Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm happy to have the opportunity to speak to the committee. I'm going to be as brief as I can, and get right to the point.
I think the real problem with family class is not, of course, with spouses and dependent children. It's with parents and grandparents. It's always been a very difficult and complex job to try to balance the economic with the family class and with humanitarian programs and it can also be troubling. It's more acute today because of the very large increase in immigration since the 1990s. As the immigration levels increase quite enormously, so do the number of parents who want to come and join their loved ones here.
The problem is essentially one of money. This is at the heart of the problem, and the high costs of admitting large numbers of elderly migrants. Studies have estimated that the social welfare costs, that is, OAS and the government supplementary program and other transfers, and the health costs during the lifetime of an elderly immigrant who comes here at the age of 65 and survives until 85 years old—which is the vital statistics figure—in that period of time, for each one of those elderly migrants, the cost is $300,000. That's a lot of money. That's at the heart of the problem.
The way it's been calculated is up to other people to decide, but more than one study has indicated that. That's the heart of the problem. It's a lot of money to bring in those people.
As an example, the Department of Immigration some time ago, in 2011, estimated there were about 275,000 sponsored parents and grandparents living in Canada over the age of 65, and assuming that they lived to the age of 85, their health care costs alone would total $27 billion. This did not estimate that many parents come here under the age of 65.
Another study by a private sector economist using data from the C.D. Howe Institute estimated that senior parents and grandparents receive on average $152,880 in old age security and guaranteed income supplement and other transfers if they live for that period from 65 to 85 years. That is the real problem.
Maybe another problem is the fact that now parents of any age can be sponsored. Part of the problem there is many of the parents are quite young and among the ones who arrive with them are three, four, or perhaps five siblings, who in turn can sponsor husbands and fiancées. That creates what all immigration officials don't like very much, chain migration, because the ones who are coming in do not have to meet any kind of skill, education, or other requirements.
It was for this reason that previous governments in the past, both Liberal and Conservative, put an age limit on parents and grandparents. It used to be that you couldn't bring your parents into Canada unless they had reached the age of 60 or a grandparent before the age of 65. In my view, the age limit would not have much impact today because of the great numbers.
The other issue, of course, is the 150,000 or so backlog that existed back in 2011 was the beginning of concern on the part of all governments about costs, because they found out that there were 150,000 sponsored parents and grandparents waiting to get in here who were qualified to come, and it was just a question of whether they could be processed in time. Governments since then have been finding ways and means to either slow the flow down or try to get rid of the backlog, which is not easily done.
The previous Conservative government did make a preliminary effort to try to get control of that situation by putting on a cap of 500 applications, and then trying to increase the numbers coming in from the backlog. I'm not sure it worked, but they did make an attempt at it.
The other thing the Conservatives did, which I think was very good and should certainly exist, was to introduce the idea of the super visa, so that parents and grandparents could come to visit their relatives an unlimited number of times for a period of two years and not have to get the visa renewed every time they wanted to come. That enabled a certain balance to occur, whereby people in the backlog could at least come to visit their loved ones here. It was a very good idea. Australia has already implemented it.
I don't have any solutions to this, although I have some ideas about it. One other way by which other countries such as Australia tackle this issue is to have what they call the balance of family. If you apply for your father and your mother and they are living in a country in which three or four of their sons and daughters are living, you will not be able to sponsor them to Australia. But if you are here and are trying to sponsor your parents who are on their own and are not looking after other dependants, then they're welcome to come. That has slowed down the flow of parents and grandparents to Australia, but it seems to be working.
In addition to that—I'm not sure how they do this—the Australians basically ask people to put up a bond of about 40,000 Australian dollars, if they're going to bring their parents or their grandparents.
We're not the only country dealing with this, but we are the only country bringing in such large numbers of people, and that's what has accelerated the problem and aggravated it.
Thank you.