Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't think the system is working as well as it could. One of the barriers to integration—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Once again, I'm not talking about the number. In fact, if you read our submission, you'll see that we actually do not talk about the number. We're just talking about the mix. We don't have a position on the overall number. We're just talking about the mix within the overall numbe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Family reunification is the pillar of our immigration policy and serves to make Canada a competitive destination for high-skilled immigrants. However, family class intake levels have been shrinking over the last two decades. Changes in the laws have also made family reunification

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My name is Avvy Go, and I'm the clinic director of the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. With me is Jin Chien, who is our staff lawyer. We will be co-presenting this afternoon. We are a community-based organization that provides free legal services to low-income members

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I said, because of the way the system works against the clients who come forward and the fact there is no incentive because they get penalized, you first of all have to deal with that issue so they at least don't get penalized if they become a victim of an unethical or incompe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As a lawyer—I'm a bencher at the law society; I can speak as bencher—I think it's a difficult question. I think it would be a challenge to regulate fees among licensed practitioners.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One simple way of resolving that is to add the word “intent”. If intent were part of the misrepresentation test, then it would require intent on the part of the applicant, and then you could go after the consultant if you wanted to.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Of course, we are proposing a regulation, but that's not sufficient, as I tried to explain in my paper as well, because there is no incentive for people to complain about a consultant when you get penalized for hiring the wrong person. So I think the government has to look at t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  But we know that they have also stopped processing all of the applications that come from the same ghost consultant in China.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. My name is Avvy Go. I am the current director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, a non-profit organization serving low-income members of the Chinese and Southeast Asian communities. Thank you to the committee for giving me the opportunity

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Get rid of the minimum income requirement.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I referred to the CIC's own evaluation report. It was released in February 2014. It's called the “Evaluation of the Family Reunification Program”. It actually looks at a cohort of sponsored immigrants, both spouse and parents and grandparents, over a time period. Some of the stat

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would pick that as our top choice as well, and in fact, some of the studies included in our submission show that racialized communities are less likely to be in poverty if you combine the family income. That means if the family has more than one generation, like the parents and

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would say that half of the clients who come to us with a CPR question, even though they are abused by their spouse, would not want us to apply for exemption. I've been telling them that hopefully the government will change the rule. I cannot think of any interim measure, to be