The year 2024 ended happily for the family of Tania Rampillon, a citizen of Sainte-Justine-de-Newton who submitted an application to the Government of Canada's Parent and Grandparent Sponsorship Program. Her mother Marithé Rampillon's file was selected in a random draw held in recent months.

This means that the eldest daughter should become a Canadian citizen no later than four years from now, in 2028. Her daughter Tania submitted her mother's sponsorship application in 2016. 

Tania Rampillon has worked at the Coop CSUR in Sainte-Marthe since 2015, and in 2024 started a virtual petition to denounce the selection process for this federal program. At the time, she described it as unfair and unjust. 

“I was very happy to receive the e-mail informing me that my mother's file had been drawn.  In the weeks that followed, I had to provide additional information. In October, I received confirmation that the file had officially entered the follow-up process. Now we just have to wait for it to run its course. The current waiting period is 4 years,” she says on the other end of the phone.  

If his mother's file had not been drawn this year, it would have taken even longer to get everything straightened out. “On Saturday, January 4, 2025, the Government of Canada announced the suspension of the Parents and Grandparents Sponsorship Program until further notice, so that pending files like my mother's could be processed. It will not be possible to submit a file in 2025. So we've been lucky. Will this decision reduce the waiting time and allow my mother to arrive sooner? At the moment, we don't know.” 

Several steps taken since 2016 

It's now almost eight years since Tania began the sponsorship process, filling in and providing all the requested documents.

“It's a complex process that takes a lot of time. The preferred formula for processing files was first come, first served. I sent in my mother's file very early on, so I was quite optimistic. However, one of the forms had been filled in incorrectly, which contributed to my application being rejected out of hand. I started the whole process again in 2017. However, the method of operation for submitting an application had changed,” she said earlier in 2024.  

With the volume of applications too high, the federal government decided to change its strategy. “During the application period, you had to fill out a form that said: I X wish to sponsor X living in X and send it to the government. When the application period closed, a draw was held to determine which files would be processed. My mother's was never lucky enough to be randomly selected in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. Maybe in 2024, it'll be our turn,” she philosophized. 

Since this can be a lengthy process, the federal government has introduced the Super Visa for Parents and Grandparents, which allows the holder to visit their children or grandchildren for five years at a time. “It can be spread over a period of up to ten years. So it seemed like the perfect solution for us. We figured my mother's case would be settled in that time. But that hasn't happened yet,” she adds. 

Right now, Marithé Rampillon is in Quebec on a tourist visa, which means she can't stay longer than six months.

“She had a Super Visa, but it expired at the same time as her passport.She renewed her passport, but at the time, we didn't know that the Super Visa expired at the same time.So she didn't renew it at the same time as her passport.It was only later that we realized that the two were linked. So my mother filled out the paperwork to get a Super Visa again, but to do so she had to give an address in France, which she didn't have.She indicated her address in Quebec, which was not correct.So she had to go back to France for a year and fill out the paperwork again to get a new Super Visa, which will be good for 10 years.At the moment, she's still waiting for this official document.If she doesn't receive it by the end of January, she'll have to go back to France until she does. Then she can come back here until the current process is completed. We hope she won't have to leave us. Claude DeBellefeuille's office is supporting us in the case and putting pressure on the government to get the Super Visa before the end of January.” 

Thereafter, if all goes according to plan, Marithé Rampillon will be able to see her grandchildren grow up without fear of having to return to France, for the rest of her life.