Debates of Sept. 23rd, 2010

Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member gave an impassioned speech about the importance of immigration to our country and the importance of this bill which, I am sure, will pass.

I had an opportunity this morning to read the minister's speech. Interestingly enough, one of the earliest statements that he made was that people do not have to go to consultants. I know that one of the reasons he was thinking of but did not mention was the fact that members of Parliament become one of the most significant players in applications, whether it be for sponsor information or for visas, et cetera.

What the minister did not address was the resources that are made available to make the system work well and to incorporate the responsibilities of members of Parliament in this process. The irony here is that new members of Parliament do not even get any orientation on how to advise people with regard to immigration. This is an oversight. We do not have the resources and we do not have the training when staff turns over. This is a real travesty. I think the government has let it go.

Maybe the member will want to comment on this.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I remember with fondness, as a small child in Toronto's Queen-Bathurst neighbourhood, where my grandparents, as new immigrants, set up their first business, a bakery. The member's mother was one of the customers who would come in to buy hot bread. What a wonderful reflection of what immigrants contribute to our country.

The member is quite correct in pointing out the hypocrisy of what the minister said, which is that potential new Canadians do not have to go to consultants. My goodness, where do they turn to when the system, as has been referenced, has become Kafkaesque? Some of them turn to the minister.

I mentioned Iryna Ivanie who has four Canadian children and has been separated from her husband for over five years. She wrote a letter to the minister because she had nowhere else to turn. I also wrote to the minister at the start of this year. What was the response? The response was, no. That is not good enough individually and in terms of the whole system.

I certainly hope that Bill C-35 does not become window dressing that hides the reality of what is going on behind that wall, a system that has become dysfunctional. The minister has been on this file for a number of years and knows it well. He must get the job done.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Madam Speaker, the Canadian Society for Immigration Consultants was established by the Liberals a number of years ago. It was a genuine attempt to create an oversight body that would be effective and that would separate and address the kind of issues that have been raised. Obviously the hearings have indicated that it is not working effectively.

Could the member suggest ways in which that body could quickly be turned around and made an effective oversight body similar to the Law Society and similar to other oversight bodies, and not risk going back many months and not get something to address the kind of concerns that he has raised?

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, yes, in 2003, CSIC was established by the Liberal government because it identified that these parasites were preying on the confusion of new Canadians. However, it has also been shown that in the past seven years that it is not good enough. What we need to have is a statutory federal body that oversees. We need a professional association but we also need federal government oversight.

I want to further illustrate what has happened over the last couple of years. I have mentioned that of the skilled workers coming from Kiev, 80% of the cases are finalized today in six years and eleven months, 83 months. Horrific, seven years. In 2004, under a Liberal government, it was 34 months. That was still not good enough. It was just under three years.

However, today, under the Conservatives watch, it is now six years and eleven months. That is unacceptable.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-35. I listened yesterday to some very good speeches regarding the bill and some very good ideas. I might say at the outset that this bill is long overdue. I hope this Parliament lasts long enough for us to get the bill to committee and see that it does find its way through the system and into law.

As the last speaker indicated, this is not an issue that just came up in the last seven years. It might have taken the Liberals up until the last seven years to recognize this as a problem, but I can tell members that this was a rampant problem back in the 1980s.

When I was elected provincially in Manitoba in 1986, one of the concerns we had at that time as a provincial government was how to regulate the immigration consultants. In order for us to come to grips with that issue and deal with it, we had to find out just how big the problem was because immigration consultants were everywhere.They were not just lawyers doing it. In fact, lawyers were probably in the minority in terms of participants. We had many travel agents doing immigration consulting on the side. We had all sorts of people from all walks of life involved in one way or another in the immigration consulting business and charging big fees. As a matter of fact, some of these people were so well connected that they knew people on the Immigration Board who, in those days, were political appointees and oftentimes local, well connected people. Of course the immigration consultants would develop a rapport with them and try to get special considerations. I realize that the government has gone beyond that stage and tried to take steps to make that process a little better than it was.

I see this as a work in progress. I do not feel that proceeding with the bill and passing the bill will solve the problem because whenever in society there are large monetary rewards available for people to access, they will find a way to do it. Therefore, no matter what rules we set here in Parliament, there will be unscrupulous people who will find a way around whatever rules we set.

However, while it is late in the game, it is good that we are coming to grips with it. I am very happy that we are concentrating on the problem, and whether this solves the problem or even part of the problem will be something we should applaud. We certainly need tough rules against people who take advantage of vulnerable people. We not only need tough rules but we also need tough enforcement.

For the last several hundred years we have had immigrants coming to our shores for a whole number of reasons. If we look back in history we find the early explorers, starting with Leif Eriksson, I believe, but certainly Christopher Columbus and other explorers who were out to find new resources and new lands for their kings. It became a policy of kings to expand their empires by looking for more resources, whether it was new trade routes, new products, furs or gold. There have been various stages of immigration over the years.

We know, for example, in parts of Australia, where I was a number of years ago, many of the original immigrants to the Tasmanian area were from penal colonies. People were taken from prisons in Europe and sent to those colonies.

We had stages in our history when people were involved in the gold rush. Just south of Manitoba is the Black Hills area. The gold rush in that area brought thousands of immigrants to our country. There was the California gold rush and the Yukon gold rush.

The member for Timmins—James Bay talked about how people came here for jobs and for a better life.

