Evidence of meeting #36 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 caregivers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
I would like to thank all of the witnesses for providing their insights before our committee today.
In particular I would like to thank Ms. Gerente for the courage she showed in appearing before our committee. I know that your poignant and insightful testimony will help us with our work, and I know I speak on behalf of all of the committee when I say that we're proud to welcome you and your sister into our Canadian family.
Thank you.
With that, we'll suspend for two minutes.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
I would like to welcome, by video conference from Vancouver, Richard Kurland, lawyer and policy analyst.
Perhaps, Mr. Kurland, you could clarify. Unfortunately our notes are incorrect. You're from Vancouver, so I don't think you're representing the Toronto Community Legal Services.
4:30 p.m.
Richard Kurland Lawyer and Policy Analyst, As an Individual
Not today, Mr. Chairman; I'm appearing as an individual. I'm an immigration lawyer and policy analyst and a member of the Quebec bar and of the British Columbia bar.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you.
We have Sheila Monteiro, a lawyer. Perhaps you are the person who is here on behalf of the East Toronto Community Legal Services. Okay, so there is a bit of a mix-up there in our notes.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Welcome to you both.
We'll begin with you, Mr. Kurland. You have seven minutes for your presentation, please.
4:30 p.m.
Lawyer and Policy Analyst, As an Individual
Thank you. It's an honour and a pleasure to be appearing before the committee. I'll try to use the seven minutes wisely.
First, to save time, I would draw again the committee's attention to the submissions of the Canadian Bar Association. I support and endorse every recommendation made therein.
Today, I'd like to draw attention to just three things.
The first is money. This may be the appropriate venue to illuminate a way of assisting the financing of family reunification processing. I'll just take a brief couple of minutes to illustrate.
In Canada, we receive, in a year, about 1.5 million visitor applications, about 300,000 study permit applications, 400,000 work permit applications, half a million PR cards applications, and about a quarter of a million citizenship applications. These are the volumes—about three million applications a year. Well, there is a design flaw. When the department created its information technology system to intake applications, including family reunification applications, what happened was that the designers used as a model the old paper-based forms—one form for a visitor visa application, another for study, and another for work. Guess what? We are completing....
Oh, I'm sorry about that. Can you hear me?
4:30 p.m.
Lawyer and Policy Analyst, As an Individual
We are completing the same information at every step along Canada's immigration continuum, for both temporary and permanent resident status. It's as if you had a dozen different silos for information collection. The model is [Technical difficulty—Editor] Canada Revenue Agency....
4:30 p.m.
Lawyer and Policy Analyst, As an Individual
Sorry, we are receiving here in Vancouver messages that the communication has been disconnected.
I'll continue regardless.
4:30 p.m.
Lawyer and Policy Analyst, As an Individual
What should occur is the use of the CRA model in information intake—one file, one person. You enter your personal information and update it over time. You then select the service requested—visitor visa, extension, study, work, PR card, sponsorship, or even citizenship application. The failure to do this is costing the Canadian economy over three million hours per year, assuming one hour per application.
In addition to the complexity of the Immigration department's website system, how do you navigate and find the right form? Single person, single portal, single entry for your lifetime—this simple fix would reduce member of Parliament representations driven by confused constituents.
I'll stop there.
The other two points are related to marriage of convenience and.... In that, I would recommend softening the impact of an evidentiary rule, res judicata. I would propose, five years following an immigration appeal determination of marriage of convenience, to expressly provide the immigration appeal division jurisdiction to consider compassionate humanitarian relief.
Finally, ministerial instruction for the department's processing choices.... For example, within the parent and grandparent processing category, announce the number to be processed from inventory in the year, alongside the number of new cases to be accepted in the year. Until we achieve an equilibrium where we take in as many cases in a year as we can process in a year, letting the public know that intake will be less because we have to take care of the queue is appropriate. That would be a recommendation.
Those are my opening remarks, Mr. Chair.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you, Mr. Kurland.
Ms. Monteiro, you have seven minutes, please.
4:40 p.m.
Lawyer, East Toronto Community Legal Services Inc.
Thank you.
I welcome this opportunity to speak to you today.
