Citizenship and Immigration committee  We don't come to this position lightly at the Canadian Bar Association. It's been over 20 years that we've been comfortable with the idea of giving it a shot with respect to the regulatory bodies for consultants, right? We've had two chances now. We've had two regulatory bodies

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm sorry. It just doesn't work, because our system is such that if you.... We've tried that. Early in my career, I said, “Okay, this person is saying to me that the consultant made the mistake, so can you please rectify this? They've missed the limitation period. Is there any

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, again, I don't think they should be.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't think this kind of thing happens in other areas of law, and there are lots of different lawyers with different experience who will charge different amounts. The issue is about protecting the public, and lawyers aren't likely to work with these ghost consultants. There are

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For what kind of matter?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If a lawyer saw someone who was a live-in caregiver who came to Canada knowing what a live-in caregiver makes and wanted to help that person, they could do it for free. Lots of lawyers do pro bono work. They could also do it for a few thousand dollars. No one is going to charge $

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I get what you're saying.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Can I just answer your question? Immigration lawyers go into this because they care about people. My point is that there is no evidence that immigration lawyers are charging exorbitant fees.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It would depend. I would say it would be maybe $3,000 for a permanent residence application—to do the whole thing including family members back home, maybe in the Philippines, and all of the forms and everything. Around $3,000 would be something you might charge for a live-in car

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I respectfully disagree. I think there are very simple matters that we take on, like extending a work permit.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We can do it for a few hundred dollars. It extends a person's work permit, and it does it in a way that makes sure that it doesn't get returned. When it gets returned, by the time the inland office Vegreville returns it, it could be 90 days later. Now the person, the internationa

Citizenship and Immigration committee  All I'll say on this is, there are times when litigation can cost tens of thousands of dollars in various areas of the law. This is not one of them in terms of immigration lawyers. We know that these are vulnerable people. Immigration lawyers go in there to help people in the com

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If you're talking about ghosts, definitely there needs to be more resources for the RCMP to look at it.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They're going to go after the high-profile cases where someone is using the same address for citizenship applications and pretending that all these people are living there when they're not. No, I don't think that you can just change the model. If you want to have a statutory mo

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I don't think that would work at all. I don't think the self-regulatory model works currently, and I don't think that a statutory model would work either.