Many people came here because of religious persecution in their home countries. They came here during certain periods when their governments back home were treating them badly, and that was their way to escape. People came here because of political problems in their home countries. There are numerous reasons why people have come to our country over the years.

Many people from China came to Canada to help build the railway. Perhaps John A. Macdonald would never have been able to get the railway built had it not been for Chinese immigrants coming in by the thousands to do what was essentially a very dangerous job. Many of them died during the process.

People have observed that there were fewer rules for immigration in those days. Several hundred years ago, people could simply come to our country and essentially get in, but today we are dealing with many more rules that have been brought in by different governments.

The Liberals, by virtue of the fact that they have been the government for most of the last century, have, in fact, been making the rules. To their credit, they have certainly encouraged immigration over the years. People with another view have said that they created the problems with the present immigration system that we are now trying to solve.

Several members have indicated that MPs' offices are deluged with immigration questions and immigration problems. Generally speaking, if that is a problem, that is an indication of a systemic problem within the government. I can think of other problems, on a provincial basis, for example, that people in large numbers have complained about to their elected officials, and finally, the political system wised up to the fact that something needed to be done about the problem to move it away from elected officials, because it is not really our job as elected officials to be running government programs.

One of the things I was surprised about as a new MP was that many MPs' offices are spending inordinate amounts of time and effort on immigration problems. Immigrants will oftentimes tell me that when they had a problem, it was their MP who solved it. When we are using up so much of our time on one particular problem, we have to deal with the problem through new laws and new enforcement and major changes.

This is not a problem that has developed in the last half dozen years, or even in the last 10 years. This problem was very much alive 25 years ago, and probably long before that. Why all governments have taken so much time to come up with a solution is really a big question.

The member for Winnipeg Centre made a fabulous speech yesterday on this subject, and he dealt with a number of areas. His riding is in the core area of Winnipeg, and he sees a huge number of immigrants who come to Manitoba.

The Manitoba government had enough foresight about 10 years ago to come up with a provincial nominee program, which, by the way, has attracted about 15,000 immigrants in the last year or so. The program has been a winner since the NDP government of Manitoba actually set it up. As a matter of fact, it was so successful that the government of Nova Scotia looked at it, studied it, and I believe adopted, or copied, the program.

The same thing happens all over the country. When there is a good program in a province, in Quebec, for example, other provinces will take a look at it. This program developed in Manitoba got such immediate, positive results that the Nova Scotia premier at the time, John Hamm, a Conservative, took a special interest in this area and came to study the program.

The member for Winnipeg Centre points out that when many immigrants first come into the province, initially they settle in his riding, so he has had a first-hand view of the immigration problems. He also sees the consultants at work. He indicated that he uncovered a situation, and I am sure that there are many such examples, where consultants were telling people that for $3,000 they would get them a letter from the person's member of Parliament, as if that was going to be their ticket through the process. That was one of the examples he discovered. The question is how many more examples of people paying these huge fees for something that, in fact, would have been free have gone undiscovered.

Before the member for Winnipeg Centre was the terrific member that he is for that constituency, that seat, for a very brief period, was held by the Liberals under Mr. David Walker. I know that he too had a lot of time to spend on immigration problems. As a matter of fact, my wife tells me very often the story of when she was trying to get her father in from Peru. They went to Mr. Walker's office, and he did a terrific job of getting them through the paperwork and the problems they had getting her father into Canada.

The question is whether MPs' offices have now become the official funnel through which all immigration issues and problems have to pass. Perhaps it is better that they come to the MPs' offices than to the immigration consultants.

The fact of the matter is that the immigration consultants catch them at an earlier stage. The immigration consultants are sitting in positions as travel agents. They are the ones selling the tickets.

The previous member who spoke before me made some good points. Yesterday the member for Winnipeg Centre talked about issues with the temporary worker program and how that program is being abused and profited from by some consultants. CBC did a big exposé about 20 years ago about immigration consultants in Manitoba who were involved in the immigrant investor program. The members will know all about that program and how it works. It basically attracts richer immigrants to the country.

These immigration consultants were not just operating here in Canada; they were operating outside Canada. They were travelling over to, in this case, I believe, the Philippines and were operating out of there. They were running ads in the paper in the Philippines with pictures of the immigration consultant shaking hands with or standing by the mayor of Winnipeg at the time.

I guess, as a politician, you have to be careful who you get your picture taken with, because you never know how, when, or where it is going to be used. The mayor of Winnipeg at the time was a wonderful gentleman, and he was very surprised to find out that his picture was being used in another country by an immigration consultant who was attracting people by showing that he had credibility with the mayor. If the immigrant wanted easy access into Winnipeg, this was the consultant to deal with, because here he was in a picture with the mayor of Winnipeg.

He took a lot of people for a lot of money. They employed him to fast-track them into the country, but in addition to that, this guy was also a real estate guy. He was selling them businesses that they had not seen other than through pictures. In one case, he sold a bakery in a rundown building in a rundown part of town for probably double or triple its value. When the immigrant investor ended up in Canada, they found themselves in a very difficult situation, because not only had they paid this guy consulting fees, they had also overpaid for the bakery they were buying. This is just one example. There were other examples.

