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.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
I understand that before we begin today's hearing, Mr. Tilson would like to raise an issue.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
I would, Mr. Chairman. I'll try to be very brief because we want to hear these witnesses.
As you know, the finance minister is giving an economic update on Tuesday at 4 o'clock. Our meeting starts at 3:30. Many of us would probably want to hear that statement. I would.
I also understand from the clerk that some of the witnesses will be travelling from afar, and it would be costly to cancel or to put that meeting off to another time. I'm just raising the issue as to whether it would be appropriate to put the Tuesday meeting off to another date, because some of us might want to hear what the finance minister has to say.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
I put that to the committee.
How many witnesses are travelling? Four. There could be pretty substantive penalties with having to cancel those travel arrangements. I'd just like to make that point.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
I appreciate that. It's also important to hear the plans the finance minister may have.
Liberal
Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON
Mr. Chair, I appreciate the comments that Mr. Tilson made. It is very important to hear our finance minister. In today's day and age, I'm assuming that they are videotaping it, and we could watch it afterwards, so my recommendation is that we don't postpone our next meeting.
Thanks very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you.
It seems that there isn't any consensus on this point, Mr. Tilson, so the meeting will proceed as scheduled.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
I'd now like to turn to our witnesses.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), and the motion adopted by the committee on February 25, the committee will resume its study on family reunification. We have a large panel before us this afternoon.
We have representatives from the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, Ms. Avvy Go, the clinic director, and Mr. Vincent Wong, who is a staff lawyer assisting.
From the Canadian Bar Association, we have Mr. Vance Langford, the chair of the immigration law section. We also have Ms. Tamra Thomson, the director of legislation and law reform.
Once again, we have Ms. Chantal Desloges, a lawyer from the Desloges Law Group. Welcome back.
We'll begin with the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. Ms. Go, the floor is yours. You have seven minutes.
Avvy Go Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Thank you.
My name is Avvy Go. I'm the clinic director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. With me is Vince Wong, who is the staff lawyer of our clinic.
Thank you very much for the opportunity for us to comment on the family class program.
We have submitted a written brief. I would encourage members to review that. I'll just start with my brief remarks.
Family reunification is one of the core objectives of Canada's immigration law. Historically, family class immigrants comprise a significant portion of the overall immigration population. Since the early 1990s, however, the percentage of family class immigrants has steadily been on the decline, so currently family class immigrants make up just less than 25% of all immigration to Canada.
Immigrants from Asia and other parts of the global south represent the largest percentage of both the sponsor population as well as the sponsored immigrants in the family class program. As a result, any negative changes to the program will disproportionately affect members of racialized groups.
Family class immigrants contribute significantly to the well-being of Canadian families and to the Canadian economy, yet sponsored parents and grandparents are often portrayed as burdens on our society, while sponsored spouses are viewed as fraudsters even though these myths have never been substantiated.
Studies have actually shown that the presence of family networks in Canada, including parents and grandparents, facilitate the settlement and integration process. Research also confirms the central critical role parents and grandparents play in supporting the healthy development of our youth. Families are particularly important in the maintenance of the well-being of racialized communities, members of people with disabilities communities, and women.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada studied the family class program and did an evaluation based on a number of years of the sponsored immigrants coming over. The result of that report shows that the family program actually acts as an incentive for economic immigration because about 48% of the sponsors of parents and grandparents and a high percentage of spousal sponsorship came to Canada as economic immigrants.
The report also confirms the economic benefits of sponsored immigrants to their families and to Canada in addition to fostering social cohesion. Yet despite all these positive benefits, there have been many negative changes to the family class program over the years, particularly for the sponsorship of parents and grandparents. We want this committee to look at ways to strengthen the family class program and to make it easier for Canadians to be reunited with their families.
Our report has a number of recommendations. I'll highlight a few.
First, the quota system imposed on parents and grandparents should be lifted. The Government of Canada should treat all family class members equally, and should provide adequate and equitable resources for the processing of all family class members.
Second, family reunification should not be a privilege reserved only for the rich, so we recommend that the ban on spousal sponsorship for sponsors who are in receipt of social assistance be repealed. We urge the Government of Canada to remove the minimum necessary income requirement for the sponsorship of parents and grandparents Our brief talks about how historically there was no minimum income requirement for such a program until 1978.
Third, with respect to spousal sponsorship, we recommend anti-racism training for visa officers to combat any inherent bias in their decision-making process. We also recommend periodic systemic review of their decisions.
Finally, we want to acknowledge the extended family model that many Canadians embrace. Therefore, we urge the age of dependent children be increased back to 22 years of age, and that there be changes to allow the admission of assisted family members or assisted relatives through regulatory change.
