Calgary Will Lawyer on Powers of Attorney and Personal Directives

When it comes to estate planning, it’s good to think of others. But don’t forget yourself. For many, estate planning is about planning for the inevitability of death. On this view, the will is important because it provides for loved ones. People who think this way likely have the foresight to plan for retirement and probably have taken steps to invest in RRSPs, tax free savings accounts, real estate, pension plans, etc. 

However, if you are such a forward thinking person, you should not fail to consider the possibility that you may well live for several years in a state of mental decline. Especially for diligent planners, this may be a tough pill to swallow. Death can be accepted, but the possibility of incompetency may be hard to fathom.

I am of the view that planning for your own mental incompetency is so important that I include two documents - the power of attorney and the personal directive – in my basic estate planning package. Occasionally clients ask me how much it is to do just a will, assuming it is less than the rate for all three documents. I tell them it’s the same price if they also complete the power of attorney and personal directive, so they may as well go with the full package. 

There are plenty of good reasons to do a power of attorney and personal directive when you do your will. In terms of money, these documents may ultimately save your family thousands of dollars. In the event that you didn’t have a financial representative appointed and became incompetent, someone would have to apply to be named your guardian. That would probably involve paying a lawyer and could prove costly for people close to you. If you’ve ever been in the position of looking after a mentally incompetent relative who didn’t have a power of attorney, you’ll know what a nuisance it can be. And if you haven’t prepared a personal directive, family members may disagree about what medical treatment you should receive and could even end up taking those disagreements to court.

I think the big reason for a power of attorney and a personal directive is to protect your quality of life. Most people would want someone responsible, with their best interests at heart, to make financial and medical decisions for them. Ensuring this may take as little as a half an hour to write up a personal directive and a power of attorney. Even if your lawyer, like most lawyers, charges extra for these documents, I would suggest that you can’t put a price on the protection that such documents will provide you at the stage in your life when you find yourself most vulnerable.

Sponsoring Your Family for Immigration in Canada

Options for sponsoring family members to immigrate to Canada have dwindled considerably in recent years. Currently, you can still – in most cases – sponsor spouses and minor children to immigrate to Canada, provided you are a permanent resident of Canada or a Canadian citizen. But in most cases you cannot sponsor siblings, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, and other relatives. 

Worse than that, for the next two years, the Canadian Government has closed the door on new parental sponsorship applications. If you have an existing parental sponsorship application already being processed by the government, you can expect to wait five to ten years for an approval, assuming you obtain an approval. Parents can still be denied entry for health reasons, so an otherwise successful application can be rejected at the last minute due to some illness associated with old age. 

The Canadian Government has announced that special visas will now be available for parents and grandparents applying through the parental sponsorship program. These special visas, however, will only be available to those who can obtain private health insurance. For people with pre-existing health conditions, the cost of such insurance may be so high as to effectively close the door on their chances of entering Canada.

It seemed like a Golden Age of family sponsorship not so long ago. As recently as 2010, the Alberta Government had its own program that allowed family members even to sponsor relatives such as siblings, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews. Now that program is long gone, perhaps never to return. 

Nova Scotia has a family business sponsorship program in which existing Nova Scotia businesses can sponsor family members to come and work. However, though Nova Scotia is in many respects a wonderful place to live, it isn’t exactly an economic powerhouse. Few people would invest the time and money required to move to Nova Scotia and spend years to establish a business just so that a family member could be sponsored. 

If family members have enough money, they can sometimes establish a business in a province such as BC, Manitoba, or New Brunswick, to name a few. The family members can then potentially obtain permanent residency as business immigrants under various provincial immigration programs. 

If your family members are young, it may be worthwhile to have them come and study in Canada. If an international student completes a degree or certificate program, that person is usually eligible to obtain a flexible work permit immediately following completion of the program. And if a family member studies in Canada, that person may later qualify as an immigrant under a program designed for skilled workers or people with Canadian education and work experience.

