Citizenship and Immigration committee  I could give a personal account. I represented a client once during the time when the age was going to be lowered to under 19, and we were frantically putting together her application for that, because her son simply fell into this arbitrary number of “over 19”. It neglects to co

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I definitely think they do make a huge contribution to Canadian culture and society. One of the misconceptions is that they are a drain on our system, but I think that's ignoring the contributions they make within families either through child care or through supporting fami

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, exactly. In my mind, this is the only way to remedy the problem of 117(9)(d). Effectively, it is an exclusion provision, and it automatically applies, regardless of the reason and regardless of whether the family member is a genuine family member, which I think is behind the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Basically, the typical way that this could happen is if, for whatever reason, they don't list, for example, a child on their application form, regardless of the kind of immigration stream or category that the person is coming under. It could be for some of the reasons that I spok

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's hard to say. In our study, we noted that there were a number of cases where people failed to even pursue alternate remedies or H and C remedies, for example. This is because they feared that they could receive punishment or repercussions as a result of losing their status fo

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll just add two other things. Other than 117(9)(d), the two other issues that I didn't have time to talk about are the definition of biological child and the use of DNA to test this. There needs to be a greater understanding, given technology and our understanding of families t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I provided five different categories. For example, under the category of “misunderstanding”, an applicant thought that children who were not in her custody didn't need to be listed, when that is obviously not the case. The second category is “failure to update an applicati

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think there is a simple way to deal with this. It's a very harsh tool that's being used right now. This is in our research, and I provided in my written submissions links to two research papers that I, along with some others, have written. It's very clear that the problem of fr

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for inviting me. I'm here to talk to you about one provision in the regulations and particularly section 117(9)(d). This provision defines who is not in the family class and therefore persons who are not eligible to be sponsored by a permanent resident or a citizen of C

Human Resources committee  I think it doesn't answer all of the issues that could arise between a potential employer and a migrant worker. You never know what's going to happen behind closed doors. I think there are two important things to highlight. First, migrant workers are not necessarily informed or

Human Resources committee  This may be a radical thought for the committee, and I might have been a little shy in answering Member Tassi's question, but I actually think that many of the jobs that are here are durable and endurable. We will need people to fill these jobs, as my colleagues have said. I thin

Human Resources committee  Would you like to go first?

Human Resources committee  There are a lot of different models that can be used. At the outset, I think the timelines right now leading to permanent residency are quite lengthy, and some of these people are waiting for years to even submit an application. As you know, sometimes submitting an application ca

Human Resources committee  In my view, the timelines could be developed according to the kind of work they're doing. I understand that there are concerns with regard to persons staying within Canada, staying within the line of work that they will be doing, and things like that. I think the timing should be

Human Resources committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Jamie Liew. I'm an immigration and refugee lawyer and a professor of law at the University of Ottawa. My presentation to you today will be shared with Pinky Pagl