I'm going to turn it over to Vince to close the submission.
Vincent Wong Staff Lawyer, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Thank you, Avvy.
I'd like to focus my submission on three points.
The first is with respect to conditional permanent residency. As expected, and as we see at the clinic, the mandatory imposition of a two-year permanent residency condition that a sponsored person live with their spouse has led to an increase in vulnerability, and an increase of situations where we see domestic violence and exploitation, as this condition is being used to further tip power imbalances between spouses. The government, in their mandate letter, has already committed to repealing this, so we want to say that we hope this repeal is done immediately and also is applied retroactively to those spouses who have already been affected by this condition.
The second point refers to the bona fides of spousal relationships, specifically, subsection 4(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act regulations. In 2010 there was a government amendment saying that spouses and their sponsors needed to prove both a genuine relationship, number one, and, number two, that a relationship was not entered into primarily for immigration purposes. Previously, spouses only needed to prove one or the other.
This has led to situations of absurdity, basically, where an immigration officer or the Immigration and Refugee Board has determined that a spousal relationship is genuine but still rejects it because the primary purpose, they determine, is for immigration purposes. This is a waste of time. This is a waste of taxpayer money to go through these appeals. It only serves to unjustly and unfairly separate families. We believe that this amendment, which is overly harsh and redundant, should be repealed.
The third is with respect to paragraph 117(9)(d) of the regulations.
Staff Lawyer, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Thank you.
Basically, this excludes from the family sponsorship anybody who was not examined at the time somebody landed as a permanent resident. We believe this catches many legitimate situations and is also overly broad and harsh, particularly for our clients having to do with a one-child policy or a two-child policy, who are unjustly separated from their children for a lifetime for that reason.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you, Mr. Wong.
Mr. Langford, please, for seven minutes, or is it Ms. Thomson?
Tamra Thomson Director, Legislation and Law Reform, Canadian Bar Association
Mr. Chair, I will start, and then Mr. Langford will continue.
Mr. Chair and honourable members, we're very pleased to be here today on behalf of the immigration law section of the Canadian Bar Association. The CBA is a national organization, and the members of the immigration law section, numbering over 1,100, practise in all aspects of immigration and citizenship law in all parts of Canada.
The primary objectives of the Canadian Bar Association include improvement of the law and improvement in the administration of justice. It's in that optic that the letter you have before you has been prepared, with the specifics of the changes that the immigration law section would like to see.
With that, I will hand it to Mr. Langford to deal with the substantive matters in our submission.
Vance P. E. Langford Chair, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
Thank you, Ms. Thomson.
Mr. Chair, honourable members, thank you for hearing us this afternoon, which we appreciate.
Ms. Thomson has mentioned our written submission addressing the seven issues identified for this study. This afternoon I'd like to address those issues, and in particular, our recommendations related to reducing obstacles to immigration for members of the family class, including spouses and partners, children, and parents and grandparents.
Our key recommendations are as follows: number one, reduce obstacles to entry to Canada for spouses and partners of Canadians. The Canadian Bar Association commends the Government of Canada on prioritizing the sponsorship of spouses and partners by increasing levels and reducing backlogs, under the 2016 immigration levels plan. Our members note general improvements in processing times in the past year, and we think that's excellent.
We also note the positive effect of spouses obtaining open work permits after about four months in Canada. We recommend that the current pilot project that expires in December be extended and made permanent.
We further recommend improving processes to achieve efficiency and consistency in decision-making, based on officer training, reasonable assessment criteria, particularly for common-law and conjugal partners, communication between officers and applicants, and detailed reasons in the event of a negative decision.
We recommend improving access to appeals, including for sponsorship applications submitted inside Canada, in reasonable time periods.
We recommend issuing open work permits for spouses and partners upon filing applications for permanent residence, or alternatively, on sponsorship approval, which is currently the practice.
We recommend deferring removal of spouses when an in-Canada sponsorship application is in process. The current policy of deferral for about 60 days in limited circumstances is inadequate, particularly when Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada takes 12 to 24 months to process a spousal application.
We recommend eliminating conditional permanent residence for sponsored spouses and partners, including retroactively, as has been said by other witnesses before this committee, and instead, enforcing prohibitions against misrepresentation under the act.
Number two, reduce obstacles to sponsoring dependent children, adopted children, siblings, and other relatives. We recommend repealing paragraph 117(9)(d) of the immigration regulations, which can result in permanent separation from family members. This provision is overly broad, capturing many situations that occur due to innocent mistakes, such as confusion over terms such as “common law”, or lack of knowledge of a living dependant.
