Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think isolation is a feature of domestic violence that is common across all cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Our shelters are full of anglophone and francophone women who can talk about the experience of being isolated by their abusers, so I don't think it's unique to any p

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Delays in family reunification damage almost everybody. They damage the person in Canada who is wanting to be reunited with her family member. They damage the person abroad who is waiting to be reunited, possibly with children. It is damaging economically, because you have an eco

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I think, if I may say something slightly related to this, because earlier, the prospect of language and the importance of women learning English or French was accentuated, and that's always a good thing. It would be worth this committee studying what the barriers to that migh

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It was my understanding that the minister stated categorically in Parliament that he was not considering the policies you mention, but if he is, and if you are, then let me add that if you want to reduce family reunification, if you want to keep families apart, these are excellen

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't think these are legal terms of art, so I am not going to try to pretend they are, but I think that the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario, for example, has done considerable work to raise awareness around these issues, and I commend their work on it to you. I think the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In my reading of other countries' practices, Ms. Marshall was absolutely correct that many other countries have some form of conditional status, yet in each of those countries the concern about marriages of convenience and marriage fraud has not abated. Nobody has said this has e

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think that's true. I have very little to add. I think there is a choice here of what you care more about. Do you care more about the idea of marriage fraud, or do you care more about abuse of women? If you care about marriage fraud, then my next question is this. Does this co

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'd sure want to know what the result is, if and when those go to the immigration appeal division, rather than to simply rely on the refusal rate.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I want to return to the point that we already extensively screen people from abroad, allegedly to screen out so-called marriages of convenience. So why are we doing it a second time at great expense and difficulty inland, with this conditional sponsorship? Unless there is an ide

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can only say that I don't know a lot about proxy marriages. The country where I do know proxy marriages happen quite a lot is Israel, where couples actually get married by proxy marriage quite frequently because the laws there are limited to religious marriage. I don't know if

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Maybe one thing to consider is this. There is one more point the committee may wish to consider, which is how difficult it can be for some people to come to Canada to marry their spouse in Canada. It can often be difficult to get visitor visas. What you are describing becomes an

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much for this opportunity to address the committee. I'd like to begin by commending Minister Chris Alexander for formally declaring in Parliament yesterday that his government does not have the intention of imposing either language requirements on spouses prior to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It is clearly the case that Canada as a country of immigration has long welcomed people, and enabled and encouraged them to maintain their other citizenship should they choose to do so. Canada has self-interested reasons for doing that, in terms of promotion of trade and global r

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Oh, excuse me. I was only referring to Minister Kenny's response, which you referenced, that it's unfortunate that the citizenship of those who are mononationals cannot be revoked owing to the obligation not to create statelessness. It was that. I interpreted this to mean that we

Citizenship and Immigration committee  When you impose a punishment on one group that you don't impose on another, that's a form of discrimination. It's as simple as that. There is nothing about the group upon whom that special punishment is being imposed that is different in a relevant way. Yes, they're different bec