Canadians-Of-Convenience

Snow blankets the North Shore Mountains behind Vancouver -- Jenelle Schneider, PNG

Canadians-Of-Convenience

"Winters in Canada are pretty harsh, we all know that, and cost of living is cheaper abroad. Unless there is some mechanism for enforcement, the damage could be substantial for the provincial coffers."
Sergio Karas, Toronto immigration lawyer

"With the current pressures facing our health-care system we need to be sure our resources are focused on eligible residents."
Kristy Anderson, B.C. Health Ministry

 

Local youngsters were Wednesday taking advantage of the white stuff at Diefenbaker hill in Tsawwassen.

Photograph by: Chung Chow, Delta Optimist

- See more at: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Photos+Snow+falls+Vancouver/5997138/story.html#sthash.GC1ZUxfd.dpuf

The federal government a year ago cut back the full range of medical and hospital services on the Canadian taxpayer's dime to those within Canada who represent failed refugee status. A basic type of medical service, however, remains available. There is the additional issue of those who, having secured landed immigrant or/and citizenship status using the country as a convenient back-stop of utilitarian use when emergencies arise.

And then there are people like Savyed Geissah and Souad Khalaf, who emigrated from the Middle East to Canada in 1994, becoming eligible for medicare three months later. In due course, they applied for and received Canadian citizenship. Their sons long since moved from Canada to Egypt, Dubai and Qatar leaving their parents to visit them. Their claim is that they spend six months of the year visiting their children and grandchildren.

And they can't understand what all the fuss is about, causing the government of British Columbia to balk at paying their medical bills. Like most provinces B.C. requires that patients spend at least six months a year in the jurisdiction to enable them to claim benefits from medicare. The government insists the pair had lived most of the past several years in the Middle East, rendering them ineligible to claim for medical coverage back in Canada.

The husband and wife argue their Canadian citizenship entitles them to reside wherever they wish to locate. They argue that B.C.'s medicare agency cannot force them to live in Canada where, they say, it is too expensive for them to live. The Court of Appeal ruled in a judgement this month that the province had acted legally in retroactively stripping them of coverage for a 9-month period.

Millions of Canadians live in other countries. This, being the first time that Canadian courts have ruled on medicare eligibility through residence laws, there are far broader ramifications when this is viewed as a test case, a precedent under which all other, future similar cases will be judged. The case study yardstick has been achieved.

An investigation had been launched by the B.C. Health Ministry in 2011. When asked, the couple refused to provide records of their travels. The department concluded the timing of their health-care claims suggested that they hadn't lived in the province for years. After which British Columbia's Medical Services commission ruled them to be ineligible for coverage from December 2001 to July 2010. No effort to seek repayment from them has been made.

Among the arguments that Mr. Geissah and Ms. Khalaf have advanced is a failure on the part of the government to prove they were not residents. In support of their claim that they were, they pointed out they received Old Age Security from the federal government, proving, they claim, residency. Furthermore, they said, "the citizenship ceremony granted them the right to live anywhere", and it was "illegal to force them to reside in Canada when they cannot afford to do so".

Justice David Frankel stated: "I find no merits in any of the arguments."

Living in the most weather-moderate part of Canada is expensive. An alternate option is to live elsewhere in Canada, where winters truly can be miserably oppressive, but living costs are far more modest. Those choices did not appear appealing to the pair, evidently. So the question remains: why migrate to Canada to begin with?

The Asia-Pacific Foundation in their 2009 report estimated that 2.8-million Canadian passport-holders live outside Canada, roughly a million in the United States, with smaller numbers in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, China and Australia. And, of course, throughout the Middle East, as well.

Famously, the Government of Canada expended millions 'rescuing' Lebanese Canadians from Lebanon during the Israel-Hezbollah war, to bring them to safety and security in Canada. Only to see those rescued speedily return to their permanent residence in Lebanon when hostilities ceased.

An illustration of Canadians-of-convenience; people migrating to Canada to seek its easy citizenship and accruing all the benefits pertaining thereto, who end up living their lives in their home countries, until events overtake them that leads them to urge they be rescued by a Canadian government willing to accede to its responsibilities to its citizens.