OTTAWA-
The House of Commons immigration committee has called an urgent meeting next week to discuss allegations that the department and the former minister misled a federal judge in a trademark infringement case. – an allegation that former immigration minister Marco Mendicino has categorically denied.
The allegations stem from the creation of a new college to regulate immigration consultants in 2020.
An existing company called the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council sued the government in Federal Court to try to prevent it from using a similar name: the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants.
On the day of the hearing, the Privy Council posted an order on its website stating that the law establishing the college had come into force.
This information was also forwarded to the Federal Court.
The government issued a press release a few days later, in which Mendicino stated that the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants Act had indeed taken effect.
“With today’s announcement, the Minister is delivering on his tenure commitment to advance the full implementation of the new professional governance regime for immigration and citizenship consultants,” the statement read. release on Nov. 26, 2020, according to a cached version curated by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
In fact, the legislation only came into effect on December 9, 2020. The press release was corrected several days after it was published.
Mendicino communications director Alex Cohen said Sunday the discrepancy was the result of human error.
Department officials confused the date the governor general signed the executive order with the day it was to take effect, Cohen said in a statement. When the problem was discovered, it was reported to the courts.
On October 4, independent media outlet Blacklock’s Reporter published an article titled “Minister Cancels Document,” citing internal emails obtained through Freedom of Information and Privacy (ATIP) legislation.
The outlet reported that the emails revealed “an apparent attempt to mislead a federal judge” and that Mendicino’s office did not respond to Blacklock’s request for comment.
The report alarmed NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan enough that she wrote to the chairman of the immigration committee last week to request an emergency meeting to discuss the “worrying allegations “.
“It is never acceptable for documents to be altered or falsified to mislead the courts,” Kwan said in an interview on Sunday. “We don’t know exactly what happened here and so it’s important for us to get to the bottom of it.”
A meeting has since been scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, at which MPs are expected to debate whether or not to launch a full-scale investigation into the allegations.
“This report is false,” Cohen said in his statement. “This is completely false and totally unsupported by the ATIP in question.”
He denied that the documents were “backdated” and said Mendicino and his office were not involved.
Mendicino’s office provided the 730-page package of emails to The Canadian Press, which shows considerable back-and-forth between department officials and communications staff sharing the incorrect effective date of the legislation.
The week after the press release was issued, the exchanges show that the department’s legal team pointed out the error, and on December 1, 2020, department officials discussed the need for “corrective action.”
Cohen says the government notified the Federal Court of the matter on Dec. 9, 2020 — more than a week before the court decided whether or not to force the government to temporarily stop using the college’s name.
In her December 24, 2020 decision, Judge Janet Fuhrer indicated the correct dates before siding with plaintiffs in the trademark infringement case and issuing an injunction.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on October 9, 2022.