Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 27th, 2016

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I'm supportive of this motion. I was just wondering if my colleague, who moved it, would speak to her desire for timing. I have a concern on this, given the timeline on this motion. I know when we conducted the study this summer, the message out of the ministry was “We're going to wait for action until the committee study is done”. My concern is that if this is put off to a later date it might also be the same message that comes out of the ministry again, and that's certainly not how I would like to spend question period for the next few months.

I'm wondering if my colleague opposite would speak to when she would like to see this happen and maybe if the government members would speak to...perhaps this committee would be unanimous that we would encourage the minister not to take that tone on this particular exercise.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I would certainly urge that this motion be acted upon as soon as possible. There is an urgency with respect to the matter, given that the government has a timeline of 120 days. I would think that even if that meant we had to interrupt or change our schedule on the studies that we had planned, we do that and insert this as soon as we're able to have the officials come and present before this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Sarai.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

I think it won't be more than one meeting. It will be an hour for the German officials and an hour for our government officials to come and report. We're just talking about a short...unless you correct me and they need longer, and then we have a short report after that.

Perhaps we could even interrupt the current reports, and I don't know if the subcommittee does it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

I believe we could get into the details of it.

Are you suggesting that we add the phrase “as soon as possible” into the motion as it stands?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Chair, if there's consensus that we move quickly on this, I'm fine with that. I don't need an amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

As far as the final details go, we'll perhaps hear back from the department officials and we can work that out in our subcommittee. I think the intent is clear. It seems that we've collectively come to consensus.

There were some wording changes. The clerk could perhaps read it. It's in her handwriting.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Erica Pereira]

The motion reads:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and in light of the House of Commons unanimously voting in favour of the motion for the Canadian government to use its full authority to provide asylum to Yazidi women and girls who are escaping genocide within 120 days; the Committee undertake a study and invite officials from the German government that led the German initiative to expeditiously resettled 1,000 Yazidi women and girls so that Canada could learn from their experiences; that departmental officials who travelled to Iraq brief the Committee on their experience at an in camera meeting; that this study be comprised of one meeting to be held as soon as possible; that the Committee report its findings to the House; and that Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the government table a comprehensive response thereto.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Is there any further discussion?

(Motion agreed to)

That passed unanimously.

We'll now return to the scheduled hearing.

I would like to welcome before the committee, the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants. We have Mr. Deepak Kohli, the vice-president; and Ms. Vilma Filici, a representative. As an individual, by videoconference, we have Mr. Arthur Sweetman, who is a professor. Also, as an individual, we have Mr. Sergio Karas, barrister and solicitor with Karas Immigration Law Professional Corporation.

Welcome to all the panel.

We'll begin with Mr. Kohli, for seven minutes, please.

[Deepak Kohli, Vice-President, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants]

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.

[Vilma Filici, Representative, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants]

Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to speak before you today.

I am going to repeat some of the things that we have already heard from the people who spoke before us.

CAPIC is also very concerned about paragraph 117(9)(d) of the regulations, which excludes members of the family class. You heard from the other panellists that if there is a situation where a dependent family member does not do medical examinations at the time that the person, or in this case, the would-be sponsor, is applying for permanent residency, that dependent will be excluded for life from being sponsored as a member of the family class. CAPIC would like to see that section repealed or changed to allow for circumstances where there was no clear intention to misrepresent and where there were circumstances beyond the control of the person applying for permanent residency and they could not have the family member or dependent medically examined.

I believe Mr. Wong talked about a situation where there is a bitter divorce and one of the spouses has custody of a child, and the spouse who has custody of the child does not allow that dependant to undergo medical examinations. Unfortunately, the way the regulation works now, even if the child was declared but the child did not undergo medical examinations as required by section 42 of the act, that child will be excluded for life.

We would like to see changes to allow for such circumstances where there was no true intention to misrepresent, where the child in this case was declared, but for reasons beyond the person's control the child could not be medically examined, to not be excluded as a member of the family class.

