44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 1, 2022 10:00AM
moved that Bill C-242, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (temporary resident visas for parents and grandparents), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
He said: Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about a bill that I think is going to make a dramatic difference in the lives of many Canadian families.
In 2011, our Conservative government brought in the super visa. The super visa is a 10-year, multiple-entry visa that allows families to reunite with parents and grandparents. They were allowed to stay for two years over 10, and there were certain conditions with respect to that visa. They had to undergo a medical exam and be admissible on medical grounds. They had to have provided satisfactory evidence of private medical insurance, and the host child or grandchild had to have certain financial means in order for the parent or grandparent to qualify to come to Canada and be eligible for the super visa.
This has been a fantastic tool for families to reunite in Canada over the past 11 years. It is one of the things I am very proud of, as I was part of the government that brought that in. What we have learned over the past 11 years, however, is that this is something that could be improved. In fact, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration studied this in 2016 and heard from stakeholders about the challenges that exist with the super visa.
My bill would do three things. Number one, it would extend the time that a parent or grandparent could stay in Canada from two to five years, which is going to be an incredible benefit to families. Imagine being able to have a parent or grandparent there for five months every year over 10 years, to spend time with a person and their children. This would make things so much better for Canadian families.
Number two, the issue of health insurance has been brought up. It is costly. The bill would address that. It would allow for the purchase of insurance from outside of Canada, as approved by the minister.
Number three, the bill would require the minister and the government to prepare a report on reducing the minimum income requirement that a child or grandchild of a foreign national must meet.
I am going to go into the importance of these improvements, and why the bill is going to mean so much for Canadian families. Health care and private health insurance can be enormously costly for families and can range up to $5,000 per year. In addition, families are looking at paying for the cost of a flight back and forth. This was clearly heard in the evidence that was brought before the committee.
What we have to point out is that someone has to be medically admissible before they are eligible for the super visa. That health check has to be provided as a precondition to the super visa being issued. We are not talking about people who have health care, health conditions and health concerns. By allowing insurance from other countries, this will lower the cost of insurance.
I believe this, because I believe that competition is a good thing. If one can purchase insurance from an American insurance company, a British insurance company or an Indian insurance company, and the list goes on and on, this will create competition for Canadian insurance companies and it is going to lower the cost to these families.
Some will say that maybe this could be an insurance company that would not pay. That is why I have included a safeguard in the bill. It is as approved by the minister, so insurance companies that say they want to be eligible to provide their products to this could make a submission to the minister. The minister has the capacity, the skill and the knowledge to ensure that this is an insurance company that would be able to pay for any health claims that are made while in Canada.
The bill would lower the cost of insurance for those trying to use the super visa, and we have a safeguard in place that would make sure that no health care system or health care provider in the country would be left with an unpaid claim.
The other issue is the income part of this: the low-income cut-off. This is a challenge, especially for new Canadian families, when they are struggling to actually build the lives that they wanted to build in this country.
They may be working in jobs that do not pay a lot. They work very hard, and with the income test as it is, many Canadian families are excluded from being able to apply because they are not going to meet that income test.
When I think about this, I think what the extra cost would be if my parents came to stay with me for five months. We can debate whether or not I would want my parents to come and stay with me for five months, but that is of course a different topic. Many people do want that, but there really is not a significant cost involved in that. It is not a cost that would require a family to somehow become financially insecure or financially unable to meet their obligations.
The income test itself does not make sense to me, which is why the bill would require the government to table, within one year, a plan to lower the low-income cut-off and the income required. There may be some criticism of that, saying we may therefore have problems. That is actually not what the committee study showed in 2016. What we saw in the evidence presented at committee was that having a parent or grandparent come and stay with family was actually a boon, in an economic sense. Those parents sometimes were able to provide extra child care, so the family could take an extra shift or maybe work some overtime, and their economic situation actually improved.
It is kind of the opposite of what we think, or the perception being put forward of the low-income cut-off: that somehow this is going to be detrimental to the family. When we look at how this will expand opportunities for families, we have to consider how important it is for families to be able to reunite with their parents and grandparents, so that children can spend time with their grandparents. There are important lessons we learn from our grandparents and having them as part of our families.
In many communities across Canada, there are multi-generational homes where having the parents and grandparents there is an important cultural aspect of life. Why are we limiting this on the assumption that somehow having our parents or grandparents come and stay with us for a few months is some kind of financial burden?
