Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sorry; just to clarify, that rigorous test was when the immediate change was made to public service appointments. They initially started testing when they got away from the GICs and started with the public service appointments, and then they retracted it because people were faili

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's something I would need to put more thought into, because it might be worthwhile to have individuals hearing complaints who are familiar with the refugee and immigration process in particular. Again, I've never really thought of the Judicial Council looking into it, so I don'

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's interesting to me that Mr. Aterman's testimony was so emphatic in protecting board members, given that they have a collective agreement and a union that's already representing their interests. Again, it requires a paradigm shift, right? The board needs to start thinking abou

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm assuming they mean some sort of alternative dispute resolution process, and I don't know how relevant, if at all, that sort of process would be in these situations. You don't sit down the decision-maker with a claimant and come to a resolution about how unfair or incompetent

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It would be similar to the process for JPs, which is that individuals are picked and put on a roster. The chairperson would be presented with these individuals before they're approved on the roster, but then we don't think that they should be ranked. I know that this was a situat

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It is absolutely flawed. The chairperson is in an inherent position of conflict. Why would the chairperson admit that somebody under his or her watch did something wrong? As you said, sir, you're a member of the law society. If I were working for somebody, my employer would never

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't know if this has to be done through regulation, but we do need an independent panel of individuals for the hiring process, for CLEs and training, and for complaints, because the management is just not doing its job.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think our colleagues will have more to say on the hiring process, but certainly members should be required to take a substantive test on refugee immigration law and human rights administrative procedures. Again this is rumour, because it happened before I started practising i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This new complaint process just started in December. I think there have only been a handful of complaints filed under the new process, and from what I've heard, none have been referred to an independent external investigator, but again, it's an opaque black box, so I wouldn't kno

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It shouldn't have started with, “This is what we're already probably going to implement. Give us your comments.” That's not really consultation. It's a facade of consultation. If the IRB is going to make these very drastic changes, they need to have a complete discussion with th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the reason, Ms. Kwan, that the IRB doesn't take the results of a complaint and then funnel them back into the training process is that the IRB doesn't want to acknowledge that there is anything wrong with their members. That's really the crux of the problem. If you're g

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's important to remember as well that this is not a regular workplace. The ramification of having somebody who doesn't know how to do their job is having someone removed to a place where they can undergo persecution.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That again is an indication that the IRB doesn't really want to address that there is a problem. There had been many complaints about Cassano in the past. They didn't address that. One of the things that I actually asked the IRB to tell me was how many complaints had been made a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Of course, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would like to add that while these complaints are ongoing.... For example, in what happened with Cassano, it took about 10 months for there to be a final decision. Hearings ongoing with her on which she hadn't made a determination, hearings that had been adjourned for another d