Live-In Caregiver Program -- Good Enough to Work, Good Enough to Stay!Caregivers have long declared that if they are Good Enough to Work, they are Good Enough to Stay! They demand landed status upon arrival and to be treated as equal members of the Canadian polity with their rights respected and not abused. Within this broad demand they want an open permit so they are able to find other work and not be tied to one employer and constantly face the threat of deportation.
Government programs aimed at importing a workforce to work as domestics have succeeded one another since the mid-1950s. Tens of thousands of workers originating mainly from the Caribbean until the mid-1980s, and later from the Philippines, have been forced to abide by conditions akin to indentured labour. This includes live-in provisions at the employer's residence and all that may imply in terms of time worked, work relationships, living conditions, isolation, abuse, and distance and separation from family members and their communities and society generally. Many women from the Caribbean as well as from the Philippines who have worked in Canada as domestic workers were and are highly educated, with some of them trained teachers, nurses and administrators. They seek work in Canada because of the economic conditions in their own country where they are unable to find work or properly care for their families. Many who complete their training in the Philippines as teachers and nurses are then forced to work for some time as volunteers before being able to find work, if at all. Recruiters actively seek out these workers. Coming to Canada for many women includes the hope of providing a better future for their children. The majority send money home for family members. A problem for these workers after coming to Canada is to be accepted as permanent residents. Under some programs, they are not even able to apply for permanent residency while working in Canada. This becomes a major problem as they must return home to apply without any guarantee of being accepted and no possibility to appeal a denial.
A requirement of the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), introduced in 1992, is that workers have to reside at their Canadian employer's home for a minimum period of two years before applying for permanent residency. In Canada, in 2010, over 35,000 workers were forced to live at their work premises. The LCP also requires workers to undergo extensive study sessions before acceptance for work in Canada with some applicants forced to undergo a training program in the Philippines at their own cost. The education requirement at the time was raised to that of a grade twelve Canadian equivalent. In the Philippines, normal high-school leaving is grade 10 so workers are forced to pay for additional studies as well as the training program. Prospective employers have to complete a Labour Market Impact Assessment stating they are unable to find Canadians to do the work. The fee for this assessment is $1,000 but waived for prospective employers earning $150,000 or less. Very often, women from the Philippines go through agencies to obtain work in Canada. The agencies charge somewhere in the vicinity of $3,000 to $4,000 to find a job for migrant workers. Sometimes, by the time workers arrive in Canada where they are supposed to work for two years before applying for permanent residency, the job they were supposedly hired for is no longer available. They then have to find other work very quickly with another Labour Market Impact Assessment having to be done. This creates problems for them as they become undocumented and find themselves at the mercy of various state forces and private agencies. The Harper government gave its rationale for the LCP in 2009: "The live-in requirement is a vital component of the LCP, given the continuing shortage of caregivers in Canada willing to live in the home of those they are caring for. There may be enough caregivers in Canada to satisfy labour market needs related to live-out care. Should the live-in requirement be eliminated, there would likely be no need to hire TFWs [temporary foreign workers]." As stated, the live-in requirement was clearly and openly directed at migrant domestic workers, as workers in Canada mostly refuse to abide by such a demand. The Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse condemned the obligation on the grounds it breaches human rights considered fundamental, creating systemic discrimination. The International Labour Organization also opposes the requirement.
The Harper government made changes to the LCP in 2014, which then became the Canada Caregivers Program (CCP). The CCP was introduced as a 5-year pilot program with two streams and ends November 2019. Thus far, the Trudeau government has said only that it is evaluating the pilot project. The 2014 reform made the "live-in" aspect of the program optional with "employers now unable to dock expenses for room and board from a worker's compensation." However, the reality of low pay and sending money home means many migrant caregivers find it impossible to live outside the employer's premises. The government also created two new categories for caregivers working in Canada on temporary work permits and seeking permanent residence. One pathway to permanent residence is for childcare providers. The other is for caregivers taking care of the elderly or those with chronic medical needs. The second pathway is a direct appeal to migrant registered nurses, practical nurses, nurses' aides and orderlies. Significantly, the Canadian government and employers are directly poaching skilled workers from an underdeveloped country without directly compensating that country for the value it expended in training those workers. The two categories divide the program into skilled and low-skilled workers. With regard to the more highly skilled stream, the government is now appealing explicitly to have nurses, registered practical nurses, and other trained migrants apply for the program, which offers higher wages, and promises an easier passage to permanent residency and family reunification.