The member from the Conservatives who was just commenting now knows of what I speak, because he was around in those days. He knows that this immigration consultant had connections and friends in his own provincial party. They were working together as a group. There was a group of them. These people were not people that any political party would want to be involved with. However, you cannot stop people from joining your party, and in some cases, you do not know why they are joining your party. These guys were smart enough to know that if they could connect with local politicians, mayors, and provincial and federal politicians, it was good for their business. It was a good business practice.

Of course, CBC did its job in exposing this person, but by then the damage had already been done, and these investors had lost most of their money.

This is the kind of activity that gives the country a bad name, because these people have friends back home, and they will certainly relate their experiences of coming to the country. When we are trying to attract immigrants, this is not a selling point if you run the risk of dealing with these types of fraudsters.

The member for Winnipeg Centre pointed out yesterday that the goal was to have a certain percentage of immigrants come to Canada on an annual basis. In actual fact, I think in only a very few years have we actually met the target. I do not think we have ever met the target. We have come close to the target in only several years.

The fact is that the government is on the right track with this particular bill. I am not one to not give the government its due when I think it is on the right track. In this case, it is on the right track. I just hope that it stays around long enough to get this bill through the process and does not prorogue Parliament again or call a quick election because it sees some short-term, quick opportunity on the gun registry or any other idea that kind of hits the government's fancy as the days progress. I hope that we apply ourselves.

We saw what happened under Lester Pearson. For six years of minority government, a lot of things were accomplished. The Conservative government has been around for five years and what does it have to show?

I would suggest—

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Questions and comments, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Madam Speaker, we went from the explorations of the explorers back in the 1700s to whether the government would stick around long enough to get this bill through. I find it quite fascinating that the member would like to use history as a guiding lesson.

In the close to five years that the government has been here, just with respect to this ministry, much has been accomplished.

If he is worried about what may or may not happen in the future, it certainly will not be because of this party. For the next two, three or four years, we will do whatever it takes to get out of the economic difficulties that the world now faces. Our country is sitting on the leading edge and there is no need for elections to move those things forward. If the opposition wants to talk about elections, that is fine. On this side of the House, we are focused on governing and moving forward.

With respect to the bill, it is very clear. I think I heard at the very end of the member's statement that he does support this bill and will vote to move it forward to committee. I appreciate the fact that there is some constructive nature to his discussions. I heard from the member for Etobicoke Centre, too.

When it comes to citizenship and immigration, there is no need to take a view that will not be positive, that will not see the bill move to committee, then back here for third reading and then implemented.

I have several quotes from the industry, and I would like to get the member's comments on what the industry has said what the bill will do for those who suffer under crooked consultants.

The first quote is from Peter Bernier, national president of Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants, who said, “It is the dawn of a new era for Immigration Consultants as announced yesterday by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney”.

Phil Mooney, past president of Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants, said:

We're delighted [about Bill C-35] because proper immigration consultants are victims of the crooked ones too. They steal our clients with lies and false promises and they give the whole industry a bad name... We've been very unhappy with the way we've been regulated. Our members complain bitterly...

The industry likes what we are doing. The industry knows it will be a good bill. I want to hear the member say that he will support the bill.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I remind all members that they cannot use the name of a sitting member of Parliament even when quoting an article.

The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I do not know why the member is getting so riled up. The fact is we have said we support getting the bill to committee.

The member should learn from the hon. minister who showed a lot of class in the House by attending the debate on his bill. He not only listened to each of the speakers, but asked the first question. In fact, he was the only Conservative minister to do that in the spring.

We recognized at that time that this was the proper approach. That is what is done in other legislatures and should be done here, too. What the government typically does is the minister shows up, makes a speech and then is not heard from again. Ministers are not even here.

His minister showed a lot of class with the previous legislation. Not only that, he was successful in getting support from our party, the Bloc and the Liberals. That is the way we should operate in the House. That is way Lester Pearson did it in the six years he was prime minister in the 1960s. He unified the armed forces and he brought in the Canadian flag and medicare. He did a lot of things in six years.

What do you have to show for your five years?

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I am sure the hon. member was not asking me what I had done for five years.

The hon. member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, there are still concerns that the changes regarding this new regulatory body will be made through regulation. This is somewhat of a concern because it will not have the power to sanction immigration consultants who are not members, nor have appropriate enforcement powers regarding membership or the dedicated resources to enable it to do the job properly.

Also, the bill and the dialogue at this point still has not incorporated any mention of the role that members of Parliament and their constituency staff play in terms of immigration and citizenship matters without any orientation, training or resources for that purpose.

The member may want to comment on that.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, as usual the member offers excellent insight into the problem, and he is absolutely right. When we leave most of the implementation procedures to the regulations, the devil will be in the details. This is why we have always argued that we should have as much of the details in the bill so we know what we are dealing with.

The government would like to strip the bill down as much as it can and leave as much as it can to the regulations so it can essentially run things on a day-to-day basis the way the minister sees fit. As opposition parties, we do not like that approach. I am sure when we get to committee, the member will be there, he will argue his point and we will get some of these issues clarified at committee.

We are certainly in favour of getting it to committee. I am happy with the initiative that the government has shown in this area.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am glad the member addressed in his speech things we could do to improve the system and ensure that people would get the assistance they need and were not necessarily driven to use an immigration consultant.

He mentioned that a lot of people come to MPs' offices now for those services. It is not the ideal situation that MPs should be immigration service centres, even though we are willing to offer that service.

