Taking Grandchild to Canada for holiday

[dradford]

Hello,

I'm hoping someone might have information on this- I've checked with a couple of visa services, but didn't get much further than the "give me 10,000Bht and we can start the visa application" phase. I thought I would do some research first so I know if this is even possible.

Here is the situation in brief:

-Thai wife and I have been legally married for about 2 years

-She has been to Canada once on holiday with me (no problems getting visa)

-She has legal custody of her grandchild and he lives with us (the other grandparents (fathers parents) refused to return him to us or the mother and so we all went to court, court decided that my wife was the only fit guardian).

-Mother and Father are not (never) married and not together. Father is on bith cert, but has not gone through the legal process to get rights.

-He is about 17 months old

-Mother willing to sign consent form to take child out of Thailand for holiday

-I am not the biological grandfather, nor is there any paperwork describing me a guardian or anything like that.

We would like to Canada on holiday (maybe one month) and want to bring him with us. One we'd miss him if we didn't, two we (obviously) don't trust the other grandparents, and three the mother is 19 and very immature and completely incapable of taking care of him properly. There are some other family options, but while they are nice people, they are very much stereotypical rural Thais (strawberry pop in the milk bottle, TV on 24/7, kids can do whatever they want until they get a smack across the head, etc). So, we really want to bring him with us.

Any advice, experiences, etc would be appreciated. Thank you.