Evidence of meeting #55 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 consultants.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:50 p.m.
Member, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
They shouldn't practise. You're hearing it as MPs, lawyers hear it in their offices, and the board itself has given testimony that they shouldn't be acting as litigators.
The answer is very simple. They shouldn't be litigating.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
What you are proposing is that it should only be lawyers, and no one else should deal with it.
4:50 p.m.
Member, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
There is a role for the immigration consultants to be supervised by lawyers. They could join law firms, but the lawyer would have to meet the client. The lawyer would have to identify all of the issues—issue spot. We have training for that.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
4:50 p.m.
Member, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
Absolutely.
The testimony you've heard before you is that immigration consultants are charging $15,000 to $20,000. There is all kinds of evidence that they're charging excessive fees. Immigration lawyers don't go into this field for money; they go into it for the humanitarian impulse. They're not bilking clients.
4:50 p.m.
Member, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
They're not charging excessive fees, no, especially for litigation matters.
4:50 p.m.
Member, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
No, not at the IRB.
At the IRB, it's not at all excessive in terms of what an immigration lawyer would charge, considering that you're talking about weeks of work that would go into properly preparing for the tribunal. You are talking about disclosure, about preparing, about researching all of the relevant case law. It's absolutely the case that there are not excessive fees being charged by immigration lawyers.
There are lots of young associate lawyers and all kinds of immigration lawyers across the country. There are thousands of them.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
I hear the opposite through my constituents, that the lawyers are charging very excessive fees, and it might not be affordable for many of them.
4:50 p.m.
Member, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
I agree with my friend over here that there should be beefed-up legal aid. When someone is very poor or can't afford to hire an immigration lawyer at a prominent firm or something, then there should be resources available, and there should be legal aid that's provided. But there are—
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
Do you know the time it takes to get approved for legal aid in Ontario, the process people have to go through to get the legal aid approved?
4:55 p.m.
Member, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
All I'll say on this is, there are times when litigation can cost tens of thousands of dollars in various areas of the law. This is not one of them in terms of immigration lawyers. We know that these are vulnerable people. Immigration lawyers go in there to help people in the community, if they're from that community. They're not charging tens of thousands of dollars for litigation matters.
April 3rd, 2017 / 4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
I'll go to my next question.
It seems to me that the issue of consultants keeps coming before this committee. The same problems are identified, recommendations are made, the government acts, but the problem remains. I'm particularly concerned that unregistered domestic consultants seem to exist in a grey zone out of the purview of the ICCRC. As long as their activity is low-profile enough, the CBSA doesn't have the resources to investigate that and prosecute.
I wonder if we need to stop tinkering with the system and consider more substantive change. Is the self-regulatory model we have now the right one? Can it be made better? Should we consider a government regulator, and if so, what would that look like?
4:55 p.m.
Member, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
If you're talking about ghosts, definitely there needs to be more resources for the RCMP to look at it.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
Member, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
They're going to go after the high-profile cases where someone is using the same address for citizenship applications and pretending that all these people are living there when they're not.
No, I don't think that you can just change the model. If you want to have a statutory model, then it's a lot of government dollars. It's creating a whole new regulatory system that's apart from a self-regulatory system. Again, that's not getting at the root of the problem.
The root of the problem is that they're practising law and it's a very sophisticated, complicated area. You need the proper legal training to go to the IRB. You need to know how to examine, you need to know how to do an examination in chief, you need to know how to do case law research. You need to put the time in. You need to be a lawyer to do that kind of work.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
Member, Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association
No, I don't think that would work at all. I don't think the self-regulatory model works currently, and I don't think that a statutory model would work either.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
Staff Lawyer, Neighbourhood Legal Services, Inter Clinic Immigration Working Group
Another point that I didn't get a chance to make, although it's in our brief, is that we're very aware that relative to other provinces we are extraordinarily well resourced in Ontario. There are parts of the country where there is not only not a clinic to refer to or a legal aid private bar practitioner, but there is maybe no immigration lawyer at all.
In the last 18 months to two years, with the new arrival of Syrians to communities that didn't previously receive resettled refugees, you have a lot of secondary legal issues, family reunification issues arising and there are no immigration lawyers to refer to. I think that in terms of access, cost is a huge one. I appreciate what my friend is saying in terms of the fee scale relative to other areas of law, but for somebody on social assistance, $4,000 to digitally review an application minimum—
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Salma Zahid Liberal Scarborough Centre, ON
You represent people from Regent Park. It's one of the priority neighbourhoods. Those people cannot afford—