The change in 2014 concerned the removal of the live-in requirement but not the abolition of such an arrangement in spite of the well documented negative effects on working conditions and relationships. Domestic labour in private homes remains a sub-regime within the federal labour laws. In accordance with ILO Convention 189, if the employer and the worker both agree, the worker can live with the employer. The live-in status is thus left to an arrangement between a Canadian employer and a migrant domestic worker. The migrant worker remains under the obligation to complete the required 24 months of full-time work before applying for permanent residence with their work permit still tied to a specific employer and all the difficulties that may entail. At the time of the changes brought in by Harper, the
process
to acquire permanent residence took three years plus the two
years of prior work. Minimally, migrant caregivers could be
separated from their children and spouses for five years and possibly
more. Even after receiving permanent residency, workers have to
apply to the family reunification program and prove they are able
to provide for family members after their arrival in Canada. In February of this year, live-in caregivers and those assisting them in their fight for their rights succeeded in having some changes made to the LCP that favour these workers and their families. The Trudeau government announced two five-year pilot programs that it says will "allow caregivers to come to Canada together with their family and provide a pathway to permanent residence." The pilot projects are said to provide "Open work permits for spouses/common-law partners and study permits for dependent children, to allow the caregiver's family to accompany them to Canada." The government also stated that these workers will also be given "greater flexibility to change jobs quickly." These measures only address future workers, not the thousands who are already in Canada, some of whom were not properly informed that their work and positions would not provide them a means to achieve permanent residency. To that end, the government also announced a three-month window, from March 4 to June 4 of this year, called the "Interim Pathway for Caregivers" through which current live-in caregivers may apply for permanent residency with criteria modified from that of the current programs.[3] Notes1. From 1868 until the
1930s, 100,000 children were sent from Great Britain to Canada as cheap
labour. Two-thirds of them were under the age of 14, many who had been
taken by the state as "Home Children" when their parents would or could
no longer take care of them. Thousands of these boys were sent to work
as indentured labour on Manitoba farms. Their minimal wages were given
to the agencies responsible for their trafficking. Some were forced to
sleep in barns, others were beaten. One of these farms was the Barnardo
Industrial Farm near Russell, Manitoba, named after Dr. Thomas
Barnardo, who in the name of high ideals founded an organization that
pioneered the trafficking of these British youth to Canada. An
estimated 50 agencies were involved in this labour trafficking scheme
to send children to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 2. From Summary, PINAY Submission
for the Universal Periodic
Review on Canada.
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For over a century, Canada
has been importing a workforce from
other countries to work as "domestics." In the beginning, the
workforce hailed mainly from Britain, including many "Barnardo
Boys,"[
While working in Canada,
caregivers
pay taxes and contribute
to the Canada Pension Plan as well as Employment Insurance but
with little possibility to use those programs when needed. This
arises from restrictions deliberately put in place but also
workers' fear that receiving government entitlements will go
against them in their application for permanent residency.
PINAY, the Filipino Women's
Organization in Quebec, describes
the work relations of live-in caregivers as personal dependencies
where workers are trapped in situations similar to slavery. PINAY
has long demanded the removal of the live-in requirement: "Due in
part to the fact that the domestic work is carried out in private
residences and to the LCP's strict requirement of the caregiver
to live-in with their employer, LICs [live-in caregivers] are at
an increased risk of exploitation, harassment and abuse within
their workplace. The structure of the LCP creates the conditions
for vulnerability, trafficking and forced labour experienced by
various caregivers. It is essential to either abandon the live-in
requirement or at least to make it optional, so that this
exploitation may be addressed, and human rights abuses may be
avoided."[
The lower skilled category
has
permanent residency dependent on the migrant workers' level of
education, age, years of work experience and language proficiency,
making it harder to obtain. The Harper government also placed a cap on
each of the two categories, for an allocation of 2,750 workers in each
stream.