One other idea, and something I put forward, is that we look at the office of the worker advocate in Ontario, which deals with problems surrounding worker compensation problems, and establish something similar federally, an arm's-length government funded office of the immigration advocate to do that kind of work for people to ensure the government takes responsibility to ensure people get that kind of assistance.

Does the member think this is another reasonable idea toward solving the problem that people have with the complications and the problems that arise as they engage our immigration application system?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his idea. In actual fact he is probably right. I had indicated that I really did not think that one bill would necessarily solve all of the problems. I only applaud the fact that it is actually being addressed, and it is long overdue. It is probably something that should have been done by the Mulroney government 20 years ago. We were certainly aware of the problem in the Manitoba in the eighties and it was probably around a lot longer than that.

The member's idea is a very good one and he should take it up at the committee process and with the minister and the parliamentary secretary to see whether it could be put into force.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, in the report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration regarding immigration consultations, the first recommendation was that consultants who work in Quebec be subject to Quebec laws. At the time, this recommendation was supported by the NDP.

I would like to know whether the New Democrats still agree with this proposal and whether they are prepared to study and support amendments to ensure that consultants in Quebec are regulated by Quebec laws.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member is certainly very active in all areas of the immigration field. On behalf of our party, we have an open mind to those different options and certainly would be happy to look at every one of them when it comes to committee.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to discuss the bill. We are dealing with a very important problem and really we need to discuss so we can fix the problem as opposed to tinkering around the edges.

We understand the need to regulate and ensure that immigrants to our country do not have to deal with unscrupulous people. That is why the government put forward CSIC in 2003. It was meant to be reviewed, as it is now, to see whether it would work or not.

It turned out that there were some flaws in that process, and we know what those flaws are. First, while the group had the ability to prosecute, it did not have the ability to audit or subpoena and it did not have any legislative and legal abilities to do a whole lot of things. Second, it did not have enough resources to get the job done.

It is good that the government has recognized there needs to be something done and I think this is a first step. However, it does not address some of the problems. As we know, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration looked at this problem and it came up with some recommendations.

What the bill does not do is address the most fundamental problem identified by the committee and the recommendations made by it. It does not significantly fix the governance issues and problems that the committee identified, and we need to do that. Putting this within IRPA and tinkering with it around the edges does not really solve the problem. We need to look at a regulatory body that is arm's-length and has statutory powers.

If we look at it, this suggestion is not without precedent. In the provinces many professional bodies, for instance, under a separate legislation, were given the autonomous ability as statutory bodies, such as the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the College of Nurses, the engineering professional group. They would then look at people who would undertake that professional work, in this case immigration consultants, who would therefore be screened to be properly trained, to have the right credentials, first and foremost, and be able to assess whether those credentials were valid or not.

What we see in the provincial legislation for professional bodies, which is a provincial jurisdiction, is that it was able to give them the powers to audit, to examine files and practices, to subpoena and to have the ability to punish and remove people directly from that profession if it was felt they were not working under the ethical guidelines, processes and procedures that the profession was set up to do.

There is a precedent for this and this is what the government should be thinking of looking at doing at a federal level, and that is devising a statutory regulatory body that would have the same autonomous ability. I am not faulting the government for deciding something has to be done, but the problem with what it is doing is that it does not give the body teeth. There needs to be teeth to punish and find out what is going on.

If provinces could do this with professional regulatory bodies, the federal government could do it with immigration consultants. There should be clear standards, ethical guidelines and ways in which they can decide whether the consultants actually have the credentials they need. It is pretty clear the precedent exists with the provinces.

One could argue that the professional regulatory bodies the provinces set up are there to ensure that Canadians are safe and protected, that they are not ripped off, harmed or hurt by professionals who do not have credentials and are not practising under guidelines. At the same time, I do not think we could ask immigrants to accept less than we expect Canadians to have. When immigrants want to come to our country to build a new life, we need to ensure they have the benefit of the law.

It is a complex issue, coming to a new country. Immigrants do not understand the culture. They do not understand the laws of the country. They are coming in blind. They come in and someone tells them that they can help, that they can walk them through it and get rid of the red tape. I know because we deal with a lot of immigration issues in my constituency office. There are people who have little money when they come here. Many of them are coming to make a better life for themselves. They spend thousands of dollars, and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, getting bad advice, being sent down the wrong channels. These people are frustrated. They are upset. They are lost. They are confused. This is their introduction to Canada.

That cannot be the introduction to Canada for new immigrants. They have to be able to expect better of this country. They have to be able to expect that the rule of law prevails. They have to be able to expect that there are certain ethical practices and guidelines that are going to protect them, not only when they are striving to come here, but also when they are here.

It is very important that we look at this bill. One of the things about this that I think is important for us to look at is the committee report. There are some clear recommendations in the report.

Consider recommendation two: “The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada introduce stand-alone legislation to re-establish the Canadian Society of Immigrant Consultants as a non-share capital corporation”.

Organizations can now bid to take this over with no set statutory powers at all. We are allowing the same group that had been doing the work before to continue to do it. I do not want to blame them; they had not been given the appropriate powers or resources to do their job properly. But everybody can now go ahead and put their tender forward for this job.

So nothing is going to change. All we are doing is changing the manager. We are not changing the process. We are not ensuring that the process is rigorous and clear enough for everyone to understand.