I talked to communities all across this country before I introduced the bill. This has been unanimously approved by them. They are excited about the prospect of having their loved ones be able to come to Canada for a longer period of time. They are excited that health insurance costs would be reduced to make it more affordable, and they are more than excited that by lowering the low-income cut-off, more families are going to be eligible for the super visa.
I am encouraging my colleagues from the government to support this bill. This will be good for Canadians from coast to coast to coast. I look forward to questions from the members opposite, and I hope I will have their support to pass the bill.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for this great, compassionate and very thoughtful bill.
The member for Vancouver East touched on the parent and grandparent reunification process. Over the last three years, there has been a very bad transition, and the grandparent and parent classes have suffered for so long because of the backlogs the federal government created in immigration. We have heard stories about this throughout the pandemic, how people needed their parents and grandparents.
My hon. colleague for Dufferin—Caledon mentioned that it also enables one person to return to the workforce when a grandparent or parent is here. On top of that, with this pandemic, people need mental health supports, as we have seen mental health diminish in this country.
Can the member elaborate a bit more on how this bill will address those issues?
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Madam Speaker, my colleague raises a great point there. When I suggested one person could stay for five months every year for 10 years, that person could also stay for a year or two. Imagine the economic benefit to people who have their parents here with them when they have their first child. They could be here for the first year to offer not only emotional support, but also economic support and a reduction in day care costs, as well as the opportunity to continue to work.
The backlogs in the parent and grandparent family reunification process have gotten massively out of control under the current Liberal government. This bill will actually help ease some of that strain because more parents and grandparents would qualify under this bill, and they would be able to stay longer. It would also take some of the pressure off the terrible backlogs we have right now.
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Madam Speaker, this is an issue I am fairly passionate about. When I was on the opposition benches, I was actually the critic for immigration. I have a lot of memories from when Stephen Harper was prime minister.
I sure wish the member had shared his concerns back then. In opposition, I remember when Stephen Harper actually shut down the program to sponsor parents and grandparents. Imagine, that was put in an absolute total freeze, so people could not even sponsor a parent or grandparent. That actually took place. Then, a couple of years later, it was opened up again, and the former government said we could have 5,000 parents and grandparents come to Canada on an annual basis.
The good news is that government was replaced with a more progressive government. This Liberal government we recognizes just how important parents and grandparents are. Within the first couple of years, we more than doubled the number of parents and grandparents who were able to be sponsored. The types of numbers we are hitting today are well over 20,000. We can contrast that to the previous government's, and look at the processing times.
When I was critic, we were talking six, seven or more years to get parents and grandparents to Canada. The member was talking about seniors. I will go further, and I will say that seniors, especially those who are coming as permanent residents or as visitors, contribute in a very positive way, not only to the families but also to the economy, either directly or indirectly. This is the type of thing we need to recognize, right up front.
Just because one is 70 years old or 75 years old does not mean they cannot contribute in a very positive way. I am 60, and approaching 70 awfully quick. People have a lot to offer. This is one of the reasons we, in the Liberal caucus, have made seniors a priority. I say that knowing that the Minister of Seniors is listening to this debate, because she knows full well just how important our seniors are, those who are living in Canada, as well as those coming to visit Canada.
We want to encourage that. We want people to be able to invite their moms and dads and grandparents to come to Canada. We also have to take into consideration what provinces have to say. We need to realize that one of the things about the 70-plus age group, generally speaking, is there is often more of a need for health care requirements. When we talk about the super visa, which I am a big fan of, I believe it is responsible to ensure there is some form of insurance for individuals coming over in certain situations.
I am glad we have those super visas. Prior to that, typically parents would come to visit their child, a fully grown adult, and would be here for a year. Three months prior to that visa expiring, they would put in an application for an extension. That would happen year after year. Parents who came under the one-year visa would actually be in Canada, and would be here for six, seven, eight years through extensions, never having left Canada.
It only stands to reason, as the demand continues to grow, that we try to put in policies that will in fact help facilitate parents and grandparents being able to meet with their children, young and old, here in Canada.
