Citizenship and Immigration committee  Under the current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, if one of the members of the family is inadmissible, then the entire family is inadmissible. This happens all the time. The most frequent scenario we see is somebody sponsoring their parents and a younger brother, and the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. The issue you're being asked to study is medical inadmissibility, and under the immigration and refugee protection law there are two grounds upon which—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. There are two grounds of inadmissibility under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. One is danger to the public, which really doesn't arise very often. I see cases of people who have tuberculosis. If it's active, they have to get treated before they come to Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I've seen organizations express concerns to me about that, so I think it might be an issue. I think it would be good to clarify, but I think you have to be careful as to how you define the organizations that you're going to authorize to assist people with filling out forms. I thi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think there would be some upfront expense for sure and then there would be an ongoing expense of administering the consultants. I would think it would run into the millions of dollars. It wouldn't be just a few hundred thousand dollars to run it because there is a large number

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's a good idea. I think the government looked at this before, when the ICCRC was created. I recall some discussions along those lines. The problem is that there are a lot of provincial law societies that don't seem to be interested in regulating paralegals. You would ha

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Perhaps I could provide an answer. I think there are only two options really. I can sense a huge dissatisfaction about ICCRC and its ineffectiveness in terms of properly policing the consultant profession. The first option is to change the model and to use a model that is not

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I've said, I think that ICCRC should be doing it, but if they're not, the government could put into the regulations minimum standards. They could say that in order to be a member of the ICCRC and to provide these services, the consultant must have this education in these areas

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In terms of the ghost consultants, I think it's very difficult to deal with them because we have no way of establishing that they're doing their job or what they're doing. I agree with Mr. Sharma when he said education of the community is crucial. I think more robust enforcement

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I hear what Mr. Sharma's saying, and I agree that the regulatory model.... This is now the second incarnation of a self-regulatory regime, and both of them have not, I believe, really been effective in regulating consultants. We need to look at other alternatives, but any alterna

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, if I understood it correctly. I think that there should be two levels of consultants, ones who are authorized to do processing, and they would need a lower level of education and a lower level of licensing, and then I think the legislation should authorize consultants to app

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What could be done, for example.... The ICCRC should be doing this, but if they are failing to do it, what I'm suggesting to you is that you could put into the regulations, which authorize the ICCRC to be the supervisory body for consultants, requirements that they do their job,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Another possibility is to have a system of tariffs, but that's more difficult because we have such a broad disparity in terms of what people charge and the complexity, but there has to be an ability to tax an account. Lawyers are cognizant of that. I've taxed lawyers' accounts an

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the way to approach this would be to ensure that in order to be a processing consultant you would need to meet certain minimal requirements in your studies. If you want, in addition to that, to be a consultant who appears before a tribunal, you would have to meet other st

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act prohibits anyone who isn't licensed from providing paid legal services in the immigration context. The law already has in place provisions that would ensure that people who are acting as ghost consultants could be brought to prosecution,