I have been practising immigration law for a little over 10 years. I find it quite ironic that they are talking about permanent residence and family reunification today.
I came across an article in the Toronto Star that says approximately 7,136 people were granted renunciation of their permanent residence cards. This tells us that people, after coming to Canada and establishing themselves, are willing to give up their residency. Obviously, there are reasons for this. Although the article talks about those other reasons, I want to stipulate that maybe the reasons are the obstacles in applying for permanent residency or in getting citizenship.
While the current system of immigration doesn't prevent Canadians from marrying non-Canadians, the current immigration barriers effectively produce this result. Prospective spousal immigrants face unreasonably long separations. This is true for other family categories, as well.
Obstacle number one—I've gone through a few—is that if you start the process of your spousal application from outside of Canada, you cannot get a visitor visa into Canada. The chances of your being denied are very high. The reason is that they feel you're going to come and stay illegally, and you may outstay your visa. There are all sorts of reasons. This is very unfair. It is contradictory to our immigration act, which clearly states that we should reunite families. I firmly believe that we must perform the due diligence of evaluating these family...prospective immigrants.
Why don't we take the stance of innocent until proven guilty? The reason I say this is that we treat everybody as though they've committed marriage fraud, or they've married because of the convenience of coming to Canada, instead of saying to them, “Hey, you've married a Canadian. Welcome to our country. If you do something wrong, we're going to look into it, and there will be...” whatever the punishment or...how to correct the issue.
My recommendation is to issue landed status for all spouses married to Canadians, or at least provide them with work permits on arrival.
My second recommendation is that we provide either permanent residence or work permits. Then, we continue to do the due diligence if they're given work permits while they are in Canada. This means they bring their spouse and stay in Canada. This continued due diligence would look at whether the marriage is genuine and continuing, which is the current marriage test.
The government, I also believe, needs to put some tracking mechanisms in place to make sure there is no abuse of this by taking social assistance or other programs they're not entitled to.
Regarding my second obstacle, the resolution for the long delays is to eliminate the caps. The reason I say this.... Increase resources, process within six months, and the incremental costs can be borne by the individuals. Checks and balances are built into an undertaking and will prevent the abuse of social assistance.
In terms of processing times in other countries, I took a look at different like-countries, like Australia. They process a spousal application in eight months when it's inland. In the U.K. they call it the marriage visa. They process it in two to four weeks. Why is Canada taking 24 months when they're in Canada? Why is it taking forever when they're out of Canada? I cannot understand this. These are countries that, yes, they may be smaller than Canada and have other issues, but obviously this is an example that we should look to and maybe strive to be like them. We are a country of immigrants too.
The fourth obstacle they have is a travel document for persons who are in war-torn countries like Nepal, Eritrea, Syria, and Afghanistan. If they cannot get identity documents, even if they're approved at the Canadian high commission, they cannot travel. These are countries where it's very difficult to get travel documents for whatever reasons. Why doesn't the high commission issue them? My recommendation would be to issue them a single travel document, so that they can be united with their families.
I would like to re-state that our current immigration system is a major bar to preventing families from reuniting. It's a real shame, because uniting families is a part of our immigration objective, and it seems to be lost.
Coming to the age and threshold of sponsorship, the good news is that while I was writing this, the government already took my recommendation and passed a regulation in the Canada Gazette with a definition of “ dependent child”. They said that they changed the definition. I was going to write about how it needs to be 22 years. I welcome this change. The financial threshold is yet another barrier. As I'm going through this, I just see barriers and barriers, again and again, that are put to families that want to reunite.
For dependent sponsors, the parent needs to meet a LICO test. This affects single parents, marginalized people, and people with low incomes. They're not able to meet LICO, as you heard from the previous witness. It only means that well-to-do Canadians, or permanent residents, can sponsor the dependent children, or they can sponsor the dependent parents and grandparents with the LICO being 30% or more for the parent and grandparent class. My recommendation here is that you allow multiple family members to co-sponsor for dependants, and for parents and grandparents, thereby allowing the parents or the grandparents who come into the country to babysit the child, or whatever, and allow the husband and wife to go to work. I'll talk about that in the next slide.
4:45 p.m.
Lawyer, East Toronto Community Legal Services Inc.
