Sonia is an immigration consultant who operates from Burlington, Ontario. She holds the L3, RCIC-IRB Class of license with the College and is authorized to practice before the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada which is the federal tribunal hearing and deciding immigration matters. Sonia is a solo practitioner and does not employ any assistants.

On April 4th, Sonia was approached by Mariam to assist her with an appeal hearing before the Immigration Appeal Division regarding the refusal of her application to sponsor her mother under the Parent and Grandparent Program (PGP). The grounds for the refusal were Mariam's inability to meet the Minimum Necessary Income (MNI) which is an eligibility requirement in such applications.

The deadline to submit the Notice of Appeal is 30 days and Sonia acted on the matter promptly and was able to file the Notice of Appeal on April 23. This is also in part because Sonia had a scheduled vacation leaving on April 30, for a period of 10 days, and wanted to get the appeal out of the way before leaving.

On April 28, Sonia received correspondence from the IAD acknowledging receipt of the Notice of Appeal and providing the IAD case file number. Sonia was also asked to submit new financial information of the sponsor which is relevant to the appeal by May 20.

Sonia was in a rush as she had nothing prepared for her trip and left the office early that dayand figured she was going to need the next day for some shopping as well. She did not inform Mariam before leaving on the vacation of the request and deadline from the IAD to provide updated financial information on the appeal. Such information includes a Notice of Assessment (NOA) for the recent three taxation years, pay slips, and job letters for Mariam and her spouse who is a co-signer in the application.

When Sonia returned from vacation on May 10, she was overwhelmed with correspondence, emails, calls, and other urgent matters to attend to and was not able to contact and discuss the matter with Mariam to advise her of the required documents for the appeal. This went on for another day until things finally calmed down and Sonia was able to send Mariam an email on May 12 asking her to gather the required documents and make an appointment as soon as possible. She did not hear back from Mariam. Sonia was starting to wonder whether she should contact the Board and ask for an extension of time.

Sonia decided to send another email the next day and since she was getting no response, she also called Mariam's cellphone. Mariam answered the phone and during the talk, she mentionedthat due to a health issue with her in-laws, she and her spouse were in Moncton, New Brunswick. They had left home on May 8 and would return back on May 17. Mariam also mentioned that they have most of the documents at home and will put them together for Sonia and were going to ask for new employment letters from the employers which they were hoping they would get in a day or two.

On return, Mariam informed Sonia that she and her spouse would collect the letters of employment from their respective employers early in the morning ofMay 20 and asked to schedule the appointment with Sonia at 1:00 pm. Sonia cleared her schedule for the day so she could focus solely on this matter as May 20 was the last day to make the submission.

Mariam arrived on time and presented the gathered documents to Sonia. She needed time to process them and ensure that nothing was missing. Sonia also had to page number and put the documents in order as well as prepare a table of contents for the submission. By 3:45 pm Sonia scanned the documents and was ready to make the submission to the Board. She prepared the email with the submission to be sent to both, the IAD and Minister's Counsel. After clicking sent from her Outlook email, she noticed that the email was not going through and was still in the outbox.

Sonia was anxious and tried everything possible to send the email, to no avail. Later in the evening, she saw on the news that there was a major email network outage in large areas without internet. As a result, the deadline was missed.

Question:

Identify five key provisions of theCode of Professional Conduct (https://college-ic.ca/ICCRC/Assets/Documents/Protecting%20the%20Public/Code-of-Professional-Conduct/PC_Code%20Guide-EN.pdf) that most directly apply to this scenario, and which Sonia breached. Analyze each of the provisions identified in sufficient detail to show your understanding of the provision, and how it applies to Sonia.

Next, assume you were the RCIC-IRB who received the email from IAD about the additional documents. What specific steps should you have taken (after receipt of this letter)to ensure you did not breach any provisions of theCode? Your explanation of the course of action you would take should demonstrate an awareness of the fact that unexpected events can happen.

Note:

Your answer should illustrate your thought process in a sufficient manner to allow your instructor to gauge how prepared you are to meet your client service obligations when receiving unexpected requests from the Immigration authorities.

Please use following cade of conduct for answers

Note: College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, "Code of Professional Conduct for College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultant Licensees - Interpretation Guide" (last modified 27 October 2022), online (pdf): CICC.