Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to speak before you today.
I am going to repeat some of the things that we have already heard from the people who spoke before us.
CAPIC is also very concerned about paragraph 117(9)(d) of the regulations, which excludes members of the family class. You heard from the other panellists that if there is a situation where a dependent family member does not do medical examinations at the time that the person, or in this case, the would-be sponsor, is applying for permanent residency, that dependent will be excluded for life from being sponsored as a member of the family class. CAPIC would like to see that section repealed or changed to allow for circumstances where there was no clear intention to misrepresent and where there were circumstances beyond the control of the person applying for permanent residency and they could not have the family member or dependent medically examined.
I believe Mr. Wong talked about a situation where there is a bitter divorce and one of the spouses has custody of a child, and the spouse who has custody of the child does not allow that dependant to undergo medical examinations. Unfortunately, the way the regulation works now, even if the child was declared but the child did not undergo medical examinations as required by section 42 of the act, that child will be excluded for life.
We would like to see changes to allow for such circumstances where there was no true intention to misrepresent, where the child in this case was declared, but for reasons beyond the person's control the child could not be medically examined, to not be excluded as a member of the family class.
We also heard quite a bit about parents and grandparents, and we are in agreement with—