Citizenship and Immigration committee  It hasn't. Whether or not this provision is constitutionally sound has not gone before the Supreme Court of Canada. The issue that went before the Supreme Court of Canada, which was in the Hilewitz decision, had to do with whether or not people were having what could be consider

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have any suggestions, actually. I think that the law discriminates, and the numbers that have been provided as a justification are arbitrary and inaccurate. It appears even that senior officials are not aware of some of the things that are being done by decision-makers.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I may be speaking out of turn, but I think he probably can speak for all of us.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I've already said, I think that the law discriminates when it acts to refuse somebody with a disability from being eligible to immigrate to Canada. I think there's a serious problem with discretionary waivers or exceptions to overcome that problem. Also, Mr. Battista made refe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's part of the problem with this. Those cases that get a certain public profile.... There is the ability for IRCC to resolve those cases on humanitarian grounds, but that simply can't be an acceptable answer to a problem with the law. It is entirely arbitrary whose case gets

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For all the Mercedeses and the outcomes of their cases, there are however many other cases of people who don't yet have—or may never have—a solution. You've heard what the law does to people. You have to think about that in determining whether there is any way it can be said that

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, it doesn't, if you look at the way the law functions. As you've heard now in a number of different circumstances, the law is discriminatory. It's not a matter of saying that we shouldn't discriminate only against this person, because there are situations, such as Mercedes', i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The important thing is that case was literally on the cusp of the law being amended. It was in relation to a spouse, and as you know, spouses are not subject any longer to the excessive demand provision, so in that case it clearly had an influence on the judge. By the time the de

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My name is Toni Schweitzer. I'm one of the lawyers at the Parkdale legal clinic in Toronto, and we were able to work with Mercedes. She came to us almost on the cusp of her and her family being ultimately refused. We were able to work with her and, as you have heard, her case was

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I now forget your first question. I'm sorry.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not sure I could give you an estimate off the top of my head. It's true that we see the complicated cases. Maybe there are straightforward cases that move quickly, but we have cases in our office in which the person in Canada becomes a citizen before their family gets here.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I have to say that in the immigrant communities I deal with, largely, in the work I do at Parkdale, we don't have a huge issue with regulation 117(9)(d). I know there are many cases that are caught by it. The problem, as has already been discussed, is that those cases, then, ar

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. Not only do they not necessarily understand, but they are, on occasion, getting bad advice too, from people who say, “If you're not planning on bringing them now, don't worry. Leave them off. You can deal with them later”. We hear stories like that all the time. The

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll answer the second question first. I don't know whether there are visa posts that are doing it differently. We work largely with clients whose families are in India and Nepal, so we're dealing with the Canadian high commission in New Delhi. Their practice, as I said, is to s

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would agree with what was said earlier today. The paragraph can operate very unfairly without any ability to assess why somebody may have not indicated a child on their forms, and it does operate then to permanently bar a sponsorship, and the only option is a humanitarian appli