Fourth Round of Questions from the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

Mr. Tabarra:	Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be splitting my time with my colleagues and Mr. Sarai. My question is for both of you. You mentioned, Mr. Sharma, in your opening statements that anyone over 18 can pass an exam. An exam consists of six months and 320 hours, and they can represent a lot of their clients. My question to both of you is in regards to the UK system, how there's a tier certification that has seven levels of advanced services that Immigration Consultants can give.
	Sorry Mr. Waldman, you mentioned also that a minimum standard of education, so if you can just elaborate on maybe how we can learn from the UK system and how we can get a certain of education and certification for consultants to have in order to perform their services properly and better service to their clients.
Mr.  Waldman:	Yeah. As I said, I think that ICCRC should be doing it but if they're not, the government can put into the regulations minimum standards and they could say, "If a consultant ... In order to be a member of the ICCRC and to provide these services, the consultant must have this education in these areas and this number of minimum hours, and pass an exam. If the consultant wishes to do more complex works, like to a detention review, in addition he must study these following subjects and pass a second qualifying exam. If a consultant wishes to represent someone at the Refugee Board, a Refugee claim, then he has to have ..." because each one of these areas, there's different information, there's different skills that needs to be required.
	What's happening now is you pass the minimum threshold and you can do everything. That's not acceptable, so I think that what we need to do is to match the service with the minimum educational requirements. We can do that by insisting in the regulations that certain minimal thresholds are met before a person gets a license.
Raj Sharma:	Look, right now I'm not saying that the current framework is akin to walking and chewing gum. The current framework probably allows a consultant to do transactional level work, application level work. To get to that next tier, what we really need is when we talk about 320 hours, for example, I did an entire course on legal research when I went to law school. To get to that level, that next level, we would need substantive legal courses in legal research, tribunal process and procedure, Canadian criminal law, administrative principles, oral and written advocacy and probably conflicts of law.
	That's just off the top of my head, but it's got to be well beyond six months. If the paralegals are at two years, it would probably take about two years of substantive legal education to get to the point of tribunal representation or significant direct related experience.
Mr. Tabarra:	[inaudible 00:41:19] my remaining time.
Randeep Sarai:	Thank you. In the last few weeks, we've been watching several witnesses and I've identified two problems that we have. We have one problem is competency which you've spoken about, both of you, today. That's more to do with IRB hearings, tribunals, appeals, divisions, and for that, I think increased to a level of education, increased training is probably the answer. The second problem that we have is fraudulent dealings, just charging 10,000, 20, 30,000 for LMIA's to say you're going to get a job to bring somebody in.
	Those type of things are the ones that concerns me the absolute most. The problem we have is ICCRC even in its second formation as it is now, it doesn't seem there is a problem. It doesn't seem that any additional rules or regulations, and we have had them here, are needed or required. So the self-regulatory body model for them does not seem to work. What are your recommendations to prevent fraudulent practices, i.e. buying, selling LMIA's, et cetera in this area, and how do you see a model that would work, or effectively work, similar to the Law Society for lawyers?
	A lot of times you get a complaint, it brings a fear in a lawyer's mind or at least a high level of concern and therefore, the fraudulent practice is levels amongst lawyers is very, very, very, very low. What we're seeing here and what the witnesses we've seen here is that it's very, very high in ICCRC, so how do you two recommend, I'll start with Mr. Sharma, to bridge that gap?
Raj Sharma:	Well, I think you have a hold on a lawyer when there's a disciplinary proceeding because to be a lawyer is a significant part of your identity. If the Law Society intervenes, there's that fear, that anxiety, and the public shaming or the risk of losing that license, and that's significant. Nobody grows up dreaming to become an Immigration Consultant. The loss of that calling or that profession is, I think, less of a hold for positive behavior.
	In terms of the ICCRC regulation, I'll give you an example. I had someone, she hired a licensed Immigration Consultant. Applications in Hong Kong for her sister, and the application is there for years and years and years. The consultant said, "Well, look. It's delayed because Hong Kong, [inaudible 00:44:04], is asking for updated ELTS results." Ultimately, it was rejected. Then she comes to me. In fact, the client had done an Access to Information request, and she obtained information, the notes seemed to suggest that this application was denied six years ago by Hong Kong.
	I emailed Hong Kong and I said, "Here's this email. Here's the [inaudible 00:44:26] response. Can you tell me whether your office sent this email requesting further language proficiency?" Hong Kong responded within three days, said, "Mr. Sharma, we have never sent that email. This file was closed six years ago." I then take that and I send that to the ICCRC. I get a call from investigator and the investigator, basically it was like he was just incredibly speculative. He was like, "Well, you can't prove that the consultant did this. It could be someone on his staff."
	I'm like, "Of course I can't prove that," but you would have to take this to the next level. This was sort of my impression of the ICCRC. Final point, on the LMIA, LMIA's are going to be 15, 20 grand as long as you can get [inaudible 00:45:12]. Take the LMIA's [crosstalk 00:45:15]-