Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 24th, 2017

[Dawn Edlund]

We did already say, I think, that we would have a look at the nationality of the applicants who've been found to be inadmissible.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

[Dawn Edlund]

Off the top of my head, I can't say to you that, for example, Americans never have problems with medical inadmissibility, because I think that would be a ridiculous statement.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

No problem.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

In the presentation today, under the excessive demand considerations that you were talking about, you said they were “determined by a departmental officer, usually referred to as a visa or immigration officer”, and you referred to it as being opposed to what happens in the U.S. or some other countries that you mentioned. I just forget where else it was. Can you quickly elaborate on that?

[Dawn Edlund]

Under our legislation, the visa officers are the folks who make the decisions overseas. The immigration officers are the folks who make the decisions in Canada for people who have applied for permanent residency from within Canada. That's the distinction there.

I'm not sure about the reference to the Americans. We did talk about Australia and net benefit stuff.

[Michael MacKinnon]

To our understanding, the United States and the United Kingdom use an approach that is much more dependent on independent decisions by their equivalents of visa or immigration officers. They do not have a threshold-based system the way we do.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I guess that's what I was referring to.

You don't hire these positions. They are a monitoring position. Do we have offices in Canada to deal with it first on an upfront basis, or is it only after there is a concern and it comes back to the Ottawa office?

[Dawn Edlund]

The panel physicians are empanelled by us and assessed by us to make sure they meet our standards, and they are all over the world, including in Canada, but they are not employees of the Government of Canada.

Then we have our own medical officers, who are in four different locations: London, New Delhi, Manila, and then here in Ottawa. When only 0.2% of our cases end up clicking over into where we think there might be an issue around medical instability, that has been in a centralized medical unit for the last several years, and the medical officers who do that work are only in Ottawa.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you.

You gave us the number of $33,275 as of January 1, 2017, as the publicly funded service over five years, the average per capita cost that you use as a benchmark. That breaks down to about $550 a month. Is it a rule or an objective that you have that the government covers that first amount of $550 a month? I think you mentioned that if the individuals could cover the costs over and above that, they would more likely be allowed to stay as well. Is that a fair assessment?

[Dawn Edlund]

We don't look at it from a month-to-month cost. We look at in terms of that $33,275 as the cost threshold. Then we see, in terms of the services that the individual would require of a health or social nature, what the cost of those services are and whether it takes you over the top in terms of the threshold. I would posit that if someone had a condition that would cost $33,276, a dollar more, I don't think a visa officer would say, “Okay, that's it. We're done.” There really are costs that are far above the cost threshold.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

We need to end there.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I'll just say that I noted it was an average, and that's why I was wondering.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Very good.

Go ahead, Ms. Zahid.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Kwan was referencing the article, the Global News story on July 4. In that report, Statistics Canada said: “With our current data sources, it would be difficult to quantify the value spent on social assistance programs targeting this specific group in the population....”

If Stats Canada doesn't think a real figure can be calculated, is it really fair to reject someone's application based on incomplete figures?

[Dawn Edlund]

We'll go back to the 2004 baseline activity that we engaged in.

We identified what wasn't covered in the Canadian Institute of Health Information's overall number as compared to our definitions in our regulations. Then we did a study by talking, at the time, to Statistics Canada and to Health Canada to get data from provincial officials to then come to that baseline idea of what that basket of social services is and what the costs of that are. That's the number we've been using and updating with inflation year over year. Stats Canada today may say they have difficulty doing that. Well, at the time they provided information to us as part of our baseline study that they must have been confident in.

[Michael MacKinnon]

To be clear, it's a bit how you ask the question. Global News asks Statistics Canada if they could quantify the total services provided to persons with disabilities, but we're not assessing it against the total cost of all services provided to persons with disabilities. We're assessing it against a specific basket of services that is specified in the regulations.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

We have talked a lot about people who are coming, whether permanent residency, the economic class, or family reunification. I would like to get some numbers on people coming on TRVs, temporary resident visas, because when they apply, they don't have to go through medical examinations, and they don't need to submit....

Do we have some numbers? Were some people who landed in Canada rejected because the visa officer thought that they were medically inadmissible? Have there been any cases in the last few years?

[Dawn Edlund]

Yes, not all temporary residents have to go through immigration medical exams. There's a small subset of those—for example, individuals headed to work or study in areas where public health is very important. If someone is coming to Canada to work in the medical profession, for example, even if that's only temporarily, they will go through an immigration medical exam.

We also look at temporary residents who are coming to Canada for longer than six months if they come from a country that has a high incidence of infectious disease, such as tuberculosis. If people from those countries are coming for more than six months and they've lived continuously in that country for a year, we have them go through immigration medical exams, but there are—

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I'm talking about those people who don't have have to go through the—

[Dawn Edlund]

Sorry. Yes, there are people who do not go through immigration medical exams to become temporary residents and who later go through medical exams as part of the permanent residency process, and then at that point it's discovered that there's a health condition that would cause an issue from a medical inadmissibility perspective.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I'm saying that for people coming here on a temporary resident visa for three months to visit their family—let's the parents are coming to visit their grandkids and their kids—has there been any case of those people being determined as medically inadmissible when they land in Canada?

[Dawn Edlund]

Not to my knowledge. They wouldn't have gone through an immigration medical exam. If they came off the plane and clearly had something that would be of concern from a public health perspective, there are quarantine provisions that would apply. I don't think that's what you're talking about.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I will share the rest of my time with my colleague Mr. Anandasangaree.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Thank you.

I'm picking up on something you said earlier with respect to the provincial nominee program. You had suggested that in one particular incident the province required an individual, and you were able to work with the province. What other ongoing conversations do you have with provinces? What kind of co-operation do you have with provinces whereby some of the rigid requirements as outlined can potentially be overridden?