We talk about the important role they play in society, and it goes far beyond what I have heard today. I wanted to contribute to the debate because I think of it in terms of their being the rock of the family, when there is a grandparent who shares their stories and wisdom, their personal heritage and how they grew up. They often contribute to the child's well-being. A person may have a parent coming from India, the Philippines or any other place around the world, and what often happens, because of their love for their grandchild, is that they end up watching over that child so that mom and dad can go do grocery shopping or do some visiting. They build up a very healthy relationship, and quite often they provide stability in the family by being here.
I have seen many families who have had a parent come over, and the parent is actually assisting them, directly or indirectly, in their business. A very dear friend of mine, Geurtin Jamoli, has a wonderful restaurant, and I got to know some of the individuals because of Canada's policy of getting and encouraging parents and grandparents to come over.
The thoughts I have are shared virtually universally within the Liberal caucus. We understand it. We encourage it. Members can see that in the actions we have taken to date, where we continue to see the numbers grow. My colleagues and I, and I suspect even members of the opposition, will write letters of support so that we can encourage immigration officials from other countries to approve visiting visas, and at times that can be a challenge in itself.
However, there is no doubt that, in terms of the cost, insurance is an issue. I have not sat on the immigration committee for a while and do not know if its members have raised this issue. I would be open to some ideas and thoughts on that. I would encourage the members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and those who might be following this debate to listen and see if there are some viable options out there.
I can tell members that we have a very aggressive, progressive Minister of Immigration. We have all sorts of things on the agenda, such as refugees whether from Syria or now Ukraine. All members or at least most, definitely all from within the Liberal caucus, are encouraging the government to look at ways we can do more for Ukraine on the immigration file, and even though that is such an important file, we still make time for parents and grandparents.
I would welcome and invite members of the public or anyone to take a look at what we have been able to accomplish in the last six or seven years on this important file. However, that does not mean that there is no room for improvement. We are constantly looking for ways to improve, because we recognize the many contributions parents and grandparents make to our society. If we recognize that in a holisitic way, it enables us to have bigger and better immigration programs in general.
I appreciate, as I always do, the opportunity to talk about immigration inside the House of Commons. I appreciate what the member is suggesting. I would recommend that he bring the issue to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration in the hope that we could actually look at what alternatives might be out there.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-242, because not only was I a member of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, as the member for Winnipeg North mentioned, but, as a lawyer in my previous practice, I worked with families who wanted to bring their parents and grandparents to Canada.
In working with these families, I saw to what extent the logistics, red tape and delays were an onerous administrative burden. What these families often wanted was to sponsor their parents or grandparents and bring them here permanently.
In that context, not only does the super visa provide the opportunity to have one's parents here while the sponsorship and permanent residence application is being processed, but it is another option for those not picked in the lottery. The lottery system is very restrictive, and few people manage to get chosen to submit a sponsorship application for parents and grandparents. The super visa is therefore a useful option.
Given the administrative burden of immigration procedures, I am very much in favour of the opportunity to make them less onerous. What is a super visa? What do we want to change?
The super visa is valid for 10 years. It does not permit the holder to work during their stay. It allows multiple entries over a period of up to two years. It requires the applicant to have medical insurance from a Canadian company that is valid for at least one year from the time of entry. Lastly, it requires the applicant to prove that the child or grandchild who will be hosting them here has the financial capacity to support them. This means that there is a minimum income threshold that must be proven by the child or grandchild in order for the parent or grandparent to be issued the visa.
The member for Dufferin—Caledon’s bill addresses the last three points that I mentioned. Before I get into the details of the bill, I want to say at the outset that my Bloc colleagues and I will be supporting the bill.
The bill has a relatively limited and minor impact on the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It does not put a burden on the government, because we are talking about temporary status. There is no service or financial aspect to making this application for parents or grandparents. It accounts for a very small number of the temporary residence permits that are issued. Year in and year out, of the 1.6 million or 1.9 million applications, about 20,000 are for a super visa. This represents about 1% to 2% of applications. The impact on Canada is relatively small, but the positive effects on families are major. In light of this, it is important to support the bill.
One of the legislative amendments proposed in the bill would allow individuals to purchase health insurance from insurance companies outside Canada. The length of stay allowed would be increased from two years to five years. The bill also requires that the minister conduct a new review of the minimum income requirement to obtain a visa for a parent or grandparent.
