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Members of Congress on the Immigration and Citizenship Commission voted Wednesday not to open an investigation into allegations that then-Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino’s department backtracked government documents in 2020.
“I think it looks like a waste of time,” Bloc Quebec MP Alexis Brunel Duceppe said at an immigration committee meeting on Oct. 12.
The committee voted 6 to 5 against a motion to open an investigation into “potential obstruction of justice allegations” against the Immigration Department in Mendicino in November 2020.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, which obtained internal emails through the Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) Act, a former division of Mendicino told a federal judge hearing a trademark infringement lawsuit that the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants Act” was believed to have come into force. November 20th Instead of the actual date that comes into effect on December 9th.
The lawsuit for trademark infringement arose when a private British Columbia firm called “Immigration Consultants for the Canadian Regulatory Council” took the federal government to court over the name of the “Immigration and Citizenship Consultants Act”, claimed to be already owned and trademarked.
On November 20, 2020, Crown attorneys attended a federal injunction against a trademark infringement lawsuit. On the same day, the Privy Council Secretariat publicly declared on its website that the law was already in force, and the same information was passed on to the Federal Court.
Six days later, Mendicino announced at a press conference that the law had come into force.
Both Blacklock’s and The Canadian Press reported that Mendicino declined to comment on allegations that the backdating was intentional.
“There is no fault here”
At a meeting of the Immigration Commission on October 12, MPs said staff at the Mendicino Immigration Service had made a “well-meaning” mistake in backdating the documents.
“There is no public servant fault here,” said Samir Zuberi, a liberal lawmaker. “They tried their best and worked as hard as they could.”
Deputy Immigration Minister Christian Foxx sent a letter to the commission ahead of its Oct. 12 meeting, in which she said the past-dated documents were the result of “human error.”
As read by Commission Chair Salma Zahid, Chairman Fox said, “Once the effective date error was discovered, all appropriate steps were taken to correct it.
“It is clear to me that this is a human error by a civil servant,” said liberal MP Shafkat Ali, adding, “I think it is a waste of our resources and time.”
Conservative MPs Garnett Genuis and Brad Redekopp advocated an investigation into the allegations, with Genuis saying the allegations clearly had “several different issues” and needed to be investigated further.
“I’m not here to articulate what happened or what didn’t. I think that’s why we filed the study motion,” said Genuis. rice field.
Redekop added that it would be necessary to question whether the lawyers were “directed by someone in the cabinet to say things that haven’t actually happened yet.”
“Government representatives came to this committee meeting and read the email and said, ‘There’s nothing here. Everything’s fine. Let’s go ahead and do something else,'” he said.
“For me, this is not a sufficient way to study this issue.”
Canadian Press contributed to this report.
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Peter Wilson is a reporter based in Ontario, Canada.
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