Marco Mendicino arrives at a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 6.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The House of Commons committee on immigration has called an urgent meeting to study allegations that the department misled a federal judge during a trademark infringement case, which former immigration minister Marco Mendicino is categorically denying.
The allegations stem from the creation of a new college to regulate immigration consultants in 2020.
An existing firm called the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council took the government to federal court over use of a similar name: College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants.
On the day of the court hearing, the Privy Council published an order on its website declaring the legislation to establish the college had come into force.
The government issued press release a few days later, quoting Mendicino, declaring that the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants Act had come into force – though it wouldn’t actually come into force for another two weeks.
Mendicino’s director of communications, Alex Cohen, says the discrepancy was the result of human error among department officials and that the court was informed when the error was discovered.