Evidence of meeting #53 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 iccrc.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Ms. Fang, I believe in your testimony you said that the applicant should state whether they view someone as authorized or unauthorized. Is that correct?
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Thank you.
Do you believe the government should play a role in clarifying or in this classification, making that distinction of who's authorized or not authorized? I'll start with you, Ms. Fang.
Chair, Canadian Migration Institute
I think, yes, because it's quite important for the client to know.
Liberal
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
The government has rejected applications en masse from China and worked with foreign authorities in India to arrest individuals there and to start at the point of contact. What else can we do?
I guess I've run out of time and so you can't answer that.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Of course, the panellists have the opportunity to submit any additional information they would like.
I would like to thank the panellists for appearing before the committee today. It was quite disturbing to hear about some of the victimization and abuse that occurs.
Since the panellists appear to have first-hand knowledge of some of this, if they would like to provide the names of victims, with their consent of course, the committee does have the option to protect victims by having in camera hearings. I think it's very important, after hearing about the sorts of victimization cited—not just monetary, but other forms of victimization—to make that request. It would be very helpful for this committee in this study.
With that we shall suspend.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
I'd like to resume, with our second hour of hearings.
We have before us, from the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants, Mr. Donald Igbokwe, the president, and Mr. Dory Jade, the chief executive officer. From the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council, we have Mr. Lawrence Barker, the acting president and chief executive officer, registrar, and corporate secretary; Mr. Christopher Daw, the chair of the board of directors; and Dr. Hafeeza Bassirullah, the director of education. Also, from the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, we have Ms. Avi Yao-Yao Go, the clinic director.
We'll begin with seven minutes for the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants. I understand that Mr. Dory Jade will begin and will split his time with Mr. Igbokwe—or the reverse.
Donald Igbokwe President, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to begin by thanking the members of the committee for the opportunity to present as part of your study of the immigration consulting profession.
My name is Donald Igbokwe. I am the president of the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants, also known as CAPIC. As the chair said, I will be sharing my time with our CEO, Dory Jade.
CAPIC is the largest association representing regulated Canadian immigration consultants, with more than 1,500 members Canada-wide. CAPIC was founded in 2005 through the amalgamation of two previous professional associations representing the profession. CAPIC is founded on four pillars: education, information, lobbying, and recognition. These pillars guide our work to improve the profession and strengthen consumer protection for the public.
At the core of CAPIC's mandate is the continuing professional development of our members, helping them to improve the service they provide to clients and thereby promoting consumer confidence. Our local chapters in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and across the prairies organize events such as seminars, workshops, and networking in order to support our members' professional development. CAPIC's annual national education conference attracts members throughout Canada as well as from overseas.
Regulated Canadian immigration consultants, known as RCICs, undergo a rigorous program of education and testing in order to earn their certification. This helps them to ensure that they have the right knowledge and skills to assist their clients through the Canadian immigration process. RCICs are regulated by a strict professional code of conduct, and I can tell you that our code of conduct is actually, when you consider it, stricter than that of the law society. We have several.
CAPIC is proud of having built a working relationship with the Government of Canada, including this particular committee and officials in the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. We have made several presentations before this committee and have consistently sought to address the challenges facing the industry so that we can improve the regulation of our profession in Canada. The industry has evolved considerably over the last decade, and so have the changes and challenges. Through our presentation, we will address some of these challenges and changes, which we have also enumerated in the presentation given to you.
In order to address the changes, I will invite our CEO to talk to you about those changes and challenges and recommendations brought forward by CAPIC.
Thank you very much for your time.
Dory Jade Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
Thank you, Donald.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the members of the committee.
I have been involved in the governance of this profession since 2005, first as a member of CAPIC for the Quebec chapter; then as a director of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, the original federal regulatory body; later as a director of the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council, or ICCRC; and then as president of CAPIC, and currently as CEO.
Over my career, I have watched our profession evolve and grow in Canada. I have also been part of the evolution of the regulatory body, including having resigned, myself, from CSIC for different reasons, some of them financial misconduct or management. While we have come a long way since that problematic chapter in our governance, challenges persist. It is important that we address these issues by improving how we are regulated.
The formation of ICCRC was an important development in the regulation of our profession. We are at another critical juncture, and it is important that we work to improve the strength of the federal regulator. The committee played an important role in 2008 by bringing forward ICCRC to replace CSIC at the time. I strongly believe you now have an opportunity to make an important contribution again.
CAPIC has provided the committee with our submission outlining the problems of the current model and how we can make it better. However, I would like to address three main challenges of the profession: one, unauthorized representatives; two, overlapping federal-provincial jurisdiction; and three, the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act, more known as the CNCA. These three issues weaken the regulation of our profession and put consumers at risk.
In terms of unauthorized representatives, under the current model, the ICCRC, which is delegated at arm's length from the Government of Canada, does not have the power to go after unauthorized representatives. This is delegated to the CBSA. They have been before the committee. They have, we know, limited resources. Priority goes to national security rather than the little or the small fraud—please excuse my language—of an immigrant.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
Sorry.
The Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act is another issue, because it was not meant to be for regulations.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you. Perhaps you will have an opportunity to provide that additional information to the committee. We need to move on.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
All right.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
I believe it's now Mr. Lawrence Barker who will speak on behalf of the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council.
You have seven minutes, please.
Lawrence Barker Acting President and Chief Executive Officer, Registrar and Corporate Secretary, Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council
Thank you.
Mr. Chair and esteemed members of the committee, first of all, Happy International Women's Day. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the work we have been doing at the ICCRC. We are pleased to be here and to answer any questions you may have.
As you know, my name is Lawrence Barker and I am currently the acting president and CEO. I have been the ICCRC's registrar since the council's inception, and am also responsible in that capacity for handling the council's complaints, professional standards, and tribunals function.
With me is Mr. Christopher Daw, the current chair of the ICCRC's governing board of directors. Also accompanying me is Dr. Hafeeza Bassirullah, who has been with me at the council since its inception. Dr. Bassirullah is responsible for establishing the education department of the council, as well as for accrediting and overseeing the immigration practitioner programs that are offered at post-secondary institutions across Canada.
ICCRC is the national regulatory body that was designated in June 2011 by IRCC to oversee the practice of regulated Canadian immigration consultants. In 2015, our scope was expanded by IRCC to include overseeing citizenship consulting as prescribed in the Citizenship Act and regulating the practice of international student immigration advisers.
As we are a regulatory body, our foremost purpose is to protect the public. We achieve this by establishing entry-to-practice requirements; licensing professionals; overseeing RCICs' professional development and conduct; receiving, investigating and adjudicating complaints against our members through a disciplinary process that sanctions members whose conduct fails to meet ICCRC's standards; and raising awareness of immigration fraud and the need to use the services of an authorized representative. As of this month, we regulate just over 4,000 professionals. ICCRC is committed to ensuring that people who wish to enter the profession we regulate meet our entry-to-practice guidelines, which are based on rigorous standards, to demonstrate their competence.
Once they are admitted, the maintenance of professional competence remains a critical focus for us. Through our practice-management education, the professionals we regulate receive training on core issues to improve their delivery of professional services. Through continuing professional development offered by third party organizations, professionals are required to complete a minimum of 16 hours of training each year on matters relevant to the profession. We also require an annual compliance audit in which we investigate our professionals' practices, recommend improvements, and exercise our right to sanction and remove substandard practitioners from the profession.
Central to our consumer protection mandate is the council's code of professional ethics. This document outlines our standards of conduct to protect the public from unethical and incompetent practice. The code is binding on all, and failure to comply will lead to disciplinary proceedings. Our robust complaints and disciplinary process responds to allegations of misconduct and incompetent practice from the public. Through a comprehensive adjudication process, we investigate all complaints against members to determine what disciplinary action, if any, is warranted.
Panels of our complaints committee, discipline committee, appeal committee and our fitness-to-practice review committee comprise public representatives as well as practising consultants to give a fair, balanced, and objective review of every matter of professional standards referred to them. We have also increased the number of independent discipline councils mandated to review and prosecute, where required, allegations of professional misconduct or incompetence.
To help expedite the processing of complaints effectively, we have recently introduced two tribunal streams, one for major breaches of the code of professional ethics, and another for less serious regulatory offences.
In addition to the central mandate of regulating consultants and international student advisors, ICCRC has been proactively engaged in promoting consumer protection through fraud prevention. We engage the public daily, informing them to be aware of and avoid unscrupulous immigration fraudsters. As a member of the Fraud Prevention Forum, which is led by the Competition Bureau, we participate in Canada's annual Fraud Prevention Month campaign. Our 2017 campaign, occurring this month, has awareness videos being released through social media to English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, and Hindi audiences around the world. We are also committed to holding unauthorized representatives accountable by reporting complaints about them to the CBSA.
Our fraud prevention initiatives have proven successful. Last year, our director of communications was the first Canadian to receive a prestigious consumer protection award from the U.S.-based Council on Licensure, Enforcement and Regulation for ICCRC's worldwide fraud prevention initiatives.
Immigration is a key factor in Canada's prosperity, and we embrace the government's position regarding its important role in keeping Canada competitive, reuniting families, and helping refugees. With our country's ambitious immigration targets for 2017, it is safe to assume that demand for services offered by immigration and citizenship consultants and international student advisors will continue to be considerable. Our regulatory successes are due in large part to the international representation of our own workforce. Fifty percent of our staff are immigrant or first-generation Canadians. Each one has first-hand knowledge of the magnitude and impact of immigration.
Members of the committee, ICCRC is fulfilling its mandate to protect consumers by effectively regulating the immigration and citizenship consulting profession. We are a young organization that has accomplished a great deal in less than six years, and we look forward to working with government and the public to further build on the foundations that we have established.