Yes, increased maneuverability and redundancy are the main benefits of this layout. Another is a wider possible range of the center of gravity.
In the video linked in your questionFederico's comment you can see that the canards reach high negative deflection angles in high-alfa attitudes: This means they will still operate in attached flow when wing and tail are already fully stalled. A canard-less airplane would only have thrust vectoring for control in this situation. Also noticeable in the video is the negative static stability which becomes evident in the lively elevator movements during the landing approach towards the end of the video. When you need agile pitch controls for artificial stability, it helps to have a second pair of them in highly dynamic maneuvers. The small size of the canards might be misleading: Since they will affect the flow over the inner wing, they are quite effective and powerful control surfaces.
A multirole, long-range aircraft will have to deal with a wide variety of ordnance and fuel loads, so the addition of canards will allow to trim a wider range of c.g. positions. Without them, some load configurations, and consequently some missions, might not be possible.