How to check that your immigration consultant is actually licensed

Every week, someone tells us about money paid to an agent who has stopped answering the phone. Sometimes the application was never filed. Sometimes it was filed with invented employment history the applicant never saw. The person who signed it is gone; the misrepresentation finding stays with the applicant for five years.

Checking someone is licensed takes about two minutes. It is worth doing before you pay anyone anything, including us.

What the law actually requires

Under section 91 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, only three kinds of people may represent or advise you for a fee in connection with a Canadian immigration application:

• A lawyer in good standing with a Canadian provincial law society, or a notary of the Chambre des notaires du Québec;
• Another member in good standing of a provincial law society — this captures Ontario-licensed paralegals;
• A member in good standing of the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants — a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant, or RCIC.

That is the entire list. A travel agent is not on it. An education agent is not on it. A relative who "knows the system" is not on it, if they are charging you. Nor is anyone operating overseas who is not one of the three.

Doing this work for a fee without authorisation carries penalties of up to $200,000 and two years' imprisonment. That is how seriously Parliament treats it — and it tells you something about the scale of the harm.

How to check, in two minutes

For a consultant: go to the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants public register at college-ic.ca and search the name or the licence number. You are looking for three things: that the person exists, that the licence is active, and that the name matches the person you are actually dealing with.

For a lawyer: search the directory of the law society in the province they practise in.

Then ask for the licence number in writing before you pay. Anyone legitimate will give it without hesitation — it is on our website, on our letterhead and in the footer of every page of this site. Hesitation is itself the answer.

The designation most people have never heard of

There is a second layer worth understanding, because it decides what a consultant is allowed to do when things go wrong.

Since 1 July 2023, representation before the Immigration and Refugee Board — appeals, admissibility hearings, refugee matters — has been a restricted area of practice. A consultant may only do it if they hold the RCIC-IRB designation. An ordinary RCIC is prohibited from appearing there.

So if your matter might end up at the Board — a sponsorship appeal, a residency obligation appeal, a removal order — the question "do you hold the IRB designation?" is not pedantry. It determines whether the person you have hired can finish the job or will have to hand you to someone else.

One more limit, which is honest to state even though it works against consultants: no consultant may appear at the Federal Court, IRB designation or not. Judicial review is reserved to lawyers. Anyone telling you they will "take it to Federal Court" for you is either using loose language or misleading you.

Warning signs

Some of these are illegal. All of them are reasons to stop.

• A guarantee. Nobody can guarantee an outcome. Officers decide applications, not consultants.
• Asking you to sign blank forms, or refusing to show you the completed application before it is submitted. You are signing a declaration that the contents are true. You must read them.
• Suggesting you overstate experience, invent a job, or use a document that is not yours. This is the single fastest route to a five-year misrepresentation bar — and the bar lands on you, not on them.
• Cash only, no receipt, no written retainer agreement. A licensed consultant must give you a written agreement.
• Urgency about a programme. "This closes next week, pay today" is the oldest line in the industry — and it is now routinely used about programmes that closed years ago.
• Charging you to get your own GCMS notes because "you need a Canadian representative". You do not, and have not since July 2022. You can request your own file notes free, from anywhere.
• Refusing to put the licence number in writing.
• Their name will not appear on the application. A paid representative must be declared to IRCC on form IMM 5476. If someone is doing the work but staying off the paperwork, ask yourself why.

The thing IRCC itself says

IRCC publishes a caution that is worth quoting exactly, because it addresses the most common sales pitch in this business: if anyone tells you you'll have a better chance on your second application because they're representing you, they're not being truthful and are likely looking to take your money.

Representation does not improve your odds by existing. What improves your odds is a properly built application, and an honest assessment of whether you are eligible at all — including when the answer is not yet.

If you have already been caught

It is worth acting rather than hiding from it. Depending on what happened, the options may include withdrawing an application before a decision, responding properly to a procedural fairness letter, correcting the record, or reporting the person to the College. If a misrepresentation finding has already been made, the five-year clock starts from the final determination if you are outside Canada, or from the date a removal order is enforced if you are in Canada — which is a meaningful difference.

Bring the whole story to a licensed representative, including the parts that are embarrassing. We cannot help with the version where nothing went wrong.

Our details, so you can check them

Waymark Immigration is in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Our RCIC is Arshdeep Singh Brar, licence R1034253, holding the RCIC-IRB designation. You can verify that on the College's public register in under a minute, and we would rather you did.