Applications for Permanent Residence made inside Canada

Immigration consultants' group sparks anger

Law societies argue that CSIC fails to fully protect would-be Canadians from sometimes negligent advice

By Beppi Crosariol
The Globe and Mail (Canada), September 27, 2004; Pg. B14

When the Law Society of Upper Canada issued a plan last week for regulating paralegals in Ontario, it was a major milestone in a 20-year campaign to bring non-lawyers into the sphere of public accountability.

But in the eyes of many lawyers, the plan (which still needs government approval) was only a partial victory.

Conspicuously absent from the guidelines was any mention of one of the largest and most established groups of paralegals -- immigration consultants.

That's because, as of last April, the policing of such individuals was pre-emptively usurped by the federal government through a new and controversial body, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants.

Created at the behest of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, CSIC sets out national rules of conduct for 1,200-plus immigration consultants who have so far signed up as members, as well as prerequisites such as malpractice insurance and contributions to a victim compensation fund.

Although the federal government says the system is working splendidly, the country's provincial and territorial law societies -- which have the statutory right to regulate legal services in Canada -- consider that body an affront to their jurisdiction.

'I call it sea sick, as in a bad boat ride,' says Wendy Danson, chairwoman of the national citizenship and immigration law section of the Canadian Bar Association, referring to the CSIC acronym's pronunciation.

Lawyers argue that the new body fails to fully protect consumers from the sometimes shady or incompetent practices of non-lawyers who provide negligent advice to would-be Canadians. Some lawyers, in fact, resent the mere existence of immigration consultants who compete with them and charge comparable fees but lack their legal training.

The main issue now is the fact the federal government is not permitted by law to punish or curtail the practices of incompetent consultants who refuse to join CSIC -- there are hundreds more who haven't become members -- and who, nonetheless, set up shop and charge money for, say, counselling and preparing immigration documents.

All the government can do is require consultants to be members of CSIC if they want to make representations directly to the federal Citizenship and Immigration Department.

'It's fairly new and . . . fairly toothless. It just doesn't have much going for it right now,' Ms. Danson says.

Legal associations say the model is fundamentally flawed because it lacks the punch to discipline shady operators who may purport to be qualified consultants. Law societies, by contrast, have the legal mandate to punish impostors who try to do the work of lawyers.

'I'm not questioning the motives of CSIC, I'm expressing a concern as to the legality of the arrangement that has been struck between the department and CSIC,' says Malcolm Heins, chief executive officer of the Law Society of Upper Canada.

Ms. Danson, who also is an immigration lawyer with McCuaig Desrochers LLP in Edmonton, says that by providing a link to CSIC on the Citizenship and Immigration website, and by conferring official status to immigration consultants, the government is in effect endorsing their services at the expense of highly trained lawyers.

'I think immigration law is second only to tax law in terms of its complexity,' she says. 'It's clear that consultants can't go into court but they can certainly do a lot of damage before [a case] gets there. And it's unsupervised, that's the problem. There's nobody looking over their shoulder.'

That complaint is shared by Diane Bourque, executive director of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada in Montreal. 'The Canadian government has basically rubber-stamped the qualifications of immigration consultants but lawyers do not receive the same kind of treatment by the government.'

Benjamin Trister, CSIC's chairman and a partner at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Toronto, says the protest is off-base and irrational.

He counters that membership requirements in CSIC are no less stringent than those being proposed for paralegals in Ontario, which largely mirror the rules that govern lawyers. 'Our code of conduct is so similar to the law society's code of conduct that we had to get their permission to use a lot of their text.'

In addition, CSIC members must also be Canadian citizens or permanent residents, pass entrance exams, be covered by errors and omissions insurance and be competent in English or French.

Mr. Trister adds that federal regulation also makes enormous practical sense, particularly given that no province has yet to regulate immigration consultants.

If regulation is left to the provinces, he says, 'there's no guarantee that all the provinces will regulate all the paralegals there, whereas federal regulation in the immigration area ensures that everyone is covered.'

It would also be economically foolish for each province and territory to set up a separate regulatory authority and investigative capacity for what may amount to a few hundred consultants, at most, in each jurisdiction, he says. 'The economies of scale would be shot to hell if a province sticks its foot in this door.'

Besides, without a single, federal website listing all the certified consultants, would-be immigrants would face the confusing task of going province by province to verify whether someone they want to hire is certified in Canada. 'Our response is that provincial regulation of paralegals in a federal area runs counter to consumer protection. It's bad for consumers,' Mr. Trister says.

The other problem with provincial regulation, Mr. Trister says, is that law societies have no jurisdiction over consultants working overseas. By making CSIC membership a prerequisite for dealing with the government, those foreigners will effectively be shut out of the system.

For its part, the government says it's pleased with CSIC's first six months. 'It was created to solve a lot of problems, and it's made great progress in terms of improving consumer protection in the immigration consultancy business,' says Mark Davidson, executive director of the secretariat on regulating immigration consultants, which is part of the national headquarters of Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

But law associations say they will continue to fight the CSIC model and look for ways to bring rogue immigration consultants to accountability. 'Our lobbying efforts with the government will continue on strongly,' Ms. Danson says.