I thought I would post this little update regarding OHIP coverage for your spouse if he or she lands in Ontario and starts living here before her PR application is approved. I talked about this way back about 20 pages ago in this thread and no one was really sure whether someone waiting for PR approval is eligible for OHIP prior to getting PR approval. So here is what I found out.
Last week I applied for OHIP for my wife. We had been here for 3 months and I relied on a section of the Health Insurance Act which permits people to get OHIP coverage if they have a pending PR application which has not yet been finalized. It's known as Health Insurance Act Regulation 552 section 1.4(5). It provides that you are eligible for OHIP if;
you have submitted an application for permanent residence in Canada, and Citizenship and Immigration Canada has confirmed that you meet the eligibility requirements to apply for permanent residence in Canada
A lot of people on this board and elsewhere have said that this section only applies to inland applicants. That's not correct. Here is what I've learned.
The Service Ontario representative denied my wife coverage under this section. I expected that. I believe they are instructed to do this. If they deny your spouse coverage you will want to get that denial in writing before you leave the Service Ontario Center.
Next, I wrote to the OHIP Eligibility Review Committee (OERC) requesting a review of the Service Ontario representative's decision. You can find the OERC address on the back of the document denying your spouse coverage. The letter explained my wife's PR situation and enclosed the denial document as well as the letter I got from CIC approving me as sponsor.
So, yesterday I got a letter from the OERC enclosing a consent form for my wife to sign which will allow OERC to contact CIC and make inquiries about the status of her PR application. I spoke with the people at OERC by phone and they told me this.
I had always thought that the outland PR process was a two step procedure; sponsorship approval/denial and then PR approval/denial. Apparently that's not true. According to the OERC representative, in outland applications there is an intermediary step that the visa office goes through, behind the scenes, where they take a preliminary look at each application to determine if the applicant "appears" to be eligible for PR. They don't tell the applicant anything about this step. If you appear to meet all the PR requirements your application then moves forward and someone looks at it later in more detail. It seems to be the outland equivalent of an inland first stage approval. If you get interim approval they call you an "AFP", (Applicant For Permanent Residence).
So, as far as OHIP goes, once you sign the consent form allowing the OERC to communicate with CIC, the OERC will send a letter to the visa office where your application is being processed and inquire as to whether you are an "AFP". If CIC confirms that you are an AFP you can get OHIP three months after the date that CIC determined you were AFP. You don't need to wait for the final determination of your PR status.
Hopefully that clarifies matters for anyone who, like me, came to Ontario with his wife before she had PR approval.
