Evidence of meeting #35 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was reunification.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Okay. That's enough.
I was going to ask another question of all three witnesses, on improving processing times for the family class reunification and dealing with backlogs. I think the Canadian Bar Association did answer this in terms of its top recommendation. If you had to give one recommendation on doing this, what would it be?
4:10 p.m.
Chair, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
In terms of reducing backlogs?
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Yes, and processing times.
I think you already touched on it, so I want to give the other two the remaining minute I have.
4:10 p.m.
Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
One recommendation I have for spousal sponsorship cases, for instance, would be to take away some of the very subjective elements of the decision-making and have a more transparent and objective process based on a number of risk factors.
If these applications do not give rise to a risk, then you don't have to police these cases in the way they are being policed right now.
4:10 p.m.
Lawyer, Desloges Law Group, As an Individual
My recommendation would be common sense. If a document is missing, pick up the phone and call the person. Tell them to send it, and give them a deadline, instead of strapping snail mail to the back of a donkey and sending it overland, which is the current system.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
October 27th, 2016 / 4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Gary Anandasangaree Liberal Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and colleagues.
I am here on behalf of Salma Zahid, my colleague from Scarborough Centre. Surprisingly, I am appearing today as Avvy Go and her colleague from the clinic are. I am extremely familiar with the great work they have done over the years. I want to thank you for being that great voice for the vulnerable in Toronto. To all of you, welcome.
I want to probe a bit more what Vincent was talking about—something that Vance also touched on—which is the conditional PR. In my office, in the last year, since January, we've come across at least four cases where there were a great deal of challenges, particularly with women who were in abusive situations and who were very reluctant to come forward and in any way address the issues. We had to be very proactive and try to probe a lot further than in our usual case management situation.
I wonder if you could give us some specifics in terms of your experience. What interim measures can we do in order to make sure we don't have vulnerable people, particularly women, who are caught up in this mess of a conditional PR?
4:15 p.m.
Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
I would say that half of the clients who come to us with a CPR question, even though they are abused by their spouse, would not want us to apply for exemption. I've been telling them that hopefully the government will change the rule.
I cannot think of any interim measure, to be very honest, because these women continue to live in fear. As long as there is CPR, they will continue to live in fear. That's why we are urging.... I know regulations are coming down. You have to make it retroactive; otherwise, these women will be in trouble.
We just finished one case where the woman's spouse was a police officer, and even after she called the police.... The husband told her that the police would not help her, and he was right. We were able to help the woman get exemption, but if she had listened to her husband and not come forward, she would have been in trouble.
4:15 p.m.
Staff Lawyer, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
In terms of interim measures, perhaps some sort of operational directive not to go after...to enforce this as hard would be helpful, but of course nothing will be a substitute for actually repealing it.
In a lot of cases we see, the spouse, who most often is the husband, is really explicit about the control. They will say, “You'd better do what I tell you. You can't run away, or else I'm going to get Immigration after you.” To a certain extent, they are right.
It is also very difficult for people in an abusive situation to come forward or to collect the documentary evidence about abuse, especially when they are trying to leave their homes and they don't have any support networks and don't know anybody. That's what we are seeing.
Thank you.
4:15 p.m.
Chair, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
In our view, the conditional permanent residence was thought to be an easy fix. Before conditional permanent residence was in place.... There are the mechanisms to enforce non-genuine marriages, marriages for immigration purposes. It was clear that there was a lack of resources in the enforcement area, so it wasn't done.
I've been involved in reporting cases. We just don't have the resources to enforce it. If we repeal conditional permanent residence and eliminate the problem with abused spouses in those situations, we can go back to a situation where we have the ability to allocate resources and effectively deal with non-genuine relationships.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Gary Anandasangaree Liberal Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON
I recently came across a very compelling situation with respect to a child. It was a spousal sponsorship that included a child in another country. They were forced to take a paternity test and, unfortunately, a 16-year-old had to find out through a very crass process that the father wasn't the biological father. As a result, there are some serious concerns with the processing.
What can we do to ensure that families—and it depends on how people define family—are intact when we deal with immigration and sponsorship?
4:15 p.m.
Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
That's a $60-million question. We also have situations similar to that, and it's more common in China, too, where there are a lot of abandoned girls. Some of our clients just took in abandoned girls and raised them as their own family members, until one day they had to prove that they were members. Of course, they had nothing to prove it because they never adopted them. I think that speaks to the lack of flexibility, and maybe to Chantal's point about how we define family. Right now, we use the concept of a de facto family member to try to capture these situations, but it doesn't always work. The visa officers have all kinds of reasons to reject them. Even in some cases where they accept that the girl has been raised in that family, they say, “Well, you know, by now she's almost 19, so she can be on her own.” I think, really, the concept of family needs to be resolved. We need to accept that people form families in different ways and that not all of them have had the chance to formalize through adoption.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Gary Anandasangaree Liberal Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON
In the CBA brief, I think there was some discussion about the super visa not being a replacement for extended family reunification. What would be an appropriate number that we should look at with respect to family reunification, or should there even be a number on an annualized basis? I think right now it's 10,000 applicants per year. What is the appropriate number, in your opinion?
4:20 p.m.
Chair, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
I think in our brief we said 25,000 parents and grandparents, didn't we? We did say that “more reasonable service levels might reflect 25,000 admissions per year, and processing times not exceeding two years.” We appreciate that there's been some increase. That was the level that we thought would be reasonable under the circumstances. We did address our minds to the overall cost.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Bob Saroya Conservative Markham—Unionville, ON
Thank you to the panel for coming all the way from Toronto and all over the place.
All of you talked about four things: to cut the time to one year or two years, to reduce the income for family sponsorship, to change the maximum age of a dependent child from 19 to 22, and to remove the quota system. If we have to put those four different things in a row, which would be number one on your wish list, and number two, and number three, and number four?
We can start with Chantal.
4:20 p.m.
Lawyer, Desloges Law Group, As an Individual
I'm going to make myself unpopular at this table and say that I'm actually not in favour of reducing the income level for sponsorship. That would probably be the bottom of my list, personally. What would be number one? I would say maybe dealing with the definition of “dependent child”. I do agree with the position that the age right now is a little bit too low to be realistic. I mean, most people are in college or university when they're 19 years old. But one thing that I disagree with is that I don't think we should go back to the previous definition, which allowed an exception for full-time students. It was a nightmare for visa officers to try to figure out who was a genuine student. You had people who were 35 years old and were already on their fifth master, just trying to stay in school to be dependent. I think that was a logistical nightmare.
4:20 p.m.
Staff Lawyer, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
I'm going to play devil's advocate here on the minimum necessary income because, again, we service low-income people. Many of them are immigrants, but not all. Still, they're certainly racialized. Basically, right now the minimum necessary income is the low-income cutoff plus 30%. It has to be shown with three consecutive years of CRA documents, so there can't be an off year. Then, because of various racial issues with accessing the employment market and because of racial inequities, a lot of people who are in our communities are stuck in poverty. If you completely bar family reunification, parent and grandparent reunification, they're never going to have the extended family structure that will be the sufficient condition to let them get out of poverty. Mothers are not going to be able to enter the workforce if their parents are not able to take care of the children since they can't afford child care.
What I want to be concerned about is how the economic analysis is nuanced. It's not black and white.
4:20 p.m.
Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
I would pick that as our top choice as well, and in fact, some of the studies included in our submission show that racialized communities are less likely to be in poverty if you combine the family income. That means if the family has more than one generation, like the parents and grandparents included in the family, they are more likely to be above the low-income cut-off. In fact, having the family here, having parents and grandparents here, lifts them out of poverty.
4:25 p.m.
Chair, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
Out of the seven issues in this study being considered, the Canadian Bar Association's number one would be reducing obstacles to entry into Canada for partners and spouses of Canadians through training and process improvements, increased consistency and transparency in decision-making, and greater access to appeals. The fact is that we treat spouses of Canadians worse than spouses of foreign nationals in immigrating to Canada.
Our number two would be children, relaxing the criteria and reducing processing times for the sponsorship of dependent children and adopted children in order to take their best interests into account.
It's very hard to put this at number three, but it is greater certainty for applicants and their family members, and Canadian sponsors, by implementing consistent service standards and processing times across all these offices; so overall system efficiency, certainty that enables people to plan and not be feeling like they have no control and they're at the whim of the processing of the Canadian government.
