Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for that question. That is such a hot-button issue here. Indeed, we have a kind of bias toward this nuclear family, which might represent my cultural space, but it doesn't necessarily represent many of the spaces of the people I work with, globally. In fact, when you

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. The case studies you'll hear from our colleagues in the field would say that. Now, I just said, of course, that you want a larger matrix of individuals in the child's family, in the child's home. What grandparents do, perhaps uniquely, is in terms of culture. They co

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If we're talking about the parents, I might defer more to my colleagues in Calgary. My focus is much more on when the kids get up to about age 24, and of course their families, and specifically on that. I can speak well to them in terms of, for instance, the continuity in langu

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. What's interesting as the conversation roles out here is we hear numbers, but I think both of us, without having prepared our remarks in advance, are really saying something more along the lines of some analysis of the vulnerability of families or the benefits that they wo

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the reports and, if I could defer again, the stories we're hearing from the direct field.... I'm conscious of my role as a researcher, but if I defer to my colleagues who are in the service-providing organizations, we know there's this bump in all kinds of different capit

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not hearing anyone raise that this is a security issue, yet it's a bureaucratic processing issue. It just strikes me as profoundly odd that for some reason, this has become so.... You had the example of that one missing piece of paper. I've heard stories like this. I think al

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I guess I was inspired, if I could, by what Canada just did with the refugees. Now, I understand that it was a huge financial investment. I'm not naive about that, but what struck me was that there was a moment in time when Canada processed.... It was not only in late 2015 and ea

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I'd be curious to know, when you came to Canada, how old were your parents when they came over?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They were 62, so they were actually—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  So they were older. My sense is that many immigrants are arriving with their parents, whom they want to bring in, actually. If the process were quicker, they would be coming in during much more productive years, when retirement is not imminent, but it's the delay of the process..

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Do you want it from the field?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would just add, coming from Nova Scotia, that the same themes appear there, and I'll just echo the same thing about this idea of cultural brokers and family navigators to link people. This myth that they stay with the settlement organizations long term is actually not true. The

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. At the end of the day, we have to understand the cultural meanings of what family reunification and indeed what family means. As we know, even within the mosaic of our own country of people who are already here, what a family is and who is important to completing one'

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thanks very much for this opportunity. I'm going to build on some of the comments my colleagues just made. As a researcher, I'd like to introduce to the committee a frame of reference to make the decisions, which are obviously very complex and have long-term ramifications, as w