Citizenship and Immigration committee  If you're asking me to talk lawyers out of a job, that's a difficult one for me to answer. However, I can tell you that there is a premise made in regard to lawyers, and we've made submissions that many of the government websites are actually quite negative about representatives

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One of the suggestions in our brief is that you give immigration program managers at visa offices greater resources both to handle client service and to be accountable for client service. If you have someone in that jurisdiction who doesn't understand the status of an application

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Tilson. The Canadian Bar Association's immigration law section in our brief made submissions about two types of issues that we think are really important. One is structural. We don't think that you can deal with client service delivery by improving the IRCC alone,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our brief highlights a number of technical issues that the Canadian Bar Association's immigration law section believes could help. We've put those under the larger umbrella of program improvements that could be made. I think that's what the Government of Canada would like to achi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Relationships of convenience, or a relationship that's formed for immigration purposes, is against the principles and the laws of Canada. The Canadian Bar Association agrees with that. We would never suggest that it be appropriate for people to marry or get into a relationship so

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I've been an immigration lawyer for about 18 years. I've seen it relatively infrequently among my clients. I guess people who come to me want to hire a lawyer, so they're probably not going to come with an illegitimate relationship. I have seen some, and I have one right now, whe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  —that they cannot, and they make a wrong decision, then there is access to appeal, and we need faster access to appeal.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Out of the seven issues in this study being considered, the Canadian Bar Association's number one would be reducing obstacles to entry into Canada for partners and spouses of Canadians through training and process improvements, increased consistency and transparency in decision-m

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think in our brief we said 25,000 parents and grandparents, didn't we? We did say that “more reasonable service levels might reflect 25,000 admissions per year, and processing times not exceeding two years.” We appreciate that there's been some increase. That was the level that

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In our view, the conditional permanent residence was thought to be an easy fix. Before conditional permanent residence was in place.... There are the mechanisms to enforce non-genuine marriages, marriages for immigration purposes. It was clear that there was a lack of resources i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Are you specifically talking about parents and grandparents or new Canadian families?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Of the costs to new Canadian families, the first one that comes to mind is child care. You have $2,500 a month, which is $30,000 a year, for a family to have a caregiver for children so the family can continue to work. There is the cost of having to travel to maintain multiple re

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In terms of reducing backlogs?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We would recommend that the government take an approach that involves enhanced efficiency, and some of the recommendations I've made about clearer standards, communication, and enhanced efficiency. When we make these recommendations about a clearer standard, be it one year or t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We wouldn't have the information available in order to do an analysis of governmental costs and the processing costs to increase levels. We would expect the Government of Canada would be better prepared to do that analysis. I think the comment about increasing the number of imm