A Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration report says that immigration consultants need to be regulated, just as lawyers and other professionals are.
"Right now there are no regulations controlling immigration consultants," said Olivia Chow, New Democratic Party Member of Parliament and member of the Committee.
She participated in drafting the report, which has made nine recommendations.
"The most important recommendation that we have made is the need to license immigration consultants to protect the interest of the stakeholders," she said.
"The committee has recommended, once the immigration consultants' licensing body is established, [that] names of all licensed consultants will appear on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada Web site so that potential immigrants and others could see their names. They should also be able to see the names of immigration consultants, who for unscrupulous practices and not serving the clients properly and ethically, may have been barred from the profession," Chow said.
"Unscrupulous immigration consultants charge huge amounts of money and that could affect the future of families--future because they are not sure whether they can come to Canada or not," she added.
The Standing Committee report has recommended, she said, that "Canadian overseas offices, visa officers there should tell the potential immigrants that they don't have to have a consultant. If they need one they should go to one that's licensed."
The Society of Immigration Consultants was named in the fall of 2003 to regulate immigration consultants as there were complaints of inadequate controls over the industry. The Committee has now recommended that the Canadian government should introduce standalone legislation to re-establish the Society as a non-share capital corporation. Such an Immigration Consultants Society Act should provide for the same types of matters covered by founding statues of provincial law societies, including, but not limited to, functions of the corporation, member licensing and conduct, professional competence, prohibitions and offences, complaints resolution, compensation fund and by-laws.
'Once the regulator is re-established as a corporation under a federal statute, the existing body that was incorporated under the Canada Corporations Act may be wound up,' the report said.
"My office receives complaints regularly against so-called immigration consultants," Chow said. "They take money from people, do very little work and give them wrong advice and basically rip off potential immigrants. There's no control whatsoever on their functioning, and as a result a lot of immigrants lose money. Their immigration cases get completely messed up."
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney will study the recommendations to take further action, she added.