This is a key thing that I wanted to suggest. Why reinvent the wheel? I do not understand this. Why is the government reinventing the wheel when we had a committee that studied the issue, that listened to a lot of witnesses. It heard what the witnesses said. In the second recommendation, the committee spoke to the issue of governance, the issue of powers, the issue of a need for a statutory body.

The third recommendation is: “The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada assist in re-establishing the new regulator and remain involved in its affairs until it is fully functioning”.

So the government is not walking away and allowing a body to have regulatory powers without due diligence. The government is going to be asked to ensure that this is happening, that all the bells and whistles are in place, that the structures are there, and that there is due diligence. Once it sees that this party is able to function on its own, then the government can say, “Fine, you go ahead and do it”, in the same way that we see provinces have done with their regulatory bodies.

We have all seen the problems people have had in coming to this country, but I want to say that there are many immigrant consultants who do excellent work, who are well qualified, and who have done a great deal to help new immigrants. However, the problem with having a few bad apples is that they spoil the whole bunch.

I know many immigrant consultants who are doing good work, who have all their licensing, who are following the rules, who have ethical guidelines and practise due diligence, and who yet feel that people do not trust them. For the sake of Canadians and newcomers alike, it is important for the government to ensure that the system it puts in place is one that everyone can believe in and can trust. Trust is important. If we do not trust the people who are there to help, if we do not trust their work because they have all been tarred with one broad brush, then we harm the whole process. It is important for the government to have a process in place that people can trust and that the government itself can trust, so that it knows that immigrants are led in the right direction and that the greed of some bad apples does not leave them floundering.

In one instance, I had a couple who were coming to Canada and had spent $20,000, which is a lot of money, and they were led in all different directions. Finally, they came to my office in tears. They had been turned away at every angle, at every door they opened.

The immigration department was not buying what they were saying, mainly because the consultant had not given them the right advice and had asked them to apply for immigrant status under the wrong criteria. They had spent all that time.

Then, once they had done it, and this is the real problem, they had now set this process in motion. The immigration bureaucrats all have this storyline that they were told they should bring forward. To walk away from that makes them sound like liars.

When they are given bad advice, the poor immigrants sound as if they are lying. They go to a puppet consultant who tells them that they have been doing it wrong, or they come to our office and we tell them they have been doing the wrong things. They now have to go back and change all the things that they were asked to do and all the information that they gave, and after that they are already suspect.

At the end of the day, it harms their ability to come in as immigrants, when they are regarded as dishonest because they were led down the wrong track.

If we are changing the way immigration works, we all agree that the system of immigration and the refugee system need to be fine-tuned, need to be fast-forwarded, so that people do not have to wait so long. We need to be clear on what we are doing.

I think the government has decided that it wants to go there. If the government is going to make the step to go there, it should do it properly. It should take that bold leap and make sure that once and for all we have changed the system so that it is one that people can trust, one that does not frustrate the immigrants or the families in Canada who are sponsoring people to come over.

That is really important, because we are going to be looking at immigrants in a different way now. We have been looking at immigrants according to different criteria that are not working anymore.

We do not need only highly educated immigrants with Ph.Ds and the expanded language requirements we require. We are looking for tool and die makers, electricians, and people who practice the kinds of trades that we do not have anymore. All of these things we have to think about.

Immigration is the key to how this country was built. People who come here bring skills, knowledge, and all sorts of things that help this country to grow.

I do not think there is anyone, except the aboriginal people in this country, who did not come as immigrants at some time, whether it was eight or ten generations ago or just yesterday. All have contributed to building this country through hard work, knowledge, and skills.

As a small country with only 32 million people, we are facing a huge crunch. We are going to have to be competitive in a global economy. We have to do so with only 32 million people. We are not going to have massive numbers of people like China and India. We are going to have to make sure that we are depending on the best, the brightest, and the most skilled people in this country. We need to look at immigration as a key means of achieving this goal.

The statistics coming out of Statistics Canada and the immigration department tell us that by 2011 we are going to be dependent on immigration for 100% of our net labour force. We need those skills. Take my own profession, physician. We have three million Canadians who do not have a family physician. Yet we have many people here who are trained physicians and who have been, in keeping with the old story, driving a cab and have not been working at their job for 10 years.

They need to be able to work and to help us to develop the kind of nurses, doctors, engineers, technicians, and technologists we require in this country. We need the construction workers, the electricians, the master craftsmen. We need more than just one group of people.

When people go to our missions abroad and apply to come here as immigrants, sometimes they are given information that they find not to be true. Sometimes they come here, believing that they had come to a country where they would be able to live, work, bring their families, and build a nation, just as all of us in the past have done, only to find that they were given false information.

An important part of the shift that the government is planning must be to ensure that foreign missions are given the same clear message. There is probably a list of licensed and properly trained consultants that they can be given so that people can know that that they are getting a list of bona fide people. This should be done in different languages, not merely in English and French. Many people who are coming to Canada speak other languages.

We have the ability to translate into every language in the world. We should use this ability when we are talking to people in their own country and giving them the advice that they need.

These are important issues for us to take care of. It is not a simple, one-shot deal. I think the bill falls far short. I would like to see the bill amended, strengthened. We have heard everyone say that. I want to congratulate the government for taking this first step, but it is not a good enough step. Let us do this right, once and for all. Everyone has been talking about changes to the immigration system, and we have all been tinkering at the edges.

