Good morning, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank you for this opportunity to address the committee.
I'll begin my statement by giving a brief account of my case, followed by recommendations for policy changes based on our experience.
Last year my family and I were deemed inadmissible for permanent residency in Canada because my son Nico has Down's syndrome. Before coming to Canada to work for York University, I was warned by the immigration and relocation coordinator that my son's Down's syndrome could be an obstacle for acquiring permanent residency in Canada. This already suggested the existence of a practice of profiling and discrimination based on disability in the permanent residency application process. My son's Down's syndrome was not, however, an obstacle for obtaining temporary work and student visas for my family. These were granted for a period of four years, and we landed in Canada on July 1, 2012.
Approximately a year after our arrival, we began our application for permanent residency. As part of the normal application process, the entire family underwent the required medical exams. We all came out healthy, including my son Nico, who at the time was 11 years old. However, because of his visible genetic identity as a person with Down's syndrome, he was singled out for additional examinations, including a pediatric exam, spinal column X-rays, thyroid exam, and developmental and cognitive assessments. No one else in the family was examined or tested further because of their genetic makeup. Only Nico was saddled with the burden of proof of health and ability beyond the basic medical exams required of all family members.
The permanent residency application process dragged on for more than three years, representing additional costs in time, energy, and money for the family, precisely because of the burdens placed on Nico for his disability.
At the end of this difficult and costly process, the fairness letter we received from Citizenship and Immigration Canada in response to the application stated that Nicolas had the “medical condition” of Down's syndrome, code 759, and that due to his “moderate intellectual disability” he was deemed inadmissible for permanent residency, along with his entire family, because of the excessive demand he was expected to have on Canadian social services. In the fairness letter we were given the opportunity to submit a declaration of ability and intent, where we could show how our family could cover the costs of this excessive demand in order for Citizenship and Immigration Canada to reevaluate their decision.
While signing the declaration was a viable option for us, we chose not to sign, and instead opted for trying to promote changes in what we considered was a discriminatory process that unjustly affected not only our family, but many other families. We took our case to the media, whose overwhelming response was supportive of our arguments. Eventually I was invited to meet with representatives of the office of the Minister of Immigration to present our case and our recommendations. At this meeting my legal counsel and I were guaranteed by the minister's office that they would take the necessary steps to enact relevant policy changes by the fall of 2016. While this did not take place at that time, in August we were notified that the minister had intervened on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, granting Nico and the entire family relief from inadmissibility based on the health provisions in paragraph 38(1)(c). Soon after we took the steps to become permanent residents of Canada, which is our current status.
Our family's experience provides the basis for recommending the elimination of paragraph 38(1)(c) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act as it does not make sense on medical, legal, economic, social, or ethical grounds, as I will explain.
It does not make sense on medical grounds because, one, disabilities are not illnesses that can be cured by medical procedures, but rather are conditions of a person, often part and parcel of his or her identity. Two, social services are not medical services, and so should not be included under the medical inadmissibility grounds. Three, the screening of persons with disabilities on medical grounds is arbitrary and discriminatory when contrasted, for example, with the possibly much greater costs to the state from smokers, for example, who are not targeted or profiled during the initial medical exams.
It does not make sense on economic grounds because: one, the cost represented by persons with disabilities is negligible to the overall budget of medical services; two, there is no cost-benefit analysis to determine what is gained and what is lost when a family of taxpaying immigrant workers is deemed inadmissible because of the disability of one of its members, not only in tax revenue forfeited, but in productivity of all the members of the family to the economy; and three, the accounting process to determine the individual cost of including an additional student with special needs in an existing classroom of special education is deficient when using national averages to determine individual cases.
If the argument of excessive demand of social services were merely economic, then gifted children who also use special education would be screened, which they are not, nor should they be.
It does not make sense on legal grounds because disability discrimination goes against section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It goes against the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ratified by Canada in 2010, and it goes against the Canadian Human Rights Act signed by Parliament in 1977.
It does not make sense on social grounds because social services considered for calculating excessive demand are a narrow selection of services, precisely those used by persons with disabilities, making the disabled community a burden to Canadian social services by definition. Second, paragraph 38(1)(c) implies that social services used by disabled persons are a burden, implying by extension that the disabled community of Canadian citizens and permanent residents is also a burden to Canadian society. Third, paragraph 38(1)(c) ignores the potential contributions of immigrant working families to Canadian society, in spite of, and sometimes even because of, the presence of a disability in the family, as has already occurred on countless occasions in Canada.
It does not make sense on moral or ethical grounds because foreign immigrant workers are, in fact, Canadian taxpayers, and by signing a declaration of ability and intent, they are subject to being twice charged for what they have already contributed to through their taxes. Second, the attempt to resolve the inherently flawed paragraph 38(1)(c) of the IRPA by offering the option of signing a declaration of ability and intent simply adds another layer of discrimination, this time against people with lower incomes. Third, there already exists a moral precedent of offering exemptions to the clause of excessive demand to refugees, for example, so it is not inconceivable to extend an exemption to the category of temporary workers who have already been accepted into Canada and pay Canadian taxes. Fourth, reducing persons to what they cost the state rather than valuing them for what they can contribute can lead us down a dark path. The targets are the elderly and infirm. Fifth, it is beneath the dignity of the Canadian state, which is recognized the world over as a beacon of inclusion, to keep paragraph 38(1)(c) of the IRPA on the books when it is flawed on so many counts.
Thank you, Chair.