Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. Currently, because the super visa requires the private health insurance to be provided by a Canadian provider, the integrity is ensured essentially by the fact that these insurance providers are regulated within the Canadian system. We know them, we know that they're regulated and that we can trust them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sorry, did you say “access provincial insurance”?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree. I think the super visa is an extremely facilitative tool that has been used quite a bit since 2011. IRCC approves some 17,000 super visas every year, which means that parents and grandparents who contribute economically, socially and culturally to our communities, country and, of course, families are able to reunite.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll turn to my colleague in operations in a moment. I'm not sure if we have data on how many super visa holders are actually renewing them. Presumably, having a longer initial stay would result in fewer renewals. I think that is intuitively a conclusion that one can draw.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  To be clear, Chair, is the question about the parents and grandparents sponsorship program or the super visa program?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have information on the number of times that these types of recourse have been pursued. I'd turn to counsel and see if counsel has that information, or my colleague in operations.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, the officials have continued to look into the various recommendations that the committee has made in the past. Following those CIMM recommendations, officials consulted with the health insurance industry on the super visa requirements. Those discussions ended up having stakeholders raise concerns more around whether insurance was sufficient, given the demographics of the population and their likelihood of having variable health statuses, which, of course, would lead to more expensive insurance.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, for the question. I would say that the objectives of the bill—to achieve longer stays—are already provided by the current super visa with an initial entry of two years, but with unlimited renewals from within Canada. Keeping it in ministerial instructions is not just a question of government facility.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't see how any kind of vulnerability or being widowed, among other things, would make it less likely that an individual would be granted a super visa. The requirements remain the same. Therefore, I don't see how vulnerability would make it harder to get the super visa. To be able to comment on this, I would have to read, review and assess the attorney in question's report.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. That's a good question. Tabling a report in the House on the low-income cut-off will help us examine these issues, which were raised by previous witnesses, and determine whether there are circumstances where temporary changes to the financial criteria should be considered.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have any examples of when ministerial instructions brought in changes to a temporary resident pathway. I would turn to counsel to confirm that, but, to my knowledge, there are no temporary resident pathways contained in the act itself.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Chair. I think that the objectives of the bill to recognize the social, economic and cultural contributions of parents and grandparents to not only their families but to our society are completely aligned with government objectives. The current super visa provides for an initial entry of two years, but it also provides for unlimited renewals from within Canada for period of two years at a time.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, I thank the member for his question. The dual intent principle applies here, just like it does in all of our programs. The requirement to leave the country when temporary resident status expires exists, and it can coexist with the dual intent principle. It's simply a way of recognizing that in some cases permanent residency will not follow or will not follow immediately.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm sorry, Chair, was there a specific question that I could answer?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I was saying in my opening remarks, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is a framework legislation. Any changes to the act would mean that any future programmatic changes would have to be done via legislation again, which can take months or years. Keeping these provisions in the ministerial instructions gives flexibility to any minister to be able to introduce changes.