Reuniting Immigrant Families in Canada : Parent/Grandparent Reunification

Grace Sorenson is among thousands of immigrants hoping to sponsor parents or grandparents to live in Canada permanently. Starting today, they can fill out an online form to express interest in the program. (Submitted by Grace Sorenson)

All ten provinces and three Territories in Canada struggle with sky-high health-care costs. Canada's population is greying, and older people invariably have a heavier load on the health-care system. At the same time the younger demographic of working adults is lower now, with the post-WW2 baby-boom generation reaching into their senior years. At least 40 percent and more of any provincial and territorial operating costs is tied up in support of provincial/territorial health care. It is not the federal government that is responsible for health care, it is the provinces/territories.

But it is the federal government that is responsible for immigration. That's their baileywick. True, there are taxation-funding transfers from the federal government to the provinces to help support health-care costs, but it is the province/territories that struggle to balance the medical/hospitalization needs of their residents. The Canadian elderly demographic who worked all their lives, paid their taxes and now draw more heavily on the system expect that Canada's universal health care will look after them in their old age and growing infirmity.

Canada, like all other wealthy, advanced and educated societies, has seen its birthrate fall ... and fall ... and fall even more. There are now more deaths than births in Canada due to natural causes. Apart from the current situation with COVID-19, there are jobs in the country that go unclaimed, particularly in the trades, in agriculture and in service groups. Orderly immigration is seen as a solution for much of this. People from all over the world are eager to come to an advanced nation where peace reigns and opportunities for work and a secure family life can be found.

Canada absorbs roughly a third of a million immigrants yearly. Mind-boggling to think of accommodating that many new residents each and every year. For the first decade of immigrant life in Canada social services are drawn upon, creating stresses. Apart from the need for more housing, for language training and for financial support in some instances, as with refugees of whom Canada also takes in its share as a wealthy nation. All of which create strains on already-overworked social programs meant to benefit those who need a helping hand.

Over 60 percent of Canada's immigration intake tend to choose large cities to live in, and for new immigrants that percentage is 70 percent. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are the three most popular cities for immigrants to choose to live in. Their arrivals strain municipal services of every kind, but Canada views this as a net positive for the future. A future of a growing workforce for whom through their taxes services will expand. Back to medical/hospital needs for a population; costly but somehow manageable. Even as wait times for elective surgery lag, and hospital admissions at any given time see many hospitals over 100 percent capacity. 

Health services have been under financial strain for many years. In this time of COVID-19 the situation has been exacerbated. And it is difficult to know how long this will last, even if a way is found to control the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Take Alberta, suffering an economic downturn resulting from a drop in revenues from their traditional source; the oil patch. With an operating budged over $20 billion, health care accounting for 42 percent of government spending annually, cuts in health care spending have just been announced which will result in 11,000 lost jobs over the next few years in the health field.

So, where is all this going? Downhill. The current government operates an immigration 'lottery' system of first-come, first-served for family reunification, the sponsoring by the immigrant population in Canada of their foreign-resident parents and grandparents to bid online for permanent resident status. This year an estimated ten thousand will be chosen randomly to be granted that coveted status. After all, isn't it a good thing for a wealthy nation to open its doors to family reunification? Look at it this way, most years that number is 20,000 applications being accepted.

COVID this year has placed a temporary crimp on the numbers, but there are plans to next year raise the number to 30,000 to compensate for halving the accepted applications this year. How many parents and grandparents of working-age immigrants in Canada from abroad can speak English? How many will be in a position to find employment and care for themselves? In the elder age group they represent as parents of grown, working-age children, and grandparents, their health-care needs will be large. How will an overstrained Canadian health-care system manage those needs?

An overstrained medical system which is what Canada is currently struggling with, will become utterly unsustainable with an influx of tens of thousands of elderly immigrants year after year. Canadians who have lived all their lives in Canada, working as adults into their elder years and paying taxes to support the medical/hospital infrastructure will have to compete for services with foreign counterparts who have never worked in Canada all the long years of their work-productive lives nor paid taxes in support of the services they will, on immigration, draw on. 

The analysis of the federal government itself indicates that parents and grandparents of immigrants tend to be at the lower end of the income ladder following a decade in Canada; less likely to become active participants in the labour force, less likely to integrate and more likely to have higher social costs. It makes eminently good sense for immigrants to be able to sponsor immediate family members such as spouses, partners and dependent children, less so for parents and grandparents.

Although sponsors are required to prove they have sufficient income to support the people they will be financially responsible for, that support does not include medical costs. A 2015 study of health care costs in Ontario in the last year of life indicates a cost over $50,000 per person. Unsurprisingly, reunification is a really big hit with the immigrant population. Why would it not be? It's a basic human need to care for one's near relatives. For the governing party, it's also a vote-winner, among very critical voting blocs in Canada's large, voting-influential cities.

Alex Konstantinovski is hoping to sponsor his mother Svitlana Konstantinovska, who is now living in Ukraine. (Submitted by Alex Konstantinovski)