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‘Working for the people’: Warren Creates on AI, foreign workers and almost 40 years in immigration law

April 15, 2024

In 38 years as an immigration lawyer, Warren Creates has seen not only sea changes in technology, but also more people than ever looking to call Canada home.

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In 38 years as an immigration lawyer, Warren Creates has seen not only sea changes in technology, but also more people than ever looking to call Canada home. Creates is a partner and head of the immigration law group at Ottawa law firm Perley-Robertson, Hill & McDougall, representing clients in immigration, refugee and citizenship matters. After dabbling as a trial lawyer after law school, Creates turned to immigration law and never looked back. Over the course of his career, he’s become one of only a few practitioners certified by the Law Society of Ontario in immigration, citizenship and refugee law. He’s written multiple publications and travelled the world, including conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, to take on some of the most challenging cases an immigration lawyer can encounter. He’s also been active with numerous local charitable organizations in Ottawa. Outside of his legal work, he’s perhaps best known as the founder of the Ottawa Dragon Boat Race Festival. OBJ caught up with Creates to discuss how things have changed over almost 40 years in practice. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What made you decide to get into immigration law?

I articled for one of Ottawa’s top litigation firms back then and quickly learned I didn’t like it. It was very adversarial. And the clients — whether they won or lost — they did not enjoy the ride. The lawyers enjoyed it, but the clients did not. They were disenfranchised from the system. Fortunately, there was a senior partner in that firm whose practice was immigration. I liked his style of work, I liked his clients and I liked the work that we were doing to help people come to Canada or stay in Canada. That was the spark. I wanted to work for the little guy. I wanted to work for the people themselves. To this day, that is my Polaris, my guiding light — the enjoyment I get out of representing the people, the families, the companies. It’s why I don’t retire. It’s easy getting up in the morning and being part of that journey of building the country one brick at a time.

Q: What does your day-to-day work look like?

We get all kinds of inquiries from people we don’t know. I’d say 50 per cent are by email, people I don’t know or haven’t heard of. Some have been introduced by their fellow country persons, or they find us through Google searching. And they say, I read the articles published by this guy, or I’ve heard cases that he’s done. The other 50 per cent are referred by family members or companies that we’ve represented and it’s a new matter for an existing client. So I have to triage these inquiries, figuring out: Who is this, is it urgent, can we help this person, is it in our wheelhouse? There’s a lot of different kinds of immigration. There’s federal, there’s provincial, there’s asylum-seekers, there’s humanitarian compassionate cases, family reunification, spousal sponsorship, and it goes on and on. Much of my day is spent on project managing inquiries to see if we can help, then lining up a consultation or providing preliminary guidance on the inquiry, then giving a legal opinion on their chances of success. Everyone wants to know the same things: How long will it take? Will my case be approved? And how much will it cost? I spend a considerable amount of my time, just like a doctor, diagnosing and then proposing treatment options. Then there’s the prognosis. What’s the probability of treating the condition? No doctor can say 100 per cent if the ailment will be fixed, nor can a competent lawyer in any field, including immigration. Sometimes there’s only one option. What we recommend is the path of least resistance, the one that’s most likely to succeed in the shortest period of time and for the least amount of money.

Q: What are some of the issues and challenges at the forefront of your field right now?

Thirty years ago, almost everyone was interviewed, no matter what their case was. They were interviewed by a visa officer overseas in their country of residence, or by an immigration officer in Canada, or they would go to a hearing. Almost 100 per cent of people were interviewed. The inverse is now true. Very few people are ever interviewed. We’ve gotten away from the human element. The immigration department is using artificial intelligence to triage cases, to check for security issues, to check for immigration fraud. And they have to because the volumes are so big and the sophistication of some of the source countries and their applicants is so significant. They can’t have people looking; they have robots and AI to do a lot of the preliminary work. And they tell us the decisions are actually made by immigration officers, which we’re comfortable with. All this to say, there’s a lot of portals. We upload information and then we get confirmation very quickly that it was received, then if it was compliant, then we wait for things like medical testing. Ultimately, without any interview, we can get approval. It’s all highly secure, it has to be. It works. There was a lot of resistance from us immigration lawyers a few years ago, but we’ve come to pivot, to modify our expectations. We’ve come to transition to this new reality and we like it.

Q: With the federal government reducing temporary foreign workers and foreign students, what are you expecting to see in terms of volume in the next couple of years?

What has always been true about immigration is that it’s subject to public policy and government decisions. In terms of volumes, programs have always changed and they change constantly, including radical change. A lot of governments realize that there’s been some backlash against the volume. In the media these days, we’re seeing there’s an inflationary crisis, there’s a health-care crisis, a housing crisis. The federal government has been criticized for bringing in too high a volume of student permit holders, for instance, or too high a volume of refugees. The writing was on the wall for many years. It’s only recently that the government has paid enough attention that they realize they’ve got to dial it back a bit. But it’s not a switch. These volumes are so big and our demographics are so challenged with our low fertility rate that you can’t switch off programs. The impacts are going to be on study permits and temporary foreign workers, but we need to wait until the details of this go public in the fall. We don’t know when in the fall, but every year, the government files its immigration plan, usually in October or November. There is criticism, they’re listening to the electorate, but for me, I don’t think there will be much change. This is political rhetoric, a lot of it. It has always been that and I don’t think my practice is going to change much in terms of the volume of cases I’ll represent. That’s been true for 38 years and I think it’ll be true starting this fall and beyond.

Q: What other trends have you had your eye on in the immigration sector that maybe haven’t gotten as many headlines?

It was true for a long time that the big cities were the ones that had the most profound, direct impact on immigration. They were the destinations of most people that applied. But because of the cost of living in major cities, immigration will impact medium and smaller cities in Canada like never before and I like that. Immigrants are going to smaller-sized cities and these cities are very welcoming. In previous history, smaller towns and cities were suspicious of immigrants. That’s no longer true. They’re realizing, in rural and industrial communities especially, that they are going to be as dependent on the immigration flow as big cities have been. And that’s going to slowly transform the cities and their demographics in a positive way.

Q: Anything you’re noticing in Ottawa?

The service sector and construction, for sure. When you look at how many cranes there are, when you look at the lack of housing, this is forecasted to be a crisis for a long time. We need health-care workers, we need construction workers, we need hospitality, tourism and nursing homes. They all desperately need workers. And they’re going to get them, because the federal government has taken notice that those industry sectors suffer the cutbacks. That’s a good thing.