Thank you. I come to this committee with a background of about 32 years as a refugee and immigration lawyer. I deal a lot with the Spanish-speaking community, so I have a lot of experience with people from Central and South America, but also other parts of the world.
I want to talk today about a case that comes from a different part of the world, the Philippines, and it's a case of a live-in caregiver. I want to use this case to illustrate two problems that I would like the committee to deal with.
One is the gap in the legislation about processing of overseas dependants of people who have made applications in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, H and C.
The other is about the age of dependency. Also throughout I think you'll hear, from all the submissions, that the delays in processing are causing serious issues in many of the programs we deal with.
In the case I'll cite, Marcellina was a nanny who came to Canada in 1999 as a live-in caregiver. As was just mentioned, live-in caregivers are able to bring their families after they have satisfied certain requirements. They can be landed in Canada with their family members whether they're overseas or not. Unfortunately for Marcellina, she was not able to be landed as a live-in caregiver under that program, because her husband was found to be medically inadmissible.
That turned out to be a mistake, later on. He was diagnosed with liver failure, but it turned out to be kidney stones. In the meantime she lost her ability to apply through the live-in caregiver program and therefore was obliged to make an application on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. The shift from being a live-in caregiver to applying on H and C grounds meant that she lost the ability to include her children in her own application for permanent residence, and that was catastrophic for Marcellina and her children.
Seventeen years later, her children and her husband were finally interviewed by the Manila visa office and it was found that there were no humanitarian reasons why the family should come here, even though she had fought and fought for years to be able to bring them. The reason so many caregivers choose Canada is that they know they'll be able to bring their families with them once they meet the requirements. In Marcellina's case, the only thing that was different, that made her not able to bring her children, was the fact that she was eventually landed on H and C grounds and not as a live-in caregiver.
In the submission I'm making, I recommend that section 69 of the immigration and refugee protection regulations be changed to allow people who are landed in Canada on humanitarian grounds to have concurrent processing for permanent residence of their family members overseas. That would not only have made a big difference for Marcellina but will make a big difference for many other people.
Concerning the delays, I'll just briefly say that now the delay is 51 months for a live-in caregiver. At the time Marcellina applied, the delay was much shorter, and to review her H and C application took five years. Then it took another year for her to get her papers so that she could sponsor her family, and by that time all her children were too old to be sponsored under the rules. As I say, it was devastating for the whole family.
I would like to briefly deal with the age of dependency. In 2014 the maximum age for a dependent child changed from 22 to 19, which means that children aged 18 and under are now eligible but those 19 and over are not. I know that the government has announced and reiterated that they will be changing this back to the former maximum age of 22. I hope they will also include the other provisions that used to apply before 2014, allowing children of any age to be considered dependents as long as they're still in post-secondary education. It seemed to work well. Again this change has made a big difference in people's family lives and their decisions about whether they can come to Canada.
I would urge that whatever legislative changes are needed be made as soon as possible, but in the meantime, there have to be some interim measures, which can be done through ministerial instructions or through policy change, to allow people who are now facing separation from their family members, or their children who are 19, 20, or 21 right now, to immigrate with the rest of their family.
So, if any interim measures could be made, it would be very good for the families and very good for the country as a whole, too.
I'll leave it there.
Thank you.