labour market impact assessment<\/a> with his employer through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which he says the government failed to provide.<\/p>\nThis assessment determines whether an employer needs to hire a foreign worker for a position, and is mandatory to renew his permit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, after months of waiting, his permit was officially revoked on June 19. The federal government said they could not renew his permit because Seguin had not provided the required documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The couple finally received the missing assessment document, and Ottawa approved Seguin\u2019s work permit at the end of July.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Seguin\u2019s status on the federal website has not been updated. And in the meantime, officials at the R\u00e9gie de l’assurance maladie du Qu\u00e9bec (RAMQ) \u2014 Quebec\u2019s health insurance board \u2014 revoked their access to provincial health insurance, retroactive to June. Because Reine’s permit is tied to her partner\u2019s, she also lost her health coverage.<\/p>\n
The couple received a written document Wednesday confirming Seguin\u2019s permit was renewed, but so far, there\u2019s been no update to Reine\u2019s status, meaning she can\u2019t ask the RAMQ to reinstate her coverage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Quebec’s insurance board says delays can happen<\/p>\n
Despite previous assurances their coverage was maintained, Quebec’s insurance board has now asked the couple to retroactively pay for follow up appointments, ER visits and ultrasounds as of June.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe agent on the phone told us everything was in order,\u201d Seguin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He says the RAMQ had confirmed twice in the past months that their insurance was maintained while they waited for word on the work permit renewal.<\/p>\n
Returning to France is not an option, given the pregnancy is near the end. And they would not have been covered there either as they\u2019d been living in Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s stress, it\u2019s risks [for the baby],\u201d Reine says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a written statement, the RAMQ acknowledges there may be a delay between the moment a work permit is revoked, and when the RAMQ is informed, resulting in the insurance coverage being revoked retroactively.<\/p>\n
They say \u201cwhen a person can demonstrate they are waiting for a decision on their work permit renewal, their eligibility generally continues until they receive the official response.” <\/p>\n
The insurance board encourages the parents to contact them as soon as possible, with a confirmation of their permit renewal, to avoid additional processing delays.<\/p>\n
Immigration lawyer says situation increasingly common<\/p>\n
The family’s lawyer, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9rik Perron-Desch\u00eanes, says the couple is not alone in this situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese situations are now very regular,\u201d Perron-Desch\u00eanes says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The immigration lawyer says \u201cin the past year, the delays for workers to receive their market assessment has gone from two to six months on average.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perron-Desch\u00eanes says she currently has several cases involving people waiting for the labour market impact assessment files from the federal government.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The situation can create pitfalls for families. For example, when young children are involved, they may have to leave during the school year or not start on time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn’t just affect the worker and the company, but the whole family,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In a written statement, Employment and Social Development Canada says the government tries to process market assessment applications quickly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the federal government’s website, the average processing time for the applications varies between nine and 99 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The couple says their goal now is to ensure their little girl is born healthy. And they hope the bureaucratic process moves fast enough to restore their coverage before the baby arrives, sparing them thousands of dollars in medical bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-847650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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