for these people to seek redress. The financial cost and the human cost and the humiliation that these people suffer is enormous, especially in many communities, because they end up with having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases, and also being responsible for the sponsorship. It's just terrible. There has to be a way to redress.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

I'd like to thank the panellists for coming to our hearing today. Thank you once again, as before, for all of your insights.

With that our meeting concludes.

The meeting is adjourned.