Okay.
I'm going to go to citizenship. Here I just wanted to touch upon the fact that Canada has the highest naturalization in the world for citizenship. It's 86% of permanent residents who become citizens, which means that a lot of people want to become Canadian citizens, but there are obstacles that they face while submitting the applications. Waivers are not meant for people who are mentally ill. I request that there be a recommendation to process the applications in 12 months.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you, Ms. Monteiro.
Ms. Zahid, you have seven minutes please.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
I would like to thank both Ms. Monteiro and Mr. Kurland for their important testimony, and thanks for all the work that you are doing.
My first question is for Ms. Monteiro.
You have raised the issue of marriage of convenience and proving if the marriage is genuine. I have heard a lot about this from my constituents that the IRCC official tasks were determining whether or not the marriage is genuine. They are not very much aware of the cultural practices that could make a relationship appear unusual by western standards.
Could you discuss any experiences you have had with the people you have dealt with in regard to the spousal applications? What do you recommend, and how can these necessary evaluations be made more culturally sensitive?
4:45 p.m.
Lawyer, East Toronto Community Legal Services Inc.
I think to educate the officers would be one recommendation. I'm Indian, and India is a huge country. I'm from a place called Goa, which was a Catholic Portuguese colony. The majority of the people used to be Catholic, but people look at you...and in north India we have Punjabi, and every culture is different. Talking, for example, for India, I would say they need to be educated. In India and in these other cultures these are the kinds of marriages. In Arab countries it might be a different situation in the Middle East and maybe in Africa.
You have to understand what the idea of marriage is. In some cultures they say, “We would like you to marry this boy.” They meet and then they say, “Yes, okay. I'm willing to take the chance of marrying. My parents have interviewed the family.” This is an arranged marriage and people work towards it. There are people who meet through their parents. They are introduced with the prospect of being the husband. They start off with, “This is a nice guy. Date him. See if you like him, and get married to him.”
It's different for different cultures. Everybody is not Canadian outside of Canada, where they meet and they date for years and years. That's not a cultural thing. I don't know whether that's Canadian culture, but that's certainly been my experience, where you hear people saying, “I've dated for years,” but then you also have the flip side that says, “I met this guy three months ago, and I'm getting married in three months.”
You have to understand that love is not something, or a marriage is not something, where we can dictate whether it's genuine or not, but there can be checks and balances that we have already, where the officer asks to explain why they should believe the marriage is genuine and continuing. In my experience, I advise my clients, “Write your story. Tell us how you met. Tell us what makes this person special, and why you got married.”
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
Yes, I agree with you because I have lived in Pakistan and was raised there. I know that most of the marriages are arranged. The cultural sensitivities are different there.
The other issue I would like to ask you about is parents and grandparents. There are certainly lots of issues. There is the income-level issue. People have to show their income. Then we have caps on the number of applications which we can take in and the process though which the applications are taken in, because if it opens on a Wednesday and two hours later it is closed, people are not able to get their applications into the processing centre or to the window in that time frame.
What do you recommend, knowing the contributions the parents and grandparents make when they are here through looking after their grandkids and through the emotional support they provide to their families? What changes or recommendations do you think are necessary?
4:50 p.m.
Lawyer, East Toronto Community Legal Services Inc.
There was a paper put out in February 2014 by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. I'm going to refer to it because I thought it was a very well written paper on parents and grandparents.
It said that they made a considerable social, cultural, and economic contribution. I'll just quickly go through it.
First of all, if a parent or grandparent is brought to Canada, they are able to help both the husband and wife go to work, which means there will be more income in the household as well as more taxes for the Government of Canada. There's also the idea of joint families. I know it's in Indian culture. I don't know which other cultures have it.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
Other than India, it is also the culture in many other countries. I know, because I grew up in a house where the grandparents used to talk about the religion and about the culture. Sometimes I feel, when I look at my kids, that they didn't get the opportunity to know about that.
4:50 p.m.
Lawyer, East Toronto Community Legal Services Inc.
Right. My statement goes back to that. These parents and grandparents also provide the cultural and moral support that families need when they move to a new country.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
What are your recommendations? How can we make it easier? What changes should we make so that this process becomes easier?