Citizenship and Immigration committee  We do have a culture in which we talk about looking after your elder parents.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My opinion would be that there needs to be a shift away from the burden on the sponsor. The sponsors could say their parents don't want to live with them, and they're not responsible. They'll go to social assistance, so that's going to ultimately come down on the government, and

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I just want to add that in terms of genuine marriages, I don't have my paper with me, but there was an article written in the Toronto Star, which talked about the removal of the conditional permanent residence. It's a government study and I guess they addressed it saying tha

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My experience is that a majority of the marriages are genuine. I have seen quite a few abuse situations. Those are the ones they question, and that's okay. You can do a question on those, because those people may have, for whatever reason, never reported on time, and that's fine.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For parents and grandparents, I would say 12 months, because they are not in Canada. For whatever reason, it takes 51 months or 36 months. I'm just throwing this number out there, because I think 12 months is something I can live with. I sponsored my own mom, and it took me three

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I do agree, and in England, they have a provision just for that. Maybe we should look at England. England has a provision that if there is no one else in your home country to look after your elder, then you can sponsor them. There are some ways of looking at it. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There was a paper put out in February 2014 by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. I'm going to refer to it because I thought it was a very well written paper on parents and grandparents. It said that they made a considerable social, cultural, and economic contribution. I'll jus

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Right. My statement goes back to that. These parents and grandparents also provide the cultural and moral support that families need when they move to a new country.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I'm in favour of the LICO because I think it shifts the burden away from the Government of Canada, but I think the processing time is an issue. Grandparents are not young; they're very old. If you're going to wait five to seven years to process them, they could die in that

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. I'm going to go to citizenship. Here I just wanted to touch upon the fact that Canada has the highest naturalization in the world for citizenship. It's 86% of permanent residents who become citizens, which means that a lot of people want to become Canadian citizens, but th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think to educate the officers would be one recommendation. I'm Indian, and India is a huge country. I'm from a place called Goa, which was a Catholic Portuguese colony. The majority of the people used to be Catholic, but people look at you...and in north India we have Punjabi,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I welcome this opportunity to speak to you today. I have been practising immigration law for a little over 10 years. I find it quite ironic that they are talking about permanent residence and family reunification today. I came across an article in the Toronto Star

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's correct.