Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 8th, 2017

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

Mr. Dean, you've spent a lot of time criticizing the ICCRC, and that's been very interesting. We see constituents who have immigration problems, and they come to us to criticize the consultants. It's surprising. I don't have as many complaints as some of my other colleagues have, because I'm a semi-rural community, but I do get quite a few. There's a lot of criticism of consultants, still, even after the passing of the bill—was it C-35? Their issues are not the ones you raised. They are saying that the consultants charge too much, and that they're incompetent and not well educated. Those are the criticisms that we get from people who have given up on consultants. To be fair, they're also critical of some lawyers.

So my question is—that's one of the several reasons why we're having these hearings—how will we deal with those things?

[Ryan Dean]

My answer to you is that after we have sorted out our problems internally and have focused on the correct problems, which are the difficult cases in immigration, getting our educational standard increased dramatically, and the other issues—

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

How will we do that? What should be the standard?

[Ryan Dean]

What I'm trying to say—

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

That's a good question, because we had some presentations before on that. What should be the standards to be a consultant? What should be the educational standards to be a consultant?

[Ryan Dean]

The educational standard for a consultant is that they need to know IRPA inside out and need to be up to date. They need to be ethical.

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

Should they write exams?

[Ryan Dean]

Absolutely.

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

They're not now?

[Ryan Dean]

They are, but the standards in my view.... There are two different ways. There are continuing education exams, which are really done through third-party organizations that will teach you things about, for example, LMIAs, temporary foreign workers, or spousal sponsorship. Then internally within the ICCRC, it's about regulatory issues. That's really where they're falling down. I think the continuing education on the external portion of learning the law is sufficient, but it's the internal portion that really needs more work.

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

Ms. Fang, do you have a comment on this? I'm talking about improving the quality of the consultants.

[Ni Fang]

Yes, I don't think all consultants are uneducated, but there are—

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

I'm sorry if I meant that. I wasn't suggesting that.

[Ni Fang]

Yes.

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

I'm just saying that I get complaints. What am I to do with them?

[Ni Fang]

First, I have suggested that we need to discover exactly whether those consultants are regulated, or not regulated, because a lot of people still provide immigration services in Canada. It is illegal to provide immigration consulting services in Canada without a licence, but they are holding themselves out as consultants, and we need to identify whether they are licensed, regulated, or not. If they are regulated, I think, if people are complaining about our educational standard, then we should look into this matter and increase the standard.

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

Should they have a licence and pay a fee for that?

[Ni Fang]

Sorry?

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

Should they have a licence?

[Ni Fang]

They should.

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

But they don't now?

[Ni Fang]

They do, and they are actually educated before they get their licence, but the problem is that we actually.... I'm an author of online educational material. I know a lot of other educational providers. I've had a lot of students come to me to complain that the education they are getting is not good. Basically they're not learning anything. They can pass their exams easily, so maybe they're not knowledgeable enough to actually do their job. That's possible, but I believe we do require post-secondary education in order to even take the exam.

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

Shouldn't they have more than a post-secondary education?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 20 seconds, please.

[Ni Fang]

It depends. A lot of immigration has now shifted to economic immigration. So some people in the immigration consulting industry have a finance background with a bachelor's degree. They do a one or two-year immigration program and they are knowledgeable.