Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. The cases I mentioned where we've reported counsel to a regulator, whether it's the immigration consultant regulator or a law society, are what I would call the more egregious cases. They're the clearest of instances where we feel there's been a brea

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can't give you a precise number there.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What I can tell you is that it is a concern on a regular basis and it's really only the most egregious cases that are brought forward to the regulator. For example, board members use a kind of compensatory mechanism in a hearing room. If they're dealing with a consultant who is n

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can tell you that the board is on the receiving end of this, so from our perspective—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think I've heard words of that nature before.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are a number of self-regulated professions that have a graduated licence. For example, with the Law Society of Upper Canada, paralegals and lawyers are all members of the law society, but paralegals can only do certain things. In other words, there's a restriction on their

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can give you an anecdotal response. The anecdotal response is that from time to time we do have cases, mostly on the removal order side, that involve people who got into trouble because they were represented by consultants who weren't doing their jobs properly. There's quite a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For the immigration appeal division...?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  About 60%, I think, of what we deal with are spousal sponsorship cases. Most of those involve marriages, but they can involve adoptions or the sponsorship of parents or grandparents. About 20% of the cases are removal order cases. Those are people, mostly permanent residents, who

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can provide the committee with the breakdown with respect to lawyers as opposed to consultants. How many are legal aid lawyers is a much more difficult question. I can't answer that, because we don't have information about the means by which lawyers are retained. In other words

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We can slice the data by region and by division as well, and then that breaks it down to lawyers and consultants. We'd be happy to provide that information to the committee.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. The Immigration and Refugee Board reports to Parliament through the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. Through the work of its four divisions—the refugee protection division, the refugee appeal division, the immigration division, and the immigration ap