Article content

The Province newspaper may have been the first Canadian media outlet to refer to “astronaut” families.

It was 1989. The archived story explained how wealthy businessmen in Hong Kong were adopting a trans-national lifestyle in which they flew back and forth, working in Asia and visiting family in Canada.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Douglas Todd: New tax approaches to the 'astronaut' phenomenon Back to video

Since then Canadians have become familiar with astronaut families, in which fathers (usually) obtain permanent resident status for their spouse and children in Canada and then return to their homeland to make money.

In the past three decades, hundreds of thousands of such astronaut families have grown into a kind of global elite, with some family members holding passports from two or even three countries. Along with Hong Kong, they now include people from Taiwan, France, Britain, India, Iran and especially China.

Astronaut families, which academics also call “circular migrants,” have had a huge affect on neighbourhoods and schools in Toronto, Montreal and particularly Metro Vancouver.