We also heard quite a bit about parents and grandparents, and we are in agreement with—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 20 seconds, please.

[Vilma Filici]

Really?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Yes.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I know the feeling.

[Vilma Filici]

Then I'm going to move to spousal and common-law partners and conjugal partners, and the conditional permanent residency.

We've also heard about situations where people who are very vulnerable may be remaining in situations of abuse because of the conditions of their permanent residency.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

[Vilma Filici]

I would just like to say that in an attempt to curb the problem of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

[Vilma Filici]

—abusive or non-genuine relationships, we have created—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Perhaps we can continue that later.

[Vilma Filici]

All right, later on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Professor Sweetman, for seven minutes, please.

[Professor Arthur Sweetman, As an Individual]

Thank you for inviting me.

Family class is motivated by many issues. This morning I'll be speaking exclusively to economics and related topics, which are my area of expertise.

The first thing is to think about context. The formal family class immigration stream is only one aspect of the broader issue of family reunification through immigration. For example, by design, “privately sponsored refugees” in practice is used to sponsor family members, so it's another stream, other than the formal family class, used for family reunification.

The one I'd like to focus on is another example, which is the use of adaptability points inside the federal skilled worker program. Expanding this avenue for family reunification might prove to be quite worthwhile and is something the committee should be considering. I know this goes against the axiom used in some governments of using one policy lever for one policy goal, but I think we've already breached that boundary, and I think it's worth thinking about considering pushing that a little further.

In terms of the economic evidence regarding family reunification, usually a committee such as yours is about evidence and opinion collection. Unfortunately, if you're interested in evidence-informed decision-making, you're going to have to invest in evidence generation, because the truth is that very little is known about economic issues related to family reunification.

I want to talk about three economic issues in particular, two of which the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is particularly concerned about. The first is social assistance used by the family class, which of course the sponsors are responsible for to some extent, and the second is health care costs, which again the act is concerned about in disallowing people with certain types of health care needs.

Other issues are really important. For example, OAS and GIS liabilities associated with immigration are potentially quite important.

The truth is, we simply don't know how large or small these issues are, and if you're going to be making evidence-informed decisions, I think it's incumbent upon your committee to find out.

One of the things the federal government has been concerned about in terms of these types of costs is who pays. As I mentioned, social assistance costs, because of the benefits accruing to sponsoring families, are to a certain extent paid for by those families. The super visa allows—or requires, I guess—people who are sponsoring and the sponsor to pay their own health care costs, and it cuts them off from OAS and GIS liabilities.

One thing we might be thinking about is that if these are truly ethical and moral decisions about benefiting Canada through family reunification, we might not want to be imposing health care and social assistance costs upon provinces. The federal government may want to choose to reimburse provinces for health care and social assistance costs directly associated with the family reunification or the family class program. This is really an issue of asking who should be paying. Should it be the residents and taxpayers of particular provinces or should it be all Canadian taxpayers? I guess I'm advocating that in this case we should think about all Canadians paying.

A third issue is demographics. Immigration, as we all know, has a very modest effect on Canada's demographic structure. Nevertheless, it's used as a motivation despite its small impact. The parents and grandparents program needs to be considered from a demographic perspective. It goes against the motivation used by this government for other parts of its immigration policy, and we need to be considering immigration policy as a whole.

Finally, I turn to labour market outcomes. The outcomes of parents and grandparents are not particularly strong subsequent to arrival and, similarly, the spouses sponsored through the family class do not have outcomes as good, if you want, or as successful, as spouses coming through the skilled worker program. If we expand these programs, we need to be thinking very carefully about the provision of settlement services to these individuals. It's not clear at the moment that we are doing this appropriately or that we're thinking very carefully about the different needs of people settling from different immigration categories.

That's it. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Professor Sweetman.

Mr. Karas, please, for seven minutes.