Finance committee  No, I'm a paralegal.

Finance committee  I'm a former senior immigration officer. I'm duly licensed by the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants. I'm not a lawyer.

Finance committee  Exactly. I specialize in immigration.

Finance committee  No. I never have.

Finance committee  No. In fact, I've been very loyal to the department. I was a loyal employee. I left because I wanted to leave. I wasn't dismissed. I left with two other immigration officers who had given approximately 15 years of their lives to the commission, as we used to call it. Now we use o

Finance committee  I have a particular issue with the words “may” and “shall”. I like the word “shall”. I don't like the word “may”. “May” is very vague. She may do this, she may do that. It's up to her what she wants to do, and that's dangerous.

Finance committee  I would obviously have to find more than the $27 million that's been.... How much is it...? We obviously need to identify those applications that clearly qualify. We do background checks on them, we ensure they're medically fit, and we give them visas. We don't wait three to fi

Finance committee  Again, this is my impression from what I've heard--

Finance committee  That's true, and none of us has a crystal ball. Obviously we can't know now whether the minister will, on every occasion, go to cabinet for their approval. She may believe, in my opinion, that she may not have to go back to cabinet. If she's telling you that on every major issu

Finance committee  Well, the processing times are still unacceptable. I'll give you that. If the statistics show that we're a little bit better than we were two years ago, then that's a positive. I guess where I'm coming from is that on a day-to-day basis I'm dealing with frustrated Canadian citiz

Finance committee  What I'm saying is that today the minister could send out a direction and give family-class reunification a higher priority. She doesn't need these amendments to do it. That's all I'm saying. At the same time, we're hearing the minister say that last year we brought in 430,000,

Finance committee  When I referred to the term “red herring”, I meant to suggest there was never any need to allow it to get to this particular stage. My suspicious side suggests this is now being used to ram through these amendments. That's my personal opinion. I'm not speaking on behalf of any pa

Finance committee  Definitely, yes.

Finance committee  There will be winners and there will be losers. What I'm afraid of is that there might be some winners on the backs of others who would have been winners in the past. We should do everything we can, obviously, to better the system. I think the 1% or 2% you referred to is really

Finance committee  Unfortunately, I don't see it. I'm not sure if the minister will go down that road. I don't see it at this juncture. It's sad to say—and we hear this as a joke—that we have some of the world's best-educated taxi fleets in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. It shows where we are ri