Citizenship and Immigration committee  From our experience, there are two windows that we missed. I think my colleague Siran Nahabedian has touched upon that. The two windows are before they come here and after they come here. I have to completely agree with her that in many cases, those two windows are completely mis

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't want to confuse forced marriages with abusive marriages. There are two distinct categories. One category is where the marriage is void or voidable ab initio because it was performed without consent. This will be a pure forced marriage. The risk is that if she comes forwa

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My Christmas list says please give the funding back to the agencies from where the funding was taken away. That's the big ticket item I can ask for, but the reason I say that is that my legal clinic is receiving a lot more questions around settlement from the women facing abuse,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In terms of the two topics of concern, there are a lot of people who confuse them. The way we explain it is that it's an end of a spectrum; one side is arranged marriage and one side is forced marriage. Sometimes there might be an overlap. A situation might start where a young pe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I said in my submission, I think the key is the exception to the rule that is there right now for the condition of permanent resident. That has to be expanded explicitly for victims or survivors of forced marriages. That's number one. Number two is that, in case a person actua

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Most definitely. There are some European countries including the U.K. that have some good practices. But I say that with a word of caution because some of those jurisdictions have also criminalized forced marriages. That is not necessarily the route that Canada can actually affor

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. One reason is the lack of knowledge and the second, as I said in my submissions—again I refer back to my notes—is the families actually hold them at ransom saying that they will actually get them deported. That's the language used, and it has only become more serious

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Currently there can be a breakdown of the relationship and they are expected to give a stack of documentation of cohabitation, experience of abuse, how the abuse was experienced. “How did you experience this abuse? If there was no reporting, who did you report to?” We basically h

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The service provider in the report is meant for service provision at all different levels: Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the CBSA, the consular officers through the department of foreign affairs and trade, and at the justice level from our different police officers. For t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Currently what happens with the situation of a forced marriage, especially in the cases of repatriation where clients are stuck abroad, or in a situation where a client contacts the clinic in a sponsorship situation and says that they are being sponsored to Canada but this is a f

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair and honourable members, I thank you for the invitation to appear before committee today for the study on how to strengthen the integrity of the immigration spousal sponsorship program. My notes are very long, but I'll try to keep this within the eight minut