Just weeks to go before the birth of their second child, a Quebec City couple still doesn’t know if they’ll have to foot the bill.
Noémie Reine and her partner Jérémie Seguin say they are caught in bureaucratic limbo between federal and provincial departments.
A series of delays in renewing Seguin’s work permit has left the couple, 38 weeks pregnant, without Quebec health insurance.
And that could mean a bill of up to $20,000 to deliver the baby in a few weeks.
“It would be catastrophic if the baby is born a bit too early,” Reine said in an interview.
The couple moved to Quebec from their native France three years ago. Seguin had been recruited for a high-demand job in information technology.
In January, months before his work permit expired, he requested a labour market impact assessment with his employer through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which he says the government failed to provide.
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This assessment determines whether an employer needs to hire a foreign worker for a position, and is mandatory to renew his permit.
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.
The couple finally received the missing assessment document, and Ottawa approved Seguin’s work permit at the end of July.
But Seguin’s status on the federal website has not been updated. And in the meantime, officials at the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ) — Quebec’s health insurance board — revoked their access to provincial health insurance, retroactive to June. Because Reine’s permit is tied to her partner’s, she also lost her health coverage.
The couple received a written document Wednesday confirming Seguin’s permit was renewed, but so far, there’s been no update to Reine’s status, meaning she can’t ask the RAMQ to reinstate her coverage.
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.
“The agent on the phone told us everything was in order,” Seguin said.
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.
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’d been living in Canada.
“It’s stress, it’s risks [for the baby],” Reine says.
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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.
They say “when 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.”
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.
The family’s lawyer, Frédérik Perron-Deschênes, says the couple is not alone in this situation.
“These situations are now very regular,” Perron-Deschênes says.
The immigration lawyer says “in the past year, the delays for workers to receive their market assessment has gone from two to six months on average.”
Perron-Deschênes says she currently has several cases involving people waiting for the labour market impact assessment files from the federal government.
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.
“It doesn’t just affect the worker and the company, but the whole family,” she said.
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In a written statement, Employment and Social Development Canada says the government tries to process market assessment applications quickly.
On the federal government’s website, the average processing time for the applications varies between nine and 99 days.
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.
