We don't come to this position lightly at the Canadian Bar Association. It's been over 20 years that we've been comfortable with the idea of giving it a shot with respect to the regulatory bodies for consultants, right?
We've had two chances now. We've had two regulatory bodies that have failed. Seventeen hundred and ten complaints for 3,600 members over five years is a lot.
Lawyers swear an oath to protect the public. You're coming to see a professional. You're coming to see someone who has to have your interests at heart. There are times in a consultation of a few hundred dollars when you can save someone tens of thousands of dollars in heartache related to going to a consultant or trying all these different avenues.
Someone comes in, says, “I haven't been living in the country, but I want to set up a Canadian corporation so that I can meet my residency obligations”, and asks if that is going to work. No, it's not.
Someone says, “I want to appeal because my dad has renal failure, so I want to go to the IAD and I want to pay you $6,000 for an appeal.” No. I'm sorry. It's not going to work. You've looked at the case log, you say. It's not going to be a successful case.
A lawyer will save you that kind of hardship. Lawyers see this day in, day out in their practices. The reality is that when a lawyer is supervising—and it could be junior lawyers they're supervising, or consultants, or people with immigration training, whether they are consultants, paralegals, or whatever —the lawyer has the responsibility. The lawyer has a lot to lose: four years of a B.A., three years of law school, and a year of articling. That's a lot on the line for a $400 work permit application. You have to be sure that what's going in.... You have an obligation. The law society says you have an obligation to supervise everyone under you.
If you want to protect the public, that's how to protect the public. There's no evidence that we have to be worried about lawyers' fees. There's no evidence that lawyers are doing this after 20 years because they want to make more money.