Madam Speaker, I wish to share my time with my colleague, the member for Calgary Forest Lawn.
I may be a new member of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration who was not directly involved in drafting the report and recommendations in its study, “Starting Again: Improving Government Oversight of Immigration Consultants”, but the report is relevant to all 338 members of Parliament due to the nature of its contents.
Before I begin, I want to personally thank the member for Calgary Nose Hill for her tremendous leadership as the Conservative caucus's shadow minister for immigration. She has been tenacious in holding the government to account, while also providing meaningful alternatives in everything the immigration committee does. For that, I congratulate her and am honoured to call her a colleague, as I am with regard to both of the previous speakers, my colleagues from Markham—Unionville and Calgary Shepard.
Before I got into politics at the provincial level in 1999 and then at federal level in 2013, I never expected the amount of immigration cases my office deals with daily. We heard the same from my colleague across the way from Winnipeg North. Even in western Manitoba, not traditionally known as the destination of many new Canadians, there has been a tremendous influx of immigrants who have decided to call west Manitoba their home. I would be willing to suggest that close to 50% of the people who call and visit my constituency office are seeking assistance with the immigration process. I suspect I am not alone in seeing this immigration caseload.
The mere fact that 50% of my constituency office's work deals with immigration is perhaps a sign that we need to improve the service delivery of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. While that is a debate for another day, I am pleased that we are having a discussion today on the committee's report regarding immigration consultants.
Individuals seek out the assistance of immigration consultants because the process is complicated, the wait times can be atrocious, and in many respects people are looking for guidance on the myriad forms they are expected to fill out. It is unfortunate that there are those in Canada who prey on vulnerable immigrants.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that this problem is not getting any better. Just this week in the news, a Winnipeg man was charged with illegally acting as a certified immigration consultant, which he most certainly was not. This is not the first time the CBSA has charged someone in Winnipeg with acting as an unlicensed immigration consultant. Just last year, an individual was charged for illegally supplying immigrant workers to restaurants, who were then coerced into giving back part of their paycheques to their employers. If this were not bad enough, another individual was charged for scamming more than 80 people into paying him thousands of dollars.
It must be said, this committee's report was unanimous in its findings. In support, I certainly have other anecdotes from my own constituency that I could offer through my office from the files that we have deal with. That is why it is so important that we deal with these unanimous findings. It is very rare to have unanimous findings from parliamentary committees. It speaks volumes to the importance of getting the necessary recommendations moving.
The reason we are having this debate today is that the government's response to the committee's report was an injustice to the 50 witnesses and dozens of hours put in by committee members and staff to provide the 21 recommendations to the government.
This report shines a beacon on the actions of unscrupulous immigration consultants. If we, for one moment, could put ourselves in the shoes of a temporary foreign worker who has been scammed by a crooked immigration consultant, we could get a better understanding of why the recommendations in this report are vital to cleaning up the industry.
Temporary foreign workers are vulnerable to begin with. They are far from home, come to Canada to work in a job that probably is not that glamorous, and then are taken advantage of because they have nowhere else to turn. The problem with immigration consultants is that while many follow the proper procedures of getting licensed and do provide meaningful assistance, there is very little one can do to stop others from printing business cards and portraying themselves as fully licensed consultants. That is why this report is so important.
I want to briefly go through some of the recommendations. The first is that the Government of Canada create an independent public interest body empowered to regulate and govern the profession of immigration consultants. The reason this recommendation is so critical is that previously, the tasks associated with governing consultants was given to an body outside of the government. While l am not one to suggest that the government needs to control every aspect of society, it is quite apparent that what we are currently doing is not working.
The Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council stated at committee that it receives over 300 complaints a year. The acting president of the regulatory council said that since it became the regulator six years ago, it has received over 1,710 complaints filed against consultants. Between 2010 and 2015, the active number of consultants in Canada has more than doubled. To put this into context, that is a significant number of complaints considering there are only 3,600 licensed consultants.
If we could just step back for a moment, we know that the number of complaints is probably far higher, as many immigrants are afraid of the repercussions that may arise from making a formal complaint.
The reason we should create a new independent public interest body is to maintain high ethical standards, preserve the integrity of the system, and protect applicants from exploitation and outrageous fees. The other thing an independent public interest body could do would be to set training, education, and experience standards before anyone could become an immigration consultant. The new regulatory body should also be empowered to investigate and deal with complaints in a timely manner. For these purposes, the new regulatory body should be provided with investigative and disciplinary powers similar to those exercised by Canadian provincial and territorial law societies.
The other important aspect of the report is that not only would a new body be created, but there would also be a regular review by the House of Commons to ensure that it is meeting its objectives. There should be a mechanism that would allow individuals who have been abused by unscrupulous immigration consultants to file a complaint without fear of it jeopardizing their application process or the status of their applications. Furthermore, it is important that organizations that provide the most basic of immigration services be allowed to assist applicants without fear of sanctions. In this regard, I know firsthand the amazing work that Westman Immigrant Services does in Brandon, as it fill gaps and eases the transition of newcomers adjusting to life in Canada.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada should start working with organizations that provide immigration services to educate applicants about the new regulatory body to determine if a prospective immigration consultant is in fact legitimate. The era of back-lane immigration services and shady practices must come to an end.
In Canada we must demand more than what has been happening and think of the larger consequences for those who have been negatively impacted, and also for our reputation abroad. If we must increase fines and sentences for offences carried out by crooked immigrant consultants, then let us do it. Let us work with the RCMP and provincial and municipal law agencies to find new ways to deter these individuals from ever thinking of working outside the law again. I acknowledge that not everyone in the immigration consultant business is taking advantage of others, but for far too long we have turned a blind eye to this epidemic of deception.
The committee is a great example of co-operation across party lines in putting forward a great list of recommendations, and the government should adhere to its advice. The Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship has done a great disservice by signing off on it with the most boilerplate response humanly possible, one that was clearly drafted by his officials. There was little evidence that the government and, in particular, the minister took any serious consideration of the report. Indeed, the government refused to take a stance on any of the recommendations.
In closing, I would like to say that we should not allow the report's 21 recommendations to collect dust in the minister's filing cabinet. For one moment, if we could put ourselves in a newcomers' position, think of what it must feel like to be taken advantage of, to be cheated and to be lied to and then to find out that one is being sent away through no fault of one's own, I believe we would all agree that the time is now to move forward and implement the committee's recommendations.