More information on birth tourism in Canada following the release of Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s recent consultations with Canadians on the issue, and in the context of the government considering changes to the current policy of granting citizenship automatically to people born in Canada.
While the press account still lacks hard numbers in terms of percentage of births, the range of comments and anecdotes suggests that the numbers are largely than expected, with the practice extending to more communities.
Still find it surprising, given the sophistication of some of our provincial medicare systems, that no harder data available. After all, we know the total number of births (377,636 in 2011), government medicare billing systems should be able to isolate those births paid by provincial plans, and provincial public servants should be able to provide some analysis behind the different categories of births not paid by medicare (e.g., births within the 3 month waiting period for provincial medicare coverage).
‘Birth tourists’ believed to be using Canada’s citizenship laws as back door into the West | National Post.