Existing legislation requires that individuals have valid insurance coverage for at least one year from the date of entry. This insurance must cover at least $100,000 and be obtained from a Canadian provider. This is set out in the legislation. Some basic research shows that this type of insurance is very expensive. For someone relatively young, in their 40s, without any pre-existing health conditions, it would cost around $1,000 to $1,500. For someone who is a little older or who has some pre-existing health conditions, that kind of coverage can cost up to $6,000 to $7,000 a year. For a couple, that is $12,000 a year, on top of the other fees associated with immigration.
By opening things up to competition, we take away Canadian companies' monopoly on this type of insurance coverage. We also hope it will reduce the cost of coverage. It will also allow some foreign nationals to combine this insurance coverage with a policy they already have for their home or auto. People might be able to save money.
This bill also ensures that there will be no problem harmonizing insurance coverage and claims for hospitals, for example, because the insurance companies will have to be pre-approved by the minister. We can expect a study on the possibility of submitting claims to these approved insurance companies.
The second point the bill covers is extending the stay from two years to five years. This would limit the number of return trips parents and grandparents have to make between Canada and their home country for the duration of the super visa. Those plane tickets cost money. This measure alone will significantly reduce costs.
The two-year permit has to get renewed. The person has to have another medical exam to get the insurance premium. It is therefore possible that during the 10-year period there is a change in health status, and consequently an increase in the premium, which potentially makes it harder for some parents and grandparents to get their coverage.
I did not mention that the visa also came with the requirement to submit to a medical exam. If it has to be renewed every two years, the person is a little more vulnerable. There is less predictability with respect to eligibility.
Finally, with respect to the low-income cut-off, the evidence of being on fairly solid financial ground to welcome one's parents or grandparents, the bill does not propose lowering or eliminating it. It proposes that the minister conduct a study on the need to keep the cut-off at the same level or just maintain it, full stop. That being said, many people are talking about repealing it outright. In the event that the minister, within a period of two years, wishes to keep the low-income cut-off where it is, he will have to explain why.
This is not a very compelling bill for parliamentarians in that regard. It seeks a review of the relevance of a legislative measure, something that it seems to me is always seen in a positive light.
I would like to mention that the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration already looked into something similar and made a recommendation regarding the sponsorship of parents and grandparents. The committee stated, and I quote:
That Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada allow the income requirements for the parent and grandparent sponsorship program to be the minimum necessary income equal to the low-income cut-off established by Statistics Canada for the years impacted by the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, conducting a yearly review to determine whether to extend allowing the minimum necessary income to be equivalent to the low-income cut-off, all while respecting Quebec’s jurisdiction.
That raises another issue. In some cases, in a recession year, for example, people may find that they are no longer eligible for a visa simply for reasons that are beyond their control. It would be a good idea to look into that.
In passing, I want to mention that, when it comes to spousal sponsorships, Quebec does not even assess the spouses' financial capacity, and it works very well.
The study on this aspect could help determine whether this threshold is appropriate in different places across Canada. The cost of living is not the same everywhere, as we know. Could there be different sponsors depending on where the individuals will be living? That would be a positive and would also acknowledge the fact that many families see a positive financial impact when parents and grandparents come, since it allows them to rejoin the job market.
For all of these good reasons, we suggest that the bill be supported.
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Madam Speaker, the NDP has always seen family reunification as a pivotal component of Canada's immigration system. All families want to do is be reunited with their loved ones, and they should not have to go through such hardship to be with their parents or grandparents, who are every bit a part of the family unit as what we have come to call immediate family.
In western culture, the nuclear family of two parents and their children has come to be seen as the basic unit to be protected. While this is the norm in many western countries, it is not so for different parts of the world. For them, extended family members are often viewed as immediate family members. Research has shown that when a family network includes parents and grandparents, it makes the settlement and integration process much easier on newcomers. It also confirms the essential role parents and grandparents play in supporting the healthy development of youth. Families are particularly important in the maintenance of the well-being of racialized communities, members of the disability community and women.
Prior to 2011, the parents and grandparents sponsorship program had the same process as spousal and dependent sponsorship streams of immigration. The application went through the system until it was ultimately approved or rejected. Unfortunately, successive Liberal and Conservative governments continually failed to provide sufficient immigration levels and staffing resources to process the applications in a timely manner. Consequently, too many families waited nearly a decade to be reunited with their loved ones. Instead of increasing resources to address the growing backlog, both the Liberals and the Conservatives chose to put a cap on the parents and grandparents sponsorship applications. The Harper administration even had a moratorium on new applications for two years. It was well known that the application cap would always be hit mere hours into the IRCC accepting them, leaving tens of thousands of Canadians unable to even apply.
