Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it depends who it is. For women who are educated, I would say yes, overall the education level in terms of immigration has gone up, and then with the advent of Internet and public information... But for women who are uneducated and unable to access it, I think it has not changed at all.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I partially agree with my friend. The only thing I would add to that is that if there has been a trial with a negative trial outcome, I would think that this is innocent until proven guilty. However, I do agree with my friend Ms. Neufeld completely that the majority of domestic violence cases do not even go as far as calling the police or going to trial.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's probably about the same. It has not gotten better. My number one advice to people is if you want information about immigration, don't call Immigration.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If the person is the sponsor and is in Canada, the first thing I would do is tell them to go to the police. As I said earlier, people who are in Canada at least have the advantage of the protections we have here in Canada. The problem is if it's the foreign national, it's a much more difficult situation, because there could be family situations; they could be under threat from their own family or from the husband's family, and the police in their country might not be particularly helpful.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, on a couple of different occasions. The one that stands out in my mind is a situation where a man had two wives. The original wife was sponsorable, which isn't a problem. He had children with the second wife and one of the children was very ill. It was a Canadian-born child.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I have. It happened to me one time. I was approached to do a sponsorship appeal. I was hired by a women and her family to do a sponsorship appeal, and the first time I met her alone and isolated from her family, she told me that she was being forced to do this, that she had not wanted to marry the person, and that she wanted to find some way to get out of it, but she couldn't let her family know.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. I've been doing immigration for about 20 years, and I'm a certified specialist in immigration and refugee law. I'm not an expert in violence against women, so I'm going to limit my comments today to things that I've seen on the ground in my practice as a lawyer, real-life examples and things I have actually observed personally.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'm not aware of any.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I don't know if you have considered calling a witness from the UNHCR, but they would have very good information about that. I don't know what the turnaround times are for other refugee-receiving countries. Whether they're faster, I really couldn't tell you. It would only be anecdotal.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, the information that I was privy to was about Iraqi families who have resettled in New Zealand. Also, those particular individuals had family there, so that may have also played a factor in it. I'm not sure about the regulations. But if it's a floodgates argument that we're worried about, the government does impose quotas.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, there's a pretty high refusal rate. I'll tell you what I attribute that to. It's not only bad decision-making, although that accounts for some of it. It's also because the majority of people who use this type of category don't have someone like me helping them. There are people who are doing it on their own.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That applies to Egypt as well.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The problem with the source country designation is it's a bit of a blunt instrument. By that I mean it doesn't go according to the minority or the situation; it goes according to the whole country. So if they only want to add countries to that where there are mass violations of human rights for significant groups of people, source country may not be the best solution here.