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54 www.canadianlawyermag.com FEATURE IMMIGRATION LAW at Cabinet Molina Inc. in Montreal, says the precarious citizenship status, sometimes even caused by the consultant, is what holds back many victims of abuse and misrepresentation from complaining to the ICCRC. "This is very, very common. You' ll have consultants doing wrong to the clients, and the clients are too afraid to come forward, and they're afraid that the consultants will then turn around and call the police and say where they are," she says. "Because they have copies of their passports, and they hold all this information about their family abroad. They're scared." While the government was seeking input from the profession as part of its consultations, Jain prepared a submission in which he says he changed the position of the CBA from the view that consultants could adequately carry out their function if properly regulated to the opinion that lawyers, not consultants, should be representing those undergoing immigration, citizenship or refugee processes. "I just said, you know what? Enough is enough. There's so much societal harm. . . . The reality is that the public has not been protected. The public has been really hosed and taken advantage of," he says. Out of the 2017 report came the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants Act, contained in the federal Liberal government's budget legislation tabled on April 9. The act proposes turning the ICCRC into a new self-regulatory College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants — instituting a licensing regime, code of conduct, complaints and discipline committees and putting the board of directors under the guidance of the minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship. But given the history of fraud and abuse, Greene says, he doesn't see the wisdom in giving the consultants a third chance. "The ethics and professionalism have been non-existent. . . . The government wants to give just a truck full of money to a corrupt organization that cannot govern itself and hope it's going to get better?" he says. Although consultants have lacked an effective oversight framework for the last 17 years, the government has made a long- overdue correction with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants Act, says Dory Jade, CEO of the ICCRC. The new statute "includes all the components of a regulator," he says, including a discipline committee with powers to send cease and desist letters, file injunctions, sue individuals and collaborate with the CBSA, RCMP and other government bodies. There is an appeals process and a "very stringent" code of ethics, he says. And whereas the old regulatory bodies were unable to pursue unauthorized practitioners or ghost consultants outside of Canada, the new regulator will be able to use parliament's extra-territorial powers for enforcement, he says. "Because they are not ghosts at all. We know their addresses. We know where they operate, how they operate. They are known to the government," Jade says. Jade adds that immigration law is not the only practice area that uses non-lawyers. Consultants also give those lacking English proficiency service in their native language and assist with settlement and integration. "Immigration consultants offer access to justice, with a much lower cost," he says. Jain disagrees. He is currently the vice chairman of the immigration law section of the CBA and says the amount of pro bono work done by his bar and the rate at which immigration lawyers offer flat fees to clients mean that the access issue is exaggerated. "Most immigration lawyers make under six figures. Most of us litigate for under five figures. We're the bleeding-heart types that go into this because we really care about people," he says. "The whole thing is framed in terms of access to justice, which is such a joke. Because there's no empirical evidence whatsoever, as they say, that lawyers are inaccessible in this bar. And there is massive evidence that the consultants are overcharging and ripping people off." The government rests desire to use immigration consultants on several faulty assumptions, says Jain. In Mangat, the court was concerned the lawyers at the time were not representative of immigrant communities, didn' t speak the native languages of prospective immigrants and consultants could fill that gap. "That's totally an outdated decision, given the diversity of the bar today," he says. "Immigration consultants offer access to justice, with a much lower cost." Dory Jade, Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council ACCREDITED UNIVERSITY PROGRAM FOR CONSULTANTS A new program at Queen's University Faculty of Law and Université de Sherbrooke will train immigration consultants. Launching in 2021, the universities will be the sole accredited schools training consultants in their respective languages and Queen's expects 500 students per year to take the 66-week, mostly online course.