Mr. Chair, I'd like to thank this committee for the opportunity for the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants to appear before you. The Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants, CAPIC, is the representative body of self-regulated Canadian immigration consultants, which seeks to educate and inform our members—about 1,400 at present—about the latest developments in the realm of immigration, and lobbies the stakeholders on issues affecting immigration and the consulting profession to improve the recognition of the regulated consultants who are authorized to provide immigration consultancy services for a fee.
In the second decade of its existence, CAPIC has appeared before various arms of the government, including this committee, and the department, as well as the minister's office. We have also been consulting with other stakeholders to immigration including ESDC, CBSA, and the provinces.
I'll start by making two points as a reminder before going to the main presentation.
In Canada, immigration has historically been focused on the social, economic, and demographic needs of the society, but it has had a remarkable though immeasurable social impact on the fabric. In fact, one of the objectives of the current governing legislation, the IRPA, is to allow Canada to pursue the maximum social, cultural, and economic benefits of immigration.
My second point is that family reunification is one of the main objectives and does contribute to the social, as well as the demographic, needs of the society. Despite this, in the last few years, Canada has not been able to reap the potential social and economic benefits of the family reunification initiative.
It would appear that as Canadians we should be looking at family reunification through a different lens and allow Canada to put into practice immigration programs that would help us improve the outcomes. Our presentation will cover these topics: the scope of family reunification as we know it; excluded members of the family class; cap on the parents and grandparents; sponsors' requirements when sponsoring parents and grandparents; 20-year commitment, which is a part of the sponsor's requirement; processing times; and the online processing situation.
I will cover the first topic, which is the scope of family reunification. As I mentioned, we should be looking at family reunification through a different lens. We have traditionally looked at family reunification as a spouse, dependent children, parents and grandparents, but family is much more than that. It appears counterintuitive that while we consider parents and grandparents rightfully as a part of the family, we don't consider siblings, who are a much closer part of any individual. That is where our main suggestion comes from. We would suggest that siblings be included in the family class. Providing an opportunity to sponsor siblings would result in better social, economic, as well as demographic benefits to Canada.
CAPIC acknowledges that this group would be potentially very large and may lead to an administrative burden on the Canadian immigration system. However, given the large-scale potential benefits, CAPIC urges the committee to consider recommending a pilot project to allow siblings to be sponsored without restricting their education and skills.
I will now hand over the microphone to my colleague, Vilma, for further presentation.