Mr. Speaker, colleagues around the House have touched on almost all of the important aspects of this legislation by now but I want to highlight two or three areas that are of significance to me in my capacity as the member representing Scarborough—Rouge River.
Canada's immigration program has actually been a very successful public policy tool and it has served Canada extremely well over the decades. With all due respect extended to our first nations, we are a country of immigrants and this has always been the case. We have learned how to do it well but our immigration act and procedures have provided the infrastructure under which people have come to Canada from all around the world. It is a controlling mechanism for people movements from outside Canada to Canada and we are absolutely, without any reservation, a receiving country of many wonderful people throughout our history.
My particular constituency happens to be about 75% immigrant, which is a relatively high percentage. Three-quarters or more of the people in Scarborough—Rouge River are, or were, immigrants. That means that in my work as a member of Parliament, and this includes my staff in the riding and in Ottawa, we see a lot of immigration issues on behalf of constituents. Those constituents are connected to other places around the world. We see immigration issues from all around the world of every type and description.
I know there are many millions of happy customers of immigration consultants as well as immigration lawyers. Many immigrants, depending on what type of immigration they follow, which procedural line they follow when they come to Canada, rely on professional advice, and that serves them and it serves Canada. They pay for it. It is quite a well working and positive system. However, that is not to say that it is perfect. What we are dealing with here today is a component of the immigration infrastructure that is not working well.
I want to recognize here on the floor, because I am not so sure we have done it, all of the good work of all of the immigration lawyers and consultants who are out there. There are thousands of them out there all doing good, professional work and we should recognize that. I say that because that comment lies in stark contrast to the name that the government has given to the bill. The short title is “Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act”.
This is somewhat Orwellian. The government has decided to put colourful, descriptive advertising into the title of its bill. The government has not quite gone so far as to put neon signs up on the Peace Tower yet, but contorting the title of a bill in this way is inappropriate. However, it has chosen to do it. I have been here for over 20 years and it is the first time I have seen this kind of Orwellian manipulation of the short title of a bill to broadcast something. If the name of the bill were totally descriptive, I would not object, but in this case the bill describes itself as a bill to crack down on crooked immigration consultants.
The bill is much more than that. It purports to regulate the whole class of immigration consultants, most of whom are good guys. The name of the bill stigmatizes a whole class of people. Would the government do the same thing if it were further regulating architects? Would it write a bill that cracked down on stupid architects or write a bill to crack down on stupid, incompetent ships' captains? I do not think that is the right way to do things. It stigmatizes a whole class of people.
What we are doing here with this bill is facilitating the further regulation of immigration consultants, which is a good profession, whether they are professional consultants or whether they are lawyers.
I wanted to get that straight. I say shame on the government for manipulating the short titles of bills in this way.
We want to try to fix or allow consultants themselves, by self-regulation, to fix some of the problems we have seen, and they have been described here today. One of the areas that I do not think we will be able to fix is the problem of a consultant in another country. We can deal with consultants here but we have never successfully found a way to deal with the enforcement of someone who acts as a consultant in Damascus, Shanghai, Colombo or New York City, someone who just says, “I'm an immigration consultant. If you pay me 10,000 bucks, I will deliver your documents and get you into Canada. All you have to do is pay me the 10,000 or 20,000 bucks and I guarantee a great result”.
That consultant is out there in another country and our laws cannot apply extraterritorially into another country. So it is tough for us to regulate this in a way that would regulate that person in that other country, which we all regret. Sometimes we call them ghost consultants. Immigration officials, as I understand it, will refuse to accept an immigration application of some sort if it appears there is an immigration consultant behind it and the immigration consultant is not properly registered or not in good standing. That is a partial address to the problem but I hope the committee will look at this and look at ways to isolate and identify consultants who are not properly registered and not properly trained in the foreign country.
Most of us as MPs have people come to us only when the file is broken. If the file is going all right through the immigration department, they do not need the MP. It is really quite shocking when a member of Parliament or a staffer of a member of Parliament has people coming in saying that they have a problem with immigration after paying a guy $15,000 and that the file is all messed up. My staff are saying, “My goodness, $15,000 and we have to fix it. If you had come to us in the first place, it wouldn't have cost you anything and we would have done it correctly for you”. It is not that we do immigration work directly out of the office but we certainly do advise our constituents and we try to fix situations that have gone sideways.
I know my party will be supporting the bill at second reading, in principle, for the purposes of getting it to committee where I hope the committee will redouble its efforts. I know the committee has looked at this stuff before. Half measures will not work. If there was ever an area subject to loopholes, this is one of them. I encourage the committee to consult with the industry, with the professionals, to look for a consensus and to be bold, to hammer down and make any amendments to this bill that will make it effective. Do not be shy. Let us do it and do it right.