By way of introduction, I've been a lawyer in Vancouver since 1989. For 25 years, I was a well-known immigration lawyer, specializing in skilled workers and business immigrants and helping Canadian employers seeking to hire foreign nationals. In 2014, my career went sideways when I moved to Ottawa for seven years to become the chairperson of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. After returning to Vancouver in 2021, I worked for three years for the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, which is the regulatory body for immigration consultants in Canada. I was a vice-chair of their discipline tribunal, where I heard complaints about immigration fraud and consultant misconduct.
I've been in the trenches for a long time, and I've seen a lot: the good, the bad and the ugly. Your other witnesses have told you much about the good, and there is a lot of good, but today, I'm going to tell you about the bad and the ugly, because you need to hear this.
Let's start with temporary foreign workers and LMIA fraud and abuse. LMIA stands for labour market impact assessment. It is a key document that allows a foreign worker to get a work permit and, in many cases, permanent residence. LMIAs are so valuable that there is an underground market for them. People will pay tens of thousands of dollars for an LMIA that will allow them to work at a lousy job with the end goal of permanent residence as a possibility.
I recommend that you read my discipline decision last year in the Bharowal case. Young men from India were paying $40,000 to get an LMIA to work as a truck driver for an employer that actually owned no trucks. Their labour was subcontracted out and they were paid only $10 an hour. When they complained, their consultant threatened to arrange their deportation, so they continued to work in slave-like conditions until their permanent residence came through. LMIA abuse like this is happening everywhere and on a huge scale.
The next item is police checks and CSIS background checks. Police checks from certain countries are not worth the paper they're written on, and we need to stop kidding ourselves about that. The foreign minister of India has gone on the record, warning Canada that we're admitting serious criminals from their country.
I recommend that you read a paper I wrote earlier this year for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute about CSIS background checks for prospective immigrants who are suspected of terrorism or organized crime. In a bizarre decision related to my former human rights tribunal, we somehow concluded that CSIS background checks are “not a matter of national security”, and ordering one makes immigration officers vulnerable to a human rights complaint.
The next item is that the recent push to prioritize French-speaking immigrants needs a rethink. Under the express entry system, French speakers are so highly prioritized that they are now displacing health care workers in the selection process. Immigration lawyers and consultants are now coaching their clients to take French classes to boost their chances. The express entry system was designed to admit people with valuable job skills, but with all due respect to my francophone friends, how is French a job skill, especially in places like western Canada? We all know that the majority of these French-speaking immigrants are from developing countries, and they may have no other valuable job skills to ensure their success in Canada.
The next item is regional immigration programs, whereby foreigners are granted permanent residence based on a promise to live in Quebec or some other province, and the new rural community immigration pilot. All of these destination programs are a waste of time, and will be until you do something to enforce the regional residency requirement after they arrive. These programs are all actively promoted as the backdoor route into Canada. Either issue conditional visas or invoke the notwithstanding clause, but do something. Otherwise, we should quit wasting time on these regional destination programs.
The next item is citizenship fraud. It's way bigger than you think it is. We need to stop the fraud, and we need to stop giving away Canadian citizenship so freely and with such low thresholds. Please, bring back mandatory, in-person citizenship swearing-in ceremonies. Have we really devalued our citizenship that much that we're happy to let that happen online? A person can go through all of their immigration, temporary residence and permanent residence applications, and now citizenship ceremonies, without ever meeting a Canadian official.
My last item is Canada's fertility crisis. It's worse than it has ever been. Immigration was supposed to fix it. I've been working in this area for longer than a generation, and I have to be honest and ask: Has mass immigration made conditions better or worse for young people thinking about starting a family? We keep admitting people faster than we can build housing for them, so of course the costs have gone up. We need to start having an honest conversation about this.
That's my short list. I'll be happy to take your questions. Thank you.