Madam Speaker, it is a real pleasure to rise today in my new capacity as official opposition critic for youth, citizenship and immigration. I have had a number of opportunities already to address youth issues before the House, and to speak today on citizenship and immigration and more specifically on Bill C-35 regarding the regulation of immigration consultants is both an honour and a challenge. For how we deal with the twin issues of youth and immigration today will define how successful our country will be tomorrow.
This House is currently wrangling with great verve over paperwork regarding rifles and on whether we got a good deal on some airplanes, and although these and other issues are legitimate and pressing, I fear that when we expend as much energy as we have on what seems urgent, all too often we find ourselves neglecting that which is most important.
The work we are doing here has its place in the long history of this beautiful country, which is still young. Instead of always trying to handle things on an ad hoc basis, moving from crisis to crisis, we should pay more attention to building for the future. One of our greatest responsibilities in the House is to prepare the next generation, and the next generation means our young people and our new arrivals.
We are a country of immigrants. Regardless of whether our family timelines are measured in millennia, centuries, decades or weeks, we are all bound together by a common dream of building a better life for ourselves and for our loved ones. That is why it can be so disheartening to see the politics of division, cynicism and fear take up so much space in our national narrative when we need to be drawing on the politics of hope, shared values and vision to be worthy of all that previous generations have fought for, created and given to us today.
Discussions and debates on immigration have been as much a part of Canadian politics as anything else we have struggled with as a nation, and it is always amazing to see how much the best among us have always said the same kinds of things. To go back 150 years, a few years before Confederation, Thomas D'Arcy McGee was pushing for a common Canadian patriotism, unhyphenated and shared by all who live in this land regardless of origin. I think it would be right for us to remember his words now:
Dear, most justly dear to every land beneath the sun, are the children born in her bosom and nursed upon her breast; but when the man of another country, wherever born, speaking whatever speech, holding whatever creed, seeks out a country to serve and honour and cleave to, in weal or in woe, when he heaves up the anchor of his heart from its old moorings, and lays at the feet of the mistress of his choice - his new country - all the hopes of his ripe manhood, he establishes by such devotion a claim to consideration not second even to that of the children of the soil. He is their brother delivered by a new birth from the dark-wombed Atlantic ship that ushers him into existence in the new world; he stands by his own election among the children of the household; and narrow and unwise is that species of public spirit which, in the perverted name of patriotism, would refuse him all he asks...
A few decades later, Wilfrid Laurier said:
My countrymen are not only those in whose veins runs the blood of France. My countrymen are all those people—no matter what their race or language—whom the fortunes of war, the twists and turns of fate, or their own choice, have brought among us.
Our country was created by people of multiple identities, and we have become strong not despite our differences but because of them. Our future, the future of our society and our economy, even the future of our planet, will depend entirely on our ability to work together, not to erase our differences but to accept them and recognize that the only way to meet the challenges facing us is to make use of all the diverse perspectives and views around us.
Everywhere around the world we are living globalization that brings multiple nationalities, identities, cultures, religions and languages into conflict within established states. The temptation when times are difficult is to play up our differences, to point fingers at identities or others and choose to divide for gain rather than bringing together. This is a path that will lead us into great peril when we think of the tremendous challenges we are facing as a planet, whether it be around the environment, poverty, human rights or just around the simple challenges that are going to derive by having to live together, nine billion of us, in a limited space.
Canada can and must demonstrate that national identity is not about our colour, language, religion or even culture. Our national identity is based on a shared set of values, values of openness, compassion, respect for each other and the rule of law and not only a willingness to work hard to succeed, but a desire to be there for each other in times of difficulty, to be there for the most vulnerable among us. This is what defines Canadians from coast to coast to coast and the more we play up those differences, the less we are able to rise to the level that the challenges will require of us.
That is why it is so important that we get our approach to immigration right, both in the House certainly but also as we collectively reflect upon it in homes right across the land. We must stay away from the easy polarizations. We are dependent on immigration for our economy, but we have an example to offer to the world. That means we need to get it right, which is why we, on this side of the House in the Liberal Party, are pleased to see Bill C-35 on immigration consultants. It is an issue that speaks to the very justice of a country of which we are so proud.
Imagine citizens of faraway lands taking it upon themselves to seek better lives for themselves and their loved ones. Maybe they make the decision for negative reasons, such as war, oppression or famine, or maybe they make it for positive reasons, such as seeking opportunity or being filled with hope and dreams. They take the difficult decision of uprooting themselves from all that they know and lived through to travel across the oceans to begin a new life.