The Liberals then went on to an arbitrary lottery system, which was a fiasco from the get-go. It is the only immigration stream that is based on the luck of the draw. This ill-conceived system fell flat on its face with multiple problems, and 500 of the 10,000 applications were lost to families in 2017. Forced to admit failure, the Liberals scrapped the lottery system and went back to the breakneck race to beat the application cap approach. In that instance, within seven minutes the application process was shut down because of the cap having reached its limit. This process also did not take into consideration the inherent disparities within the system, such as the lack of access to high-speed Internet in some communities and those with disabilities or impairments.
The media revealed that a number of individuals who were not able to submit an application to reunite with their loved ones under the parents and grandparents reunification process filed a lawsuit against the government. The government then quietly settled with the litigants by offering them 70 coveted spots in the parents and grandparents sponsorship program.
All of this is to say that the handling of the parents and grandparents sponsorship program has been disastrous. Too many families remain separated for years. That is why the NDP has been calling for the lifting of the quota, with increased staffing resources and increased levels numbers to address this ongoing issue. We are also calling for reasonable service standards to be set in the processing of the applications.
Until then, some families turn to the super visa program as an alternative. However, the program has numerous shortcomings. The super visa applicant is required to purchase a medical insurance plan with $100,000 in emergency medical coverage from a Canadian insurance company. This is prohibitively expensive.
This bill aims to partially address these issues, and while I support the bill, it must be recognized that it is only a stopgap measure.
In addition to the points that I have already made, it is essential that we bring back the appeals process for the parents and grandparents stream. I met a family that was rejected for the program in their third year of meeting the onerous financial requirements because they went on maternity leave for one month. As a result of that, the family's income dipped and their dream of reuniting with their parents vanished. This is wrong, and an appeals process with some ability to provide flexibility would have accommodated that temporary change in circumstances.
On the call around the onerous financial burden, it would be important to reduce the financial undertakings required of families to be eligible to ensure a system that genuinely recognizes the value of familial unity over financial interests. If we truly value parents and grandparents in our society, we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that these so-called extended family members are somehow a burden on our society. It is often forgotten that many are able to work full time or part time, volunteer in our communities or provide child care to their families. It is time the government updated its views of the contributions of parents and grandparents in more than just words but actions through Canada’s immigration system.
The proposed bill aims to address these issues, and the NDP supports the bill going to committee so that we can invite witnesses to examine the bill and put forward amendments. Equally important is having the government look at the financial requirements and the onerous requirements put on the family sponsorship application process for parents and grandparents.
In fact, at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration we studied this issue and invited witnesses and experts to come forward. The vast majority, if not all of them, said that this needs to change, that the financial requirements are far too burdensome. Many called for the government to lift the cap to ensure more families are able to reunite with their loved ones. I know this is not part of this bill, but it is something the NDP supports wholeheartedly.
I heard over and over again in the last number of years sitting in this place all parties talk about how much they value the contributions of family members, yet repeatedly when given the chance, whether when Conservatives were in government or now that the Liberals are in government, they do not truly address the issue. They come in with stopgap measures and then we find ourselves here again. As a result, what is left is that too many families have their loved ones separated.
I want to take a moment to also talk about extended families. In this instance, we are talking about parents and grandparents, but I know a lot of communities view extended family such as adult siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins as part of their immediate family. We have seen that with the Syrian refugee initiative. Many of them want to be able to sponsor their extended family members to come to Canada, but they have been experiencing extreme difficulties as the immigration measures do not allow for that. We need to update our view of what immediate family is to be consistent with many of the newcomers who have come to Canada and made Canada their home.
I hope this bill will make it through second stage and be referred to committee so that we can look at how we can enhance the bill even further, for example, by bringing forward the appeal process.
I want to thank the member for Dufferin—Caledon for bringing this bill forward and highlighting the issues of parents and grandparents and the need for parliamentarians to put their minds to making the process better for Canadians to reunite with their loved ones.
Finally, on the piece around extending the period from two years to five years, that is a welcome change. Ultimately, I would like to see long-term change so that people can reunite with their loved ones permanently in Canada. In the meantime, these are the measures I can certainly support.
I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on this important issue today.
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