The CBA section commends the Government of Canada on reversing the change in age of dependent children. Returning children under age 22 to the family class will avoid hardship for children of immigrants who remain physically, emotionally, and financially dependent on their parents. We urge the government to make this change effective without further delay, with transitional provisions that include dependent children who would have otherwise been eligible since August 2014.
We recommend making children of successful refugee applicants eligible for inclusion as dependent children, notwithstanding their birth in a country that would otherwise make them ineligible, such as birth in the United States.
We recommend improving processing times for routine applications for sponsorship of adopted children.
With respect to parents and grandparents, our third key area, we wish to recommend that Canada retain and improve the parent and grandparent sponsorship program, taking into account the value of economic, social, and cultural contributions of parents and grandparents. This can be done by facilitating immigration by parents and grandparents based on a holistic view of Canadian families and communities, taking into account the benefits of intergenerational families, including child care and financial support.
We recommend eliminating backlogs and reducing processing times to provide certainty for Canadian families and access to the benefits provided by parents and grandparents.
Those are our key points. I thank you for hearing us this afternoon, and we would welcome any questions you have.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you, Mr. Langford.
Ms. Desloges, for seven minutes, please.
Chantal Desloges Lawyer, Desloges Law Group, As an Individual
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and honourable committee members. I've met some of you before, but not all.
My name is Chantal Desloges. I'm an immigration and refugee lawyer based in Toronto. I've been working with immigrants and refugees for 22 years, 18 of those as a lawyer. I'm certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada in both immigration and refugee law as a specialist.
I would be remiss if I didn't start by congratulating all of you on the work that you did this summer concerning vulnerable minority refugees and the recent multi-party co-operation that you have reached this week in regard to the Yazidi genocide victims. You have my highest respect for that wonderful co-operation and work. I thank you for your leadership.
Looking at family class sponsorship, a good part of my practice involves family reunification cases. I often teach this subject to aspiring immigration consultants and give lectures to other professionals on the subject. I've dealt with literally thousands of family-based cases. I looked at the scope of the study before the committee, and I saw identified such subjects as the quota system, super visas, challenges to spousal sponsorship, etc. I've also read the deputations made by the CBA and by CAPIC. Rather than touching on topics that either have been discussed or will be discussed, I'd like to spend my couple of minutes today proposing a couple of different ideas.
First of all, with regard to parental sponsorship, in the course of my practice I've dealt with people from virtually every country in the world. In a very high proportion of countries, living in a joint family system is in fact the norm, meaning multiple generations of families living together in the same home as one family unit. Many of the committee members may originate from such communities and will doubtless be familiar with that kind of truth. Our current system of family reunification for parents causes a huge number of pain points for newcomers to Canada, such as the following.
One, there's post-arrival depression and feelings of isolation for those people who are used to living in large multi-generational households.
Two, there's the prospect of being separated from parents for a long period of time. Currently it's a minimum of three years, but realistically, it's more like at least five years before a newcomer would be able to meet minimum necessary income requirements to sponsor parents.
Three, there are feelings of guilt, especially for immigrants who bear the cultural expectations of caring for their parents in their old age.
Four, there's the separation of grandchildren from grandparents, who are often the primary caregivers in the home country.
Five, there are negative income effects due to not having in-family child care so that both parents can go out and work full time.
Six, there's attrition of immigrants back to the home country due to family responsibilities such as ill or aging parents. This is a huge problem that I've observed in my practice. We have permanent residents who aren't able to stay here, and they end up losing their own residency because of family obligations.
Finally, there are problems in maintaining PR status, which in turn, in my view, incentivizes residency fraud. I would say at least 30% of the new consultations I see on a weekly basis are from people who have problems maintaining residency. At least half of those are because of responsibilities to ill or aging parents in the home country.
The concept of the nuclear family being just two parents with children is largely a western European construct. It is not the norm in most of the world and particularly not in areas of the world from which most of our newcomers in Canada originate. However, it's exactly on that construct that we've built our definition of family in the immigration and refugee protection regulations. Maybe it's time to rethink that.
When a person applies to immigrate to Canada, under the regulations they can include to come with them their family members, which is defined as dependants, which in turn is defined as a spouse or spousal equivalent and dependent children. My recommendation is that you give serious thought to changing that definition to allow people to optionally include their parents as dependants in their own immigration applications, assuming of course that they can show enough settlement funds, enough money to support the entire family unit, and that the parents can pass all of the regular admissibility requirements.
