keesio said:
I'm sure the OP wants revenge (and I don't blame her). But as for letting her husband go - if all this is true, he committed a crime - intentional misrepresentation. Are you saying that she should let him get away with a crime? Should he get away with it?
Well, you've asked a complicated question that I imagine seems pretty simple to you -- sometimes it will be. The world is full of crimes that individuals don't report -- I'm sure CIC doesn't consider it the responsibility of a random foreign woman to report what she knows to them. If I knew a student who was working 22 hours a week instead of 20, I wouldn't turn them in. When I walk home, I see people driving every day while talking on cell phones, or more rarely, texting. I could write down license plates, I could try and photograph their cars, but I don't, even though I hate people who do this (it's more damaging, in my opinion, than intentional misrepresentation) -- most of us don't go through life feeling that we have to report every crime that we see. As Gandalf says somewhere, "Many who are dead deserve life, and there are many alive who deserve death. Are you going to give it to them?" (Or something like that.)
The situation described is one the lowest kind of intentional misrepresentation, a man abandoning his wife. I can imagine others where it would be much less thoroughly condemned -- most people do take a person's personal situation into account when determining culpability. I'm sure that you can imagine scenarios where you would hesitate to turn in someone who commits intentional misrepresentation. Since we don't really know the situation, I find it hard to get worked up about it. And as I said, there are always two sides to every story. You yourself point out that this is hypothetical -- 'if all this is true'. In my experience, things that are done largely for revenge rarely turn out to be satisfactory -- and it's very easy to convince oneself that one is doing the 'moral' thing, when motives are vengeful.
Here's an example of what I mean -- it's from Wikipedia, so it might not be accurate. My point is simply that high-level Canadian authorities don't seem to care that much about certain types of misrepresentation, why is it the moral responsibility of the OP? These are people who I would turn in, if I knew about it -- but they're still in Canada:
The government has been somewhat more successful in civil proceedings against accused wartime criminals. Since 1998, courts have found that six men, all Ukrainian, misrepresented their wartime activities and could have their citizenship revoked. Another seven people subject to deportation or citizenship-revocation procedures have died.
However, the Cabinet has yet to revoke the citizenship of any of the men.
Finally, and this is a comment on another issue, I find it hard to believe that the process under discussion will result in the man's immediate return. Assuming that CIC acts, will they really revoke his ability to land based on a phone call, even supported with documents? The documents could be forged, there has to be an investigation period; the man will summon evidence to support his side -- testimonials of relatives, bank statements, who knows what else? Presumably he has evidence from his life that he submitted to CIC that doesn't reveal his married state. I'm just saying that I would assume there will be an investigation, and that it will take quite some time, especially because the OP says she has no marriage certificate.
In a way, I guess your question (for me) is similar to that famous cartoon: "But someone is wrong on the Internet" There are plenty of things CIC prohibits that I would turn in in a heartbeat -- human trafficking, medical lies, companies that cheat TFWs, things like that. But you've got to draw a line somewhere, at least I do.
Apologies to the OP for this long and off-topic post . . . :-X
