Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I'll dive straight into the issues. Firstly, it's our position—and we support Mr. Green's eloquent arguments on this—that an overly rigid application of the physical residency test would leave otherwise deserving applicants unfairly barred from citizenship. We see the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would just add that as a matter of principle, you're always questioning the significance of the consequences of taking away these rights. If those consequences are really material—and I would argue, in the case of citizenship as a meta-right, that they are really fundamental to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Right. I would quickly add to my colleague's submissions that it's a seductive notion that they're criminals, they're bad people, and we want to punish them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We want to use all sorts of avenues to punish them, but it's a slippery slope, because we have a good criminal justice system here. It has procedural safeguards. When you put the criminal punishment on top of the immigration or citizenship punishment, you violate a lot of those p

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. Over the past few years we've seen more than a 500% increase in the citizenship processing fee. The justification, of course, is that it will put money into the system to cover processing costs, so it's a money issue. But there are significant long-term problems with that.

Human Resources committee  Thanks for that.

Human Resources committee  I thank the chair and the committee members for giving me an opportunity to speak here with you today. My name is Vincent Wong. I'm a staff lawyer at the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. We're a not-for profit community legal clinic that serves low income,

Human Resources committee  I think the tip line system is part of the tool box that we can use, but, of course, at the end of the day it is of little benefit for the actual migrant worker. Let's say if you're a migrant worker and you're being abused or your employer is not doing something right, you call t

Human Resources committee  We're doing a lot of good things. I think we've identified the problem and we're trying to figure out what's the best model to address some of those problems. I would say that because of the particularly marginalized position that a lot of these migrant workers come to vis-à-vis

Human Resources committee  Of course, it depends on what sort of complaint it is. There are some occupational health and safety complaints, housing complaints, and employment standards. I do employment standards mostly, so I'm most familiar with those. I would say that the average case, at the fastest, ta

Human Resources committee  Yes, before some resolution happens.

Human Resources committee  What we're seeing now is that when a work permit is specifically tied to, let's say, a particular job at employer X—again, this is not the case with all employers—it creates a situation where the employer knows that whatever happens, if this person is no longer working at this jo

Human Resources committee  I'm aware of some of the inspection deficiencies that have been brought forth on the record by previous witnesses. Obviously, that is a major concern—again, going back to first principles—because of the significant power imbalances between temporary foreign workers who do not hav

Human Resources committee  I'll quickly address that. Yes, I do think that the caps on permanent residency for those programs do contribute, because if this is the whole pie, let's say 5% can apply for PR, what happens to the 95%? They're stuck in temporary status limbo. These are all created by us as a s

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Avvy. I'd like to focus my submission on three points. The first is with respect to conditional permanent residency. As expected, and as we see at the clinic, the mandatory imposition of a two-year permanent residency condition that a sponsored person live with thei