Should the applicant opt not to include parents in their application, they could still sponsor them at a later date, but they would have to meet all of the regular stringent requirements, and at that point they would have no one to blame for the hardships that they face, those pain points that I just pointed out.
To play devil's advocate, one might immediately think that this would impose a large cost for those extra dependants. My response to that is, how is it different from a family with a lot of dependent children? A family of six or seven is still a family of six or seven regardless of that family's composition.
Keep in mind also that the way express entry currently works, the majority of newcomers to Canada are now younger than ever. The highest point range for age is 20 to 29 years of age, and after the age of 35, it actually becomes quite difficult to qualify. In other words, the parents of these newcomers are not old. They're getting younger all the time, and many of them would still be of working age and able to contribute.
Canada is an attractive immigrant destination, but we are, frankly, competing on a world stage with a lot of other countries that are equally attractive, like Australia, the U.S., and even places like the U.A.E., which, while they don't offer permanent status, they offer significant economic benefits over a long term. Think of how much more attractive Canada would be if immigrants could bring their parents with them right from the beginning. Think of how much happier and better adjusted newcomers would be in that case. Think of the relief of newcomers, knowing that their young children are safe at home with their grandparents while they can go out and work full time. Think of how many immigrants we would retain in this country by not forcing them to keep one foot in and one foot out of Canada.
The second recommendation—this is a short one—is that something has to be done to deal with the situation of permanent residents of Canada who give birth to children outside the country. The way the regulations are currently set up is that if you're a permanent resident, you are not able to sponsor anyone unless you are living in Canada. If you're a permanent resident who, quite within your rights, has travelled abroad for a period of time, still maintaining your residency requirements for permanent residence, and you have a child outside the country, you have to actually leave that child in the other country and come back to Canada to sponsor that child.
Lawyer, Desloges Law Group, As an Individual
Now, this is not something that happens every day, but it does happen at least a few times a year. If you check media reports, you'll find these stories tend to hit the media, because they involve separation of parents and children. I recommend that this be changed.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you, Ms. Desloges.
We will begin with Mr. Sarai, for seven minutes, please.
Liberal
Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC
Thank you to the whole panel. It is very insightful, various aspects of it.
I want to first ask either Mr. Langford or Ms. Thomson a question.
The Canadian Bar Association has twice written papers that I know of requesting that IRP regulation 4, the bad faith conjunctive test, to not amend it originally, and then I guess to say that it was affecting a lot of people in a negative manner. In my riding, and I know after consulting many other MPs as well, the conjunctive test “and” versus “or” has been a challenge.
How many would you estimate, based on your network of people or applications, are hinged on this bad faith test, where their marriage is still considered genuine, but it might fail on the part that it was for the purpose of entering Canada?
Chair, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
Thank you for that question. I don't have statistics on how many people actually end up in that situation. I can say that it has been a concern. We'd be happy to take that question away and come back with a more definitive answer, but I don't know, in fact, what the frequency of that is. I know that it's important enough for us to have made submissions on it in the past.
Liberal
Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC
In the same line of questioning, would it be possible for you, on behalf of the Bar Association, to look into what should be the language where people who have bad faith marriages...? Obviously, those who are fraudulently trying to come into Canada and do not intend to live with the person should be weeded out, so the intent of the regulation is maintained, but the problematic nature of it, as it currently stands, could be avoided. I still think, even if we do the “or” versus the “and”, it still doesn't really clean it up. I think if something better than that could be devised, it would be great for our committee to know.
Chair, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
We'd be happy to take that away and come back to the committee with a recommendation on language.
Liberal
Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC
Thank you.
My next question is for Ms. Desloges.
I want to thank you and welcome you back. You've been here before and your views are always insightful.
I actually like your idea about the family. I come from one of those joint families. My parents lived with me. My father has passed away now, but my mother still does. For us, that's the only way we've ever lived, so it's kind of a norm. I agree that I've seen it more now since the time and the difficulty to get parents has escalated from the past, and economic disparity is not as bad as before from some of the countries our traditional immigration patterns come from. A lot of people who have permanent residence are wanting to go back because of that anxiety.
What I want to ask, regarding your proposal of having a nuclear family be expanded to include dependent parents, if perhaps the income requirement on that would be more. I'd like to hear your opinion. Maybe it should be less for those who have younger parents, as you suggested, those in their fifties, or 55, say, who can be employed here, who can learn how to drive, be less dependent on their children, versus those who are perhaps 65 to 75, who would obviously face more challenges. Do you think the test for financial requirements for that would be different between the two, that those who are younger, perhaps, have a lesser requirement by the sponsor versus those who are older or past retirement age, the legally defined age, perhaps, of a higher threshold? Could you elaborate on that?