Our former Liberal government can say the same thing. We tried, and we did what we thought was good. We now need to review it. If it is not working, let us fix it, but let us not tinker with it. Let us make sure we have this door open for skilled immigrants who will bring their families and stay here, who will start to build a nation, whose children will grow up and become Canadians and help us to be more productive and competitive in the new global economy.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciated the member's comments. In large part they are complimentary toward the process we are trying to work through with this bill. Some of her suggestions merit consideration at committee.

However, I do want to clarify something. It is important to understand that the statutory board the member spoke of was certainly something that the standing committee looked at. The difficulties related to this option include the tremendous costs associated with it and the tremendous amount of delay that would result from creating an agency complete with civil servants and a new bureaucracy. To move those two issues aside, the government body that will actually exist will be designated by the minister and will have the authority to penalize. It will have the authority under regulation to pursue and investigate consultants who are not following the rules.

From a committee perspective, it is certainly something that we can look at. It would help to get strong suggestions from each of the parties, at committee and here in the House, on what these regulations for the governing body should look like. Let us understand: the intent here is to give that self-regulatory body the authority to enforce law and ensure that consultants are acting in a manner that is going to be helpful. Whether it is temporary workers, their families, or potential immigrants, we want the legitimacy of the industry to be what stands out, not the terrible actions taken by a few crooked consultants.

I have had the opportunity to clarify. I would like to get the member's reaction, because it is critical and timely. She mentioned many times how important it is to move quickly. This is the way to ensure that it will move quickly.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, what I am suggesting is not without precedent. Like lawyers in the provincial law societies, immigration consultants should have the ability to be a self-regulating profession. I was not suggesting that bureaucrats do this; I was suggesting that bona fide immigration consultants set up the structure themselves and help the profession to be self-regulating.

It is like the case of physicians. The College of Physicians and Surgeons is run by physicians and law societies are run by lawyers, not by bureaucrats. What we are suggesting is that there should be a watchdog to ensure that this works while it is getting off the ground. Then, after a year or two, the government could float it out as provincial governments have done with other self-regulatory bodies like the law societies.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Madam Speaker, the bill seeks to ensure that all consultants are covered and licensed before they can practice. It also looks at a continuation of education and enforcement.

While the bill in front of the House is important, our concern ultimately is to make sure that all consultants are scrupulous, that they give proper advice and do not charge potential immigrants an enormous amount of money. It is important that there be enough enforcement measures, enough training, for immigration officials so that if we come across unscrupulous consultants there will be ways to ensure that potential immigrants are protected.

Aside from dealing with the bill in front of us, what other measures does the member think are important to ensure proper enforcement and implementation of the bill so that ultimately at the end of the day no potential immigrants will be exploited or open to some kind of crooked consultants who would take their money and destroy their immigration cases?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague suggested that this bill intends to look at licensing, education and enforcement. That is not all that professional regulatory bodies do in the provinces. There is the task of being an ongoing watchdog which takes complaints from whoever is using that particular professional body, in this case immigrants. They would have the ability to complain to the statutory body. The statutory body would have the ability to audit, to go into the consultant's office and seize the consultant's files. It would be able to look at what the consultant had been doing. That requires a different set of powers. It is the same set of powers that provincial regulatory bodies have, as I have suggested.

Not only do we need to license consultants and indicate what they should be doing, but we also need to be able to monitor them. A watchdog function is needed. We need to be able to hear complaints. We need to ensure that people practise under certain rules of ethical conduct which the regulatory body would set up.

Ethics and conduct are a huge part of what the law society and the College of Physicians and Surgeons do. One could be the brightest person in the world, could have graduated from Oxford with a great medical degree, but if that person does not have the right ethics and his or her conduct toward patients is not proper, that person will be hauled on the carpet.

The watchdog function needs to be ongoing and there needs to be the ability to hear complaints, because how will we know if somebody is not practising properly? There has to be a complaints process that can follow through, investigate, audit, seize documents, and deal with the practitioners that are not practising properly.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, when the committee report on immigration consultants was passed, the first recommendation made by committee members was that immigration consultants working in Quebec should be regulated by Quebec.

The reason is simple. First, there is an immigration agreement between Quebec and Canada, which means that the immigration system in Quebec is quite different and requires different expertise. Second, in Quebec, there is the Office des professions du Québec as well as a whole regulatory framework. The provinces are responsible for governing professions.

The Liberals and the New Democratic Party supported this recommendation at the time. I would like to ask the member if her party still supports the committee's first recommendation. Is her party willing to study and support possible amendments in order to act on this recommendation?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have been referring continually to the report and the recommendations. My hon. colleague is right. Recommendation one speaks to the issue that immigration consultants from Quebec shall be officially recognized under Quebec laws, because as we well know, Quebec laws are totally different from our common law. They happen to be civil law. We need to be able to look at that legislation working on its own. I think that is a reasonable thing to expect.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this bill on behalf of the New Democratic Party of Canada. I am also happy to say that our party supports this bill.

It is a very important part of any responsible opposition not only to constructively criticize a government when we think its policy direction is ill-advised or incorrect, but it is also very important, as a responsible opposition, to congratulate and support a government when it introduces legislation that is correct and addresses a very real problem.

I want to congratulate my colleagues on the government side of the House for bringing in Bill C-35. The bill goes a long way toward dealing with a problem that is very pressing in this country.

