Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member and congratulate her on her remarks and perceptive questions. I would like to respond to some of them.
The member asked how we can monitor consultants who operate abroad. If a person is representing an applicant for a visa or immigration to Canada anywhere in the world and he or she represents that person to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, it does not matter whether the person is in Canada or India, we will not deal with the person unless he or she is a registered member in good standing of the designated regulatory body.
How do we monitor these consultants? We identify whether they are registered by going to the CSIC website and seeing if they are a member in good standing. What typically happens is that the larger consultancies in Canada, the more legitimate ones, will establish offices in our major immigration source countries and have them register and become members of the regulatory body. The problem is that most of the consulting and representational work done abroad is done by ghost consultants.
The legislative changes here will clarify that acting as a ghost consultant is illegal for Canadian legal purposes. However, the real problem is that most of the really nasty stuff is the production of counterfeit documents and the like where people will never report. They will continue to operate as ghost consultants abroad, which is why we need the co-operation of governments abroad in bringing in legal frameworks and focusing more enforcement resources on this area of exploitation of their own citizens.
The member asked how we will follow up with these countries. There are 180 source countries for immigration to Canada and we cannot realistically expect all of them to have a seamless legal system for the regulation of immigration consultants. I am focusing on, by far, the three largest source countries where we tend to see fairly high levels of fraud, which are China, India and the Philippines.
We had very productive meetings. My officials are now bringing together some of the dossiers on the worst offenders in the industry. For example, we are aware of one guy in India who took at least a quarter of a million dollars from students in one scam alone, producing clearly counterfeit banking documents that he submitted, probably knowing full well that CIC would reject the applications, but he had the cash in hand. We will take that information, put a bow on it, take it to the state police in Punjab and say that we want the guy prosecuted. I got an agreement from the chief minister in Punjab that the police will follow through with enforcement on cases like that. So we are making progress finally.
How do we stop the proliferation of counterfeit documents? It is the same kind of thing. We just need to work with those local governments. I can give the member one case. Our officials In Delhi and in Mumbai brought the local police clear evidence of the counterfeit of Canadian visas that were being sold, if I am not mistaken, for $10,000 a piece. The Indian police arrested the perpetrators and they are now facing criminal charges. Therefore, by proactively co-operating with local police services we can actually deal with the problem.
I have run out of time to address her questions about the designation of the regulatory body but I would be happy to get into that at committee with our colleagues.