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House Hansard - 213

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 14, 2023 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 213 - Jun/15/23
Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)
  • Jun/15/23 12:00:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight about a grave problem involving our immigration system and an injustice done to a number of well-meaning students who came to this country with the best of intentions. They were victims of fraud, and they are now being revictimized by the Liberal government. I want to start tonight by recognizing the leadership of the Ontario Gurdwaras Committee and my friends at the Malton Gurdwara in particular. They brought this issue to my attention and helped facilitate interactions for me with a number of the students who were affected by this issue. I know that many people in the Sikh community and other communities have been speaking out about this, but I wanted to provide that particular recognition because it was through leadership that I became aware of this issue, met some of the students affected and was able to support this advocacy in the House as well. What happened in these cases that we are talking about is that students were given fake acceptance letters to real colleges here in Canada by an unscrupulous consultant in India. Those students thought they had received real acceptance letters. They provided those fake acceptance letters to Canadian immigration. For whatever reason, Canadian immigration failed to detect this fraud. They did not verify with the colleges, I suspect. They issued real visas based on fake acceptance letters. Then these students came to Canada. When they got to Canada, the students were told there was a mix-up; the school was full. However, the students knew that, as a condition of their visa, they had to go to school right away. The consultants then offered them another opportunity with a smaller college that was less well-known, saying they could study there instead. These students came to Canada, and they were duped through no fault of their own. They put a lot of money into being able to come to Canada. In many cases, these were poor families that would have sacrificed enormously to allow a member of their family to come to Canada and have this opportunity. The students came here, and they studied; in many cases, they got work permits. Then, just as they were applying for permanent residency, somehow, the government found what had in fact been the government's own error. The government was able to look back and say, “Oh, actually, we screwed up. We gave you real visas on the basis of fake acceptance letters.” The students have been threatened with deportation. We have seen a number of instances of stays of deportation. Very clearly, if we look at the timelines, this has only happened following the public advocacy of the opposition. Great promises have been made by the minister and others, saying that they would treat these folks fairly. They should not worry. They are going to do it on a case-by-case basis, and so forth. The reality is that those commitments were only made in response to heightening pressure from the community, engaging with the Conservative opposition. In fact, we put forward motions to study this at committee, and these motions were repeatedly voted down by the Liberals and the NDP. However, from what I understand now, the committee is finally able to move forward on this. There is a question of the fairness to these students, but there is also a fundamental question of the integrity of our immigration system. How did this screw-up happen? Let us make sure these students are taken care of, but let us also address how such a massive screw-up took place. Somebody could simply photoshop fake acceptance letters, which should be a pretty easy thing to do, and was able to fool immigration, potentially hundreds of times. I would like an answer to that.
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