The short title of Bill C-35 is the cracking down on crooked consultants act, which shows the government's penchant for giving its legislation catchy titles, but the title captures what the bill is about. Bill C-35 prohibits unlicensed consultants in the immigration field from providing advice or submitting applications on behalf of potential immigrants. It gives the minister the power to establish a new body that would regulate immigration consultants through a tendering process.

New Democrats, in particular my colleague from Trinity—Spadina, have been pushing for legislative changes to eliminate unethical immigration consultant practices for a long time now. At present, one out of every two immigration consultants is not licensed. There are many horror stories of vulnerable immigrants being cheated out of substantial amounts of money, in some cases their life savings, and worse, having their chances for a new beginning in Canada destroyed in the process.

In the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, our party and the committee received two supporting reports with nine recommendations on this issue. These include legislative changes and, more importantly, enforcement and education efforts, which are vital to making this legislation workable in practice. Again my colleague from Trinity—Spadina moved a motion for concurrence in that report which, through the wisdom and efforts of members of this House, passed in the spring of this year.

As another member said very well, other than first nations people in this country, we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Almost everybody in this House owes his or her place in Canada to the courage of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or ancestors even further back. In some cases, members of this House are direct immigrants themselves, so it is an obvious point to make that Canada is one of the most multicultural countries on earth and one whose entire societal fabric is based on immigrants.

My own riding of Vancouver Kingsway is one of the most multicultural ridings in the country. Forty per cent of the residents of Vancouver Kingsway are of Chinese descent, from the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau. Eleven per cent of the residents of Vancouver Kingsway are South Asian, hailing from India, Pakistan and the Punjab. Ten per cent of the residents of my riding are from the Philippines. Five per cent are from Vietnam, Korea and a host of other countries. Indeed 70% of the people in my riding are visible minorities and are now the visible majority in my riding.

There are over 100 languages spoken in Vancouver Kingsway. It is truly a cultural mosaic, one that is vibrant, strong and healthy. Many people in Vancouver Kingsway are first, second or third generation immigrants. I would venture to say that the majority of people in Vancouver Kingsway are within one of those three categories.

Of course, we have to pause and examine the profound reasons that people immigrate to Canada. Everybody who came to Canada, I think, came here because they had a dream. Sometimes those dreams were to build a better life for their families. Sometimes they were seeking freedom to practise their religion. Sometimes their dream was to escape poverty and enter a land where they felt equal opportunity was available to them and their children. Sometimes that dream involved pursuing an education. Many students come to Canada hoping to obtain an education upon which they can build a better life.

We also have to remember that this country, Canada, has been built by immigrants. We have already heard mention of the fact that one of the most important nation-building projects this country has witnessed, the building of our national coast-to-coast railway, could not have been done without the contributions of Chinese Canadians. Those people came here and were subjected to horrendous racism, including legislated racism, but they persevered and helped build a strong cultural Chinese presence on the west coast of our country and, indeed, in every province across this land.

The story of my own relatives is a typical one.

In the 1920s my grandparents immigrated to Canada from Hungary. First my grandfather came with his brother. They landed in Halifax and ended up taking a train across Canada. They were dropped off in October on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan in a little place called Dewberry. He and his brother had to walk 21 miles from the train station to their end destination. They lived in a sod house for two winters. They cleared land under a government program whereby if one cleared a quarter section of land within two years, one would be allowed to homestead it and own it. My grandfather did that and three years later brought his wife over from Hungary. At that point they raised my mother who to this day still speaks Hungarian and has exposed me to that cultural history and tradition.

My father had a similar story. His grandparents came from Ireland, Wales, and Germany. I think I am a fairly typical Canadian who can reach back just a generation or two and touch countries across the world.

What all immigrants have in common is courage, trust and faith. Their stories also can be heart-rending because many immigrants experience the reality of separation from their families, loneliness, insecurity and indeed poverty when they arrive here. Statistics in this country are rife with the difficulties and specific challenges that particularly face first generation Canadians.

Bill C-35 is targeted at protecting those immigrants, and that is critically important. It protects immigrants from unscrupulous immigration consultants who would prey on those people whose dreams make them vulnerable. They prey on these people for the most unjustifiable reason: pure money.

I want to pause and say that there are many professional and ethical immigration consultants practising in this field across the country, particularly in British Columbia. There are many diligent immigration consultants who provide intelligent and well-earned advice and help people from all over the globe access Canada's immigration system. I think those consultants join with us in Parliament today in wanting to keep their profession one that is well regulated and full of integrity. Those immigration consultants realize they have an interest in doing so. I want to point that out in particular because when we talk about a profession, we must recognize there are many people of integrity as well as those whose professional standards leave a lot to be desired.

I have met many excellent consultants. I have met people like Rose White and Bob White who have come to my office several times and given me their opinion on all kinds of immigration issues. Rajesh Randev helps hundreds and hundreds of people come to this country but who otherwise would be completely mystified by the process.

Cecile Barbier, a person who lives in my own neighbourhood, a recent immigrant from France and a lawyer from that country has taken immigration courses, so that she can also put her knowledge to work, helping other people. These are the kinds of immigration consultants who want to have a law in this country that makes their profession a regulated, respected one.