It is a moment of tremendous vulnerability and uncertainty and it is perfectly normal and natural for them in that situation to look for help, to try to figure out how they are going to be able to make it to a land where they are not sure about the customs, they have trouble with the language, maybe they do not even understand the process. In that moment of tremendous vulnerability when they are asking for help, unfortunately they can make decisions that will not help them but lead them into losing their dreams altogether.
I am sure all of us in the House have met well-meaning constituents, people who come to us for help, who took the advice of unscrupulous consultants and fudged the truth in their applications or misrepresented something about their desire to come to Canada. As a result, they have an indelible X on their file that will mean that any dream they had of becoming part of this great nation, this community that we build toward the future will be washed away.
In my constituency office in the short time since I was elected I have seen over 500 immigration cases and too often they are complaining about the cost of the process. It is not the cost of the application fees and the medical evaluations and it is not the frustration with the hard work that our civil servants in our missions abroad do. It is worries about the cost and the frustration that comes with having spent exorbitant amounts of money on people who promised the world and could not deliver.
This was a problem that came through for many years in the House, which is why, in 2002, we established an immigration committee to look at this situation. We then created the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, an independent, federally incorporated, not-for-profit body, operating at arm's-length from the federal government, responsible for regulating the activities of immigration consultants who were members and who provided immigration advice for a fee. Unfortunately, CSIC was not given the power to properly investigate and prosecute disciplinary matters. It did not have statutory powers to audit, subpoena or seize documents and did not have the resources to properly police immigration consultants.
Since its creation, unfortunately we kept witnessing ongoing problems with unscrupulous individuals operating both in Canada and abroad as immigration consultants, cheating immigrants with inappropriate fees. These ghost consultants continued to be a problem and legitimate consultants were concerned that these crooked individuals put a stigma on the entire profession and made it difficult to do their jobs and protect vulnerable immigrants in their time of great hope and need.
In 2008, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration published a report that made nine recommendations to improve the process. First, the committee recognized that Quebec would remain responsible for managing the consultants within its own borders.
In respect to a new approach to regulating consultants, the committee recommended that more investigatory and punitive powers be provided regarding those members who do not deserve the confidence placed in them by people who want to come to Canada.
The committee also wanted to improve the government’s ability to supervise the work done by these regulators. In addition, it recommended that communications with potential applicants should be improved, because these people are so vulnerable.
It is in response to this report that the government is now introducing Bill C-35.
The government claims that Bill C-35 would close loopholes currently exploited by crooked consultants and would improve the way in which immigration consultants would be regulated. The proposed draft regulation will amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act so that only lawyers, notaries and authorized consultants who are members in good standing of a governing body authorized by the minister may provide advice or representation at any stage of a proceeding or application.
This is important because currently the act does not regulate the activities of consultants during the pre-application or proceeding phase. Although not in the draft legislation itself, the government has publicly stated penalties would include a sentence of up to two years in jail or a $50,000 fine, or both. While this is positive, rather than introducing stand-alone legislation to permit the creation of a statutory body to regulate immigration consultants as was recommended by the Citizenship and Immigration committee, the government has decided to amend IRPA to change the manner in which third parties are regulated. It has launched a public selection process whereby organizations, including the current regulator, are competing to be selected to be the arm's-length regulatory body. The legislation provides the minister with the power to designate a body through regulations, not legislation.
Many stakeholders have expressed concern that the decision to change the regulatory body through regulation rather than through stand-alone legislation will not result in the necessary governance and oversight required for the new body. There is also concern that the new body will still not have the power to sanction immigration consultants who are not members, nor have appropriate enforcement powers regarding its membership.
The bill also would allow Citizenship and Immigration Canada to disclose further information relating to the ethical or professional conduct of an immigration representative to those responsible for governing that conduct and would expand the time for instituting proceedings against individuals from six months to five years.
These are positive changes. We are still very concerned about the resources that have not been made available to the regulatory body and to the Canada Border Services Agency, for example, to enforce sanctions against ghost consultants and legitimate but wayward ones. We are concerned about the missing legislation that might give more teeth to the body to reprimand its own members.
I am, however, in favour to sending the bill to committee because I believe in the safety of our future Canadians and of the family and friends of our new Canadians. I will be voting in favour because I want to ensure that we protect vulnerable immigrants from unscrupulous individuals who use the immigration process to cheat people out of their life savings.
I will be voting in favour in the hopes that we, as a Parliament and members from all parties, can work together in committee and bring the amendments that will make the bill better into a law that will be in the best interests of Canada. Canadian and more precisely the residents of my riding of Papineau want this Parliament to work together. It is in this spirit that I will support the bill because, simply put, a big part of our shared Canadian identity is ensuring that we do all we can to protect the most vulnerable among us.
