Re: Mauril Bélanger’s illness a cruel twist of fate, Dec. 3.
My family and I owe longtime Ottawa Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger a great debt of gratitude. In 2003 I initiated the process of sponsoring my mother and father, then aged 78 and 82 respectively, to come and live in Ottawa. I was the only sibling who could look after them in their old age.
By March 2004, my parents had completed all the medical tests required by Immigration Canada. By June they should have been notified if they had passed all their medical tests or not. But no news came. By August I had become increasingly worried and tried to contact the Immigration Department at the Canadian Embassies in Caracas and Bogota to find out what was wrong, but my calls were unsuccessful.
November came and in despair I decided to phone the office of Mauril Bélanger, my MP. His assistant listened to the situation and promised to speak to Bélanger to make the necessary inquiries. Later that week, his assistant phoned me to tell me that they had access to my parents’ file and they had discovered a note posted in May requesting one more medical test to rule out any kind of senile dementia or Alzheimer’s. It seems that someone at the Embassy in Caracas had failed to notify my parents about this and therefore their application file had been shelved for more than five months.
I was able to find out the name of the person in charge of the Immigration Department at the Canadian Embassy in Caracas and, with Bélanger’s approval, I wrote him a letter explaining my parents’ application roadblock and Bélanger’s office discovery. This letter was hand delivered by one of my brothers. Twenty-four hours later, Bélanger’s office phoned me to tell me that the wheels of my parents’ immigration process had already been set in motion once more.
My parents finally received their landing immigrant visa in early February 2005 and entered Canada via Toronto on April 8, 2005, one week before their visa was due to expire. Six months later the Canadian government put in place a moratorium on sponsoring parents and grandparents.
My father only lived 4.5 years in Ottawa before passing away, but my mother is still alive and well looked after. Thanks to the good work of Mauril Bélanger and his staff we have been able to take good care of our parents.
I feel helpless to ease Bélanger’s pain, but I can keep him in my prayers and honour him and his work by sharing this letter.
Sonia J. Rajani, Ottawa
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