Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, that's right. That's a problem.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll point out that there are two categories. One category is the parents and grandparents. Usually you have the parents, with maybe one parent who is inadmissible and the other who is not. In the economic category, often several people are contributing, with maybe one child who

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it depends on the country. I think a lot of countries are proving to be much more flexible. Canada has to start worrying about the fact that we're competing, and we're going to lose good immigrants.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll send them to you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think what we're seeing—and your case shows this—are a lot of situations where people who have a huge amount to contribute to Canada are not able to do that. Either they can't come because of the medical issues, or they have to spend so much of their time worrying about dealing

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's important to note that this only applies to the social services aspect, not to the medical aspect. If a person is found inadmissible because they're going to cost a lot of money to social services, special education, or respite care, those types of services, then they can pr

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What I'm saying is, given the overall cost of health care, when you're talking about 900 people, which is such a small number of people, even if those people exceed the average cost by double or even triple, when you consider that as.... As you said, if you multiplied 900 by $7,0

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's been an interesting question because, as the treatments for HIV have gone up, it's certainly not a problem that creates any kind of public danger but we do see people refused because the cost of the medication is quite high. People are being refused because the government es

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The point is well taken, in the sense that if we are trying to compete for the most skilled workers but we make it difficult for them to come in by saying that they can't come because someone in their family has some kind of disability, we are not going to be able to get the work

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think probably it's too late to really deal with past cases. They've been refused based upon data we think is inaccurate. We see it in two ways. First of all, the government has to estimate what they think the likely cost will be for the individual who's applying to come to Can

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think that's right. From my experience, it's a very small percentage. People who get medical exams sometimes have conditions. They are required to have them treated, and then once they are treated and people are cleared, they come to Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That used to be the way it was done. For example, Manitoba had a scheme whereby you could pay an amount of money as a bond for future expenditures. That was cancelled. There are ways one could move forward and look for compromises such as people offering to pay bonds or province

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You pointed out the fact that it's such a small number. The cost of medical processing of all of these applications is very high. Each person has to go through a medical check, and then the application is reviewed by a medical officer. To screen out, effectively, 900 applicants,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I agree. In our office we see people with medical issues, such as heart attacks. That's part of it, but many of the cases also involve people who are supposedly mentally disabled in some form or another.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's what I was trying to say. A lot of times we find highly skilled people who are going to make an important contribution, but because one of the members of their family is medically inadmissible, they're not allowed to come into the country at all. We're competing with a lot