[Flash Walken]

Speaking of the migration aspect:

Health ministry investigators are aware of more than two dozen so-called birth houses in B.C. offering pregnant foreign mothers temporary room and board before and after giving birth in local hospitals, according to Freedom of Information documents obtained by Postmedia.

The baby houses, as they are called in Asia, are used by women seeking instant Canadian citizenship for their newborns.

The internal briefing document, titled Birth by Non-B.C. Residents, was created in response to a Vancouver Sun story last year about the three-fold increase since 2009 of non-resident births.

A department in Victoria called the Audit and Investigations Branch, Eligibility, Compliance and Enforcement Unit (ECEU) knows about 26 private residences offering hospitality services to foreign pregnant women. It said the residences are used by two groups.

The first includes those in Canada on a temporary resident document, such as a tourist visa, work or study permit. They come to deliver a baby “who by birth is then granted Canadian citizenship status.” They do not access Medical Services Plan-funded benefits and “they declare themselves as self-pay at hospitals and to doctors.”

The second category includes permanent residents properly enrolled in MSP, but at some point cease to meet the definition under the Medicare Protection Act. They return to their country of origin but remain enrolled in the MSP. They then return to B.C. to have a baby and since they still have MSP coverage, bills related to the mother and baby are billed to the plan. They stay long enough to obtain a birth certificate, a Canadian passport and enrolment in MSP for the baby before returning to their country of origin.

The ECEU conducts regular reviews of individuals who cease to meet the definition of a resident under the Medicare Protection Act, according to the documents. The next paragraphs were censored by government for fear of harm to law enforcement. The documents say the cost of non-resident births was $693,869.20 in the 2014-2015 fiscal year:

“The health authorities recover approximately 50 per cent of their amount outstanding, Pharmacare and MSP costs are recovered by the Ministry of Finance.”

Investigators have found no evidence of “forged or counterfeit” Care Cards or B.C. Services Cards, nor did they find evidence to warrant a referral to law enforcement.

Earlier this month, Postmedia reported 295 of the 1,938 babies born at Richmond Hospital for the year ended March 31 were delivered to foreign Chinese mothers. According to the documents, the number of non-resident births at Richmond Hospital “increased dramatically” beginning in 2011. Non-resident births at hospitals in the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) region account for 1.5 per cent of births, according to confidential briefing notes, but at the Richmond Hospital, they accounted for 15.22 per cent, based on the latest fiscal year statistics.

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-n...om-china-booms