- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Dufferin—Caledon
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,309.03
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, child care is important. That is why we were the first government to actually send money directly to parents for children. That was back under former prime minister Harper.
While $10-a-day child care sounds like a great idea, the problem is about how many spots and access people have to them; there are not very many. There are also lots of people who do not want to put their children into institutional child care. They want to take care of the children themselves or they want to put them into a family member's home or a neighbour's home.
To me this is so exclusionary. It is only open to a very small number of people. It is just not going to help enough.
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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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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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