There are important organizations in British Columbia that also do critical and pivotal work for immigrants: SUCCESS Immigrant Settlement Services and PICS provide absolutely essential services to immigrants from every corner of the globe.

I think we have heard from all MPs. I do not think there is a member in the House who cannot stand up and tell stories about Canadians and residents of their ridings who come to their offices with terrible problems with the immigration system that they face. Sometimes I joke that I do not have a constituency office; I feel like I have an immigration law practice.

I would like to give an example of an issue on which I dealt with the immigration minister just yesterday. A resident in my riding is a citizen here with her husband and daughter who is from Colombia. She has had her mother and her brother visit here on temporary resident visas, in other words, visitor visas. Her younger sister has applied to come here just to visit her sister for three weeks and she was turned down three times. This person in Colombia is a woman with a law degree. The first time she was turned down she was in university and she was turned down because she did not have the income. Then she got her law degree and she was turned down the second time because she did not have a travel history.

This is of course a vicious cycle in which many people find themselves. How do we get a travel history if we are turned down for a visa because we do not have a travel history? This is the third time this person has applied for a visa. She was turned down this time because a visa officer in Colombia misread her application and said that she did not have sufficient income from her employer when the figure and the employer were listed right on her paperwork.

These are the kinds of typical problems that MPs face every day. These are the kinds of problems that immigration consultants could help with if they are regulated, trained, and held to a standard of professionalism that they want and need.

In my constituency I deal with immigrants every day that I am in Vancouver. People from the Philippines tell me that the number one export of the Philippines is not a good; it is people. I deal with Filipinos every day who come into my office, trying to engage in family reunification, trying to bring aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents, and cousins to Canada so that they can build their families.

We must realize in this country that in many areas of the world family is not defined as one's parents and children; it is defined as one's aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and grandparents. That concept of extended family is critically important to many people.

People come into my office who hail from China, where the rate of refusal on spousal sponsorships from places like Beijing is approaching 50%. That means almost one out of every two people from China who are married and are making applications to bring their spouses over are rejected.

People come into my office from India who are consistently rejected when they try to bring relatives over to attend a wedding. This is particularly a problem in Chandigarh, which has about the highest rate of refusals of temporary resident visas, TRVs, in the world.

These are the problems my residents face every day and with which they come to their MP for assistance. Our offices processes hundreds and hundreds of these cases every year through the hard work of my constituency assistants, Theresa Ho and Christine Ackermann . They help these people. They go out of their way and do yeowomen's work to help these people with their problems. These are people who do not have money to pay an immigration consultant or a lawyer. So they come to us.

I have also had people come into my office who have been victims of unscrupulous immigration consultants. One of the most heart-rending situations is when people come to this country, work one, two or three jobs, undergo intense pain by being separated from their families, work for years, save up money working jobs for $8 and $9 an hour and after working two or three years, save $3,000 or $4,000, which they give to an immigration consultant because they think that person will help bring their relatives over, only to discover that person abused their trust.

They lose their money, do not get the results they want and, worse, in many cases the applicant's record is permanently marred so that their relatives can never come over. That is wrong and is something that cries out for immediate rectification by sound legislators. I want to congratulate the government for bringing in this legislation, which I think goes a long way to addressing this.

What we must ensure and be vigilant about as parliamentarians is that this legislation is sound and that it works. It does not do any good to bring in legislation that cannot be actuated in practice. We need to ensure that we establish a regulatory process that has teeth, one that licenses immigration consultants and establishes sound standards, so we can ensure that any people calling themselves immigration consultants in this country have the proficiency and professionalism required to carry out their duties in a proper manner.

We must ensure there are adequate enforcement measures because standards without enforcement are of no use. We must ensure the immigration consultants in this country know that if they try to practice without licences or provide services they are not entitled to provide, they will be caught and there will be consequences.

We must also ensure that the public knows about it. We need to ensure that every person wanting to access the immigration system in this country can go to a website and see at a glance, like is done in Australia, who are the licensed immigration consultants, who are not licensed, who has made application and failed, and those who have a black mark against them. These are all critical components of a sound piece of legislation that ensures it does not just amount to words on a paper but actually makes a tangible difference in people's lives.

I also want to comment briefly on the government's attempt to bring in legislation that the previous Liberal government failed to do. I hear members of the Liberal Party talk about this legislation, but, of course, when they were in power, they did not get it done. After numerous consultations and hearings, the former minister, the member now for Eglinton—Lawrence, set up a regulatory body that had no teeth.

The Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants had no power to enforce regulations or to prevent unlicensed consultants from practising. To make matters worse, that organization was not required to behave in a democratic, efficient or transparent manner. I am glad to see that members of the Liberal Party standing up today are supporting this legislation after having the opportunity of 13 years in government and failing to do so.

In fact, in many respects what they did was even worse, which was to set up a process that did not work. That breeds disrespect and sets back policy development because people look to a regulatory framework that does not work as proof that a regulatory framework is not valid or needed, and that is not the case.

I want to, once again, indicate that New Democrats stand behind immigrants in this country. We want them to be able to unify their families, we want them to be able to have a fair, fast and efficient immigration system. We will join with the government and all members of the House in helping to ensure that immigration consultants in this country practise in a manner that is professional and helpful.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Before resuming debate I should advise the House that we have now completed the first five hours of debate on this bill and we have come to the 10-minute interventions and 5 minutes of questions and comments.

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Richmond Hill.