Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I came to Canada about ten years ago as a skilled worker. That is my personal experience. Today I'm representing a group, Sponsor our Parents. Basically we are a group about sponsoring our parents to come to Canada. That is the reason I only talked about—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. The reason I'm only talking about the issue of parents and grandparents is that I'm speaking on behalf of the Sponsor our Parents group. Our group is focusing on this class. We understand that Canada has an interest in bringing skilled workers to backfill vacancies in the workforce.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We totally understand that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Currently the backlog is already huge, and it's not practical for aging parents. If we are putting caps onto new applications, or just even to further reduce the annual admission quota, that will hurt the community. The people staying here, they have a longer-term plan, but if such a thing happens, it leaves the new immigrants no choice but to leave.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This issue has been there for a long time. All we're suggesting is that we manage all applications through a single queue rather than assign quotas to visa offices. If we could manage all applications as step one, and, once step one has passed, if there's no queue at each visa office, that means all processing times for all sponsors will be pretty much the same.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Exactly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We are suggesting to lock the ratio rather than having an absolute number. In previous years, the ratio was about 7% to 8% of all immigrant visas. We are suggesting to keep this ratio for the coming years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have the numbers on how many we should admit each year. I believe that once we admit skilled workers, for example, they have their parents living in their home country. If we don't have a locked-in ratio like 7% to 8% for the past few years, if we keep cutting that ratio, that means more and more new immigrants won't be able to reunite with their parents in Canada, and then they'll have to go back home to take care of their parents.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our group members are against this idea. I don't know where this $75,000 number comes from. We obviously are suggesting a non-refundable health premium. It will create a fast-track queue for rich people and it treats the others as second-class citizens. So if that idea stands, does that mean we should charge a premium for patients if they want to wait less and just let other people wait longer?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the committee for inviting me to speak on behalf of the Sponsor our Parents group. My name is Felix Zhang, and I'm the representative of Sponsor our Parents, which has more than 1,500 members across Canada. We are Canadian citizens and permanent residents sponsoring our parents to Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. Unfortunately, the other representative couldn't come today.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's a very tough question for us to answer. In comparing, spouses and parents in different cultures have different priorities. In Canadian values we believe parents are closer to their children, and the spouses are as well.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Obviously parents can't come to Canada to visit our sponsors. Our sponsors can go home to visit their parents, but the problem is we all have jobs to do. We are working families and we cannot stay with our parents for a long time.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. We are aware that many countries are having challenges in verifying application documentation. The current challenge for us is mostly the wait time.The file has not even been opened, and once the file is opened, it will probably take 12 months to finalize.