Unwanted Additional Burdens

"Parliament has become increasingly concerned about the shift to the public treasury of a significant portion of the cost of supporting sponsored relatives. Family reunification is based on the essential condition that in exchange for admission to this country the needs of the immigrant will be looked after by the sponsor, not by the public purse. Sponsors undertake these obligations in writing. They understand or ought to understand from the outset that default may have serious financial consequences for them." Justice Ian Binnie, Supreme Court of Canada

Yes, Canada is a great country. Yes, Canada stands prepared to share its multitudinous opportunities for personal advancement, its good fortune, resource endowments, fair and equitable society, system of justice and good governance with other citizens of the world, to enable them to become Canadian citizens.

With the thought and the intention that this represents an opportunity to be pursued that will be of mutual benefit. To the country and the would-be migrant, both.

Canada has an enviable reputation as a great place to live, and indeed it is a well-deserved reputation. Canada also has - but does not boast of - an unwilling reputation as a country easy to get into and one well worth the effort because of all the social services and life-enhancing modes of assistance available to landed immigrants.

Ideally, Canada would like to invite and to make place for, those wishing to emigrate from their home countries to make a new place for themselves and their families within Canada with the intention of integrating, conforming and respecting the culture and social systems that prevail.

In making itself available as a destination of choice and bearing in mind the need, Canada has a significant family reunification program. In the interests in ensuring that those who become settled as landed immigrants may be entitled to sponsor close family members to join them in Canada, as a humanitarian gesture.

But those who are entitled to sponsor family members understand, because it forms an integral part of the contract, that they must be responsible financially for the support of any additional members of their family whom they undertake to sponsor. This is not negotiable. It is not an optional responsibility.

Despite which, many sponsoring family members into the country seem not to take this responsibility as seriously as they should. It's easy to feel quickly entitled to special treatment. For it is special, to have medical and hospital treatment under a universal program, and it is special for social and welfare services to be available.

And so, if all these benefits are 'free' (paid for by others who are gainfully employed and who pay on behalf of those who cannot, through taxes) bring it on, bring it all on, the more the better. From those who covertly come in as immigrants and have multiple wives, placing them on welfare rolls, to those whose plans go awry when the spouses they sponsor have different plans on arrival.

The court challenge brought by eight sponsors who contested the Government of Canada, and whom a number of immigration and refugee support organizations supported because they thought it unfair that they have been charged with refunding the provincial and federal governments for outlays in social support for family members whom they sponsored, has been roundly rejected by Canada's Supreme Court.

This is not optional. This is a formal agreement signed by the sponsors, as a requirement to enable them to sponsor family members. That those same sponsors now claim they cannot be responsible for the financial support of family and that the government, through the expenditure of tax-payer funding should pick up the tab is illegal and unacceptable.

That their plans went awry, and for whatever reason those of their families whom they decided to sponsor did not sufficiently appreciate their efforts on behalf of reunification once they became landed immigrants, is their problem to solve, not the country's. Their lack of personal fortune cannot be paid for by taxpayers. They took a calculated chance, not the taxpayer.

"The court is sending an unequivocal, clear and loud message that it will not allow the taxpayers to shoulder the burden of those who have acted carelessly or obliviously to the responsibility of fulfilling the terms of a sponsorship for a relative."

And so it must. It may be at the discretion of the government agency involved whether terms can be worked out for repayment, but those who have committed to a legal contract and they entrusted to respect their part of the bargain, must demonstrate that respect in the only acceptable way. To be a responsible citizen of the country requires that they behave responsibly and pay their own way.

And for those who deliberately gain entry to the country by being sponsored, with no intention of honouring an agreement with those who sponsored them, but use it as a conduit to their future, and as landed immigrants themselves draw upon the benefits of the social safety net, there should be an amendment to existing laws to deport them from whence they came.