PGP - New Interest to Sponsor Form - Reopen??
- Thread starter kashifaziz
- Start date
No-one knows. A couple of years means likely after the next election, and sure, you can expect some change. Whether that would be positive or negative (from your perspective) is anyone's guess.
In the meantime, you can look at and consider the SuperVisa program.
Given various pressures (economy/housing/healthcare), there is very little likelihood that you can count upon your chances of being able to sponsor parents as PRs in the next 'couple of years.' (Note, I'm saying sponsor, finishing the sponsorship process and having them arrive will take longer). That doesn't mean the chances are zero, just that you cannot count upon it. In my opinion only.
I think I have said this before but I will say it again. The timing of announcing what they are doing this year is very different from the past few years (i.e. doing it before June vs. in late Q3 to Q4 time). It may be something, it may be nothing, but I suspect IRCC will do something the PGP late this year in prep for next year. For those who suspect that IRCC may do another draw from the 2020 pool by end of year 2024, I think it's highly unlikely because it would go against their new PR target set for 2024.
Now what may IRCC be doing? Who knows. I hope it's going to be them reopening the pool again, but that's probably an optimistic thought. And if they are reopening the pool, I hope there are more restrictions in place to filter out the fake interests and so on.
Another thing about random thoughts is, what about allowing the provincial governments to take on health insurances for supervisa holders? Speaking of personal experience, one of the reasons why supervisa doesn't sound great is because the health insurance providers are very hard to deal with. They would happily take your money, but if you want to claim for anything, good luck with that. I feel like the provinces can consider to open this up as a separate program with a cost to the supervisa holders, it can cost just as much or even more than private providers, but at least there will be a peace of mind that there won't be a horrendous claiming process after.
Now what may IRCC be doing? Who knows. I hope it's going to be them reopening the pool again, but that's probably an optimistic thought. And if they are reopening the pool, I hope there are more restrictions in place to filter out the fake interests and so on.
Another thing about random thoughts is, what about allowing the provincial governments to take on health insurances for supervisa holders? Speaking of personal experience, one of the reasons why supervisa doesn't sound great is because the health insurance providers are very hard to deal with. They would happily take your money, but if you want to claim for anything, good luck with that. I feel like the provinces can consider to open this up as a separate program with a cost to the supervisa holders, it can cost just as much or even more than private providers, but at least there will be a peace of mind that there won't be a horrendous claiming process after.
The provinces are never going to become an insurance agency. Why would they want to take on that liability? Any parent visiting needs to realize that they are only taking out 100k of emergency travel insurance. This was never supposed to replace routine care or longterm care of a chronic issue. The purpose was to stabilize and allow parent to return home to receive care.
ah...no, there are a few provinces that provide auto insurance, so it's not an absolute no. And just like any insurance plans, there's a policy that can limit on what type of coverage is there, just so then things like long term care and chronic illness may or may not be covered depending on the coverage. The provincial coverage can 100% be the same as the travel health insurance coverage, however the private companies would make it extremely difficult to claim even for one single walk-in clinic service, or make sure no more doctor visits are allowed. That's the point I am trying to get to.
Paul Krugman famously describes the US government as an insurance company with an army* - by which he mostly meant that the US budget is mostly comprised of social insurance (social security), medical insurance (medicare etc), and, well, the army.
All Western democracies have large insurance operations - whether they recognize them as such or not. (Probably true of most or all other countries, too - I'm not sure).
* I just checked this quote, only to see the ever-batshit crazy WSJ editorial page has recently appropriated it - in a negative way - to push whatever right-wing nonsense they're on about this time around. I guess they think that Krugman said it so long ago they can pretend it never happened and that they're saying something original.
Notwithstanding my comment above, doesn't mean it's going to happen. Not because there's anything fundamentally wrong with the idea, but rather because "limiting what coverage" applies is going to be a huge issue. They don't need the hassle, the political hassle, because everyone who's annoyed that their parents weren't covered will whinge about that, too.
What would make sense is for the (federal) government to define a simple 'menu' and service standard for what's covered and let the private companies do that. But it would still likely fall apart in implementation - govt would do a bad job policing it because low priority, AND because the provinces can't even get any service standards functioning under the provincial plans (at present). But it should be possible.
That is for it’s for taxpayers not for visitors. Why would the government want to get involved with dealing travel insurance for visitors to Canada? It is a huge hassle that doesn’t even affect their own taxpayers. Just like Canadians going abroad visitors have to deal with the hassles of travel health insurance. If you are trying to file a claim for a walk-in clinic you have bigger issues. It doesn’t make sense to claim and risk higher premiums the next year. Make a large claim and you may not get supervisa insurance the next year.
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Almost impossible to define covered medical issues there are just too many options. Polices spell out what would not be covered and defined as a preexisting condition and state that it is emergency care coverage. Also covers repatriation I believe. The goal of these policies are not to treat longterm health issues or they would be even more expensive. Many don’t read the policies in detail.
That's pretty much exactly what I said. The policies provided by the government can have the exact coverage as the private ones, i.e. no pre-existing conditions, long term care etc. The key issue with the private ones are they are notoriously difficult for claiming even just for a $60 walk-in clinic visit, when they have no issue asking for more than $1k a year for the policy.
You do realize that a supervisa holder isn't simply a visitor right? To be eligible there needs to be a PR or citizen to sponsor them and the requirements for the sponsors are ironically very similar to PGP. And for those health insurance policies, just tie them to the sponsors who are PRs or citizens. And regarding the claiming amount, it can be easily mitigated by just adding a deductible to the policy.
I agree the federal government can introduce a standard for the policies and let private (or in some cases provincial health agencies, depending if the province is interested of course) to use as a guideline. I think policing is actually easier than you may think, as long as the standard is set to be the minimum requirements and anything additional is up to the insurance provider to price.
But we can spitball anything we want and it wouldn't matter because when does the government actually do anything people want.
Write to your MP. Get the ball rolling. They may not always do what people want, but sometimes they do, and sometimes that even overlaps with what is needed.
In my experience, less crazy proposals get more attention than the unrealistic, eg 'please let everyone bring their parents here tomorrow.'
The issue is that a supervisa is a simple visitor visa it just allows you to visit longer than 6 months but because seniors have a higher risk of needing emergency medical care and there was an issue with parents coming to visit Canada without health insurance it became a requirement. The requirements to get a supervisa are minimal and income requirements are incredibly low. The requirements are similar to qualify because supervisa was meant to appease PRs and citizens who weren’t qualifying for PGP. Most PRs and citizens are paying for their parents’ supervisa insurance so already tied to them. An insurance policy has to be tied to the person who it covers not another individual. In terms of deductible how are you expecting people to pay a 10k deductible on often a relatively low salary. Most struggle to afford the 1-2k/yr for supervisa insurance so having to pay out of pocket will just leave more unpaid bills for the hospital to try to collect and you would still have to deal with insurance companies if you got over the deductible amount.
There is no way taxpayers are going to want to dedicate resources to manage supervisa insurance. Most Canadians don’t even know the supervisa exists and would be outraged that seniors could visit for 5-7 years placing more strain on healthcare resources.
You are over simplifying how private health insurance operated. There is a lot of work/workers to run a company to handle traveler health insurance. It's complex to calculate the deductible and the premium to make sure it covers the cost. I don't think citizens/PRs would want government to run this kind of service.