Lawyers, immigration consultants and the 33 year jurisdictional war

This paper examines the 33 year-long jurisdictional dispute between immigration lawyers and immigration consultants over the right to practice immigration law in Canada. Immigration consultants began to play a role in the immigration law field of practice in the 1980s. Their entry into this field of practice has not gone unnoticed by immigration lawyers. The paper focuses on two moments in this jurisdictional dispute; the events surrounding the Supreme Courts' 2001 decision in the case of the Law Society of British Columbia v Mangat and the 2017 hearings of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Using an ecological framework to understanding the professions, and professional boundary disputes, this paper examines the reasons why the profession of law has not been able to exert monopolistic closure and prevent immigration consultants impinging on one of their traditional fields of practice. Part of the explanation, I suggest, is that immigration lawyers did not speak with one voice about immigration consultants at the 2017 Standing Committee hearings. The Canadian Bar Association's preferred settlement outcome was for the state to prevent immigration consultants from practicing immigration law. Other lawyers who appeared before the Committee advocated a boundary blurring outcome that would allow immigration consultants to practice immigration law, albeit under somewhat more restricted conditions than were then in place. The state rejected a 'full and final settlement' in favor of lawyers and eventually adopted a boundary 'blurring settlement' outcome to this jurisdictional dispute.