However, for the sick and the elderly, it may be virtually impossible to obtain permanent residency unless they happen to be extremely wealthy, with a liquid net worth of at least a few million dollars being the minimum requirement. Even then, the Canadian Government currently takes only five hundred passive investor immigrants each year. In July of 2011, on the first day to apply for the investor program, almost 1,500 investor applications were received by the federal government, with most of them coming from China.

As a last resort, there is a program that allows people to apply for permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. This program is often used for family reunification purposes or when the applicant doesn’t quite qualify as a refugee, but has undergone severe hardship in his or her country of origin. Applications under this program have a very low success rate, and I would be extremely hesitant to recommend such an application except in the rarest of circumstances.

Of course, immigration policy can change at a moment’s notice and that the lack of opportunities that currently exist for family sponsorship, in particular parental sponsorship, may give way to a wealth of opportunities in the future. However, the current majority Conservative government has made it consistently clear that government policy going forward will be to favour economic immigrants over family immigrants. Immigration that is perceived as being a drain on the Canadian economy, or on Canadian taxpayers, such as immigration through the sponsorship of parents and grandparents, is likely to be reduced over the coming years. The Conservative government has also taken steps to impede the success of refugee claims, and this too can be seen as being consistent with government policy to promote economic immigration and discourage immigration that may be perceived as being a burden on taxpayers.

So if you want to sponsor family members, look at other less direct options, such as immigration through Canadian education and work experience. And for sponsoring parents and grandparents, be prepared to get your application in early in November of 2013.

Find a Certified Calgary Immigration Lawyer

Canadian employers hiring foreign workers must be careful not to be in violation of Canadian immigration laws. Many employers don’t realize that after they have acquired a foreign worker through a labour market opinion (LMO) that they must then comply with the conditions set out in the LMO or face possible negative repercussions from Service Canada and from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. In fact, a foreign worker obtaining a work permit through an LMO should have conditions of employment that closely match – and ideally should be identical to - those stated in the LMO. Such conditions include, who the employer is, the hours per week of employment, the compensation for employment, the work duties involved in the employment, the title of employment, and the location of employment.

For example, suppose I am an employer who hires a temporary foreign worker to work in one of my Tim Hortons coffee shops. This employee has obtained a work permit that was acquired through an LMO from Service Canada. He is hired as a full time cashier at my downtown Calgary restaurant. According to the LMO, he is to be paid $9.50 per hour and given at least 37.5 hours per week. Obviously, I might expect to get in trouble if I pay this employee $9.00 and drop his work time to 20 hours per week. However, let’s suppose I really value the work that this employee has done at my downtown Calgary Tim Hortons. I am in the process of expanding my business and have recently opened another Tim Hortons in Red Deer, Alberta. While the Calgary Tim Hortons is owned by my company ABC Alberta Inc., the new Red Deer Tim Hortons is owned by another company that I’ve set up, XYZ Alberta Inc. I value this employee’s contributions to my business so much that I am willing to make him a manager and transfer him to my new Red Deer location. As part of the promotion, he is to be paid $18.00 per hour.

As an employer, I might think that I have done nothing wrong here. I haven’t violated provincial employment standards legislation. I am paying the employee a fair wage and maintaining his full time employment, and have even rewarded him for his hard work! What’s wrong with that? Nothing from a moral point of view, but from the point of view of Canadian immigration law, this hypothetical employer is making the mistake that far too many employers make when hiring temporary foreign workers – he’s changing the conditions of employment without the prior approval of the Canadian Government.

Doing so violates Canadian immigration law and could result in the employer being prevented by Service Canada from hiring temporary foreign workers for up to two years. Also, the employer could be published on Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s list of employers who are banned from hiring temporary foreign workers. If this employer relies heavily on the use of temporary foreign workers, as is the case with many Canadian businesses, his business could be in serious jeopardy.

Furthermore, being listed on Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s website as an employer that is prohibited from hiring temporary foreign workers could be embarrassing to say the least, and quite possibly harmful to the employer’s business reputation.

Better safe than sorry. Get prior approval before changing a temporary foreign worker’s conditions of employment, even if for the better.