Citizenship and Immigration committee  I definitely see the situations you've just spoken of, in which parents and grandparents make a huge contribution to child care, but also to cooking at home and having meals ready, given the long hours that many parents are working. Our notion of lifespan now is to 100, and we're

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The three-year delay obviously poses hardships on families. A lot happens in three years. The families who are here are working and participating in our economy, and that's how they are able to apply for sponsorship. Again, I emphasize that the cost of living here is not the sam

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I should also mention that in the delays in the sponsorship process, reading the application guidelines, many families early on think that because the process is tentatively approved, they do their medicals. We've seen that many families have had to do double medicals because the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  May I expand on that one, just a bit?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I've seen cases where people were eligible to do a family sponsorship, and when the income level changed, they were no longer eligible, so although they had been in the queue, they were then out of the queue. At the same time, in one particular sponsorship case, the people they

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's not so much the application fees. I'm not referring to the application fees as much as to the minimum income level cut-off because obviously, the cost of supporting three family members in Vancouver or in Toronto is very different from the cost of supporting three family mem

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Obviously, when people are coming in as refugees, their concerns about family reunification are very pressing, and they are concerned about the well-being of their families. Every day I have three or four different people coming to my office asking what can happen with their fami

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The point made by the previous speaker about the denial of temporary visas when people are in process for sponsorship is a further hardship upon the relationship and upon the family. We've seen cases where relationships haven't survived when later sponsorship did happen. It's ver

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's just an example, but I think we need to look at those timelines. If we can do express entry for economic immigrants, we can do express entry for family class.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We do reflect the differentiation from government-assisted refugees. Rather than having one national cookie cutter, we really need to look at the cost of living in each region of Canada. We also know that there's higher retention for newcomers in New Brunswick who are family cla

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good afternoon. My name is Lisa Bamford De Gante. I'm the executive director of the Multicultural Association of Fredericton Incorporated. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the pressing issue of family reunification. I have witnessed and experienced the i