OCASI Calls for a Thorough Reform of the Live-In Caregivers Program

OCASI Calls for a Thorough Reform of the Live-In Caregivers Program

For a number of years, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants has drawn the government and the public’s attention to the abuses facing immigrant women who come to this country under the Live-In Caregivers Program. In the context of the current media attention given to these matters the Council renews its call for the effective protection of live-in caregivers’ rights. As well, we reiterate our call for a fairer, faster path for them to access permanent resident status in Canada.

Under the Live-In Caregivers Program, the federal government allows people to apply for permanent resident status after three years in Canada, provided they can prove having worked for 24 months during that period. Under such conditions, thousands of newcomer women are submitted to overexploitation and numerous forms of abuse (including, in some cases, sexual abuse) and extortion at the hands of employers. The women are rendered vulnerable through threats and intimidation about getting deported.

OCASI reaffirms that the solution to such problems should be a full reform of the program. The reform should include effective protections for live-in caregivers so they can enjoy their workers’ and human rights just like anyone else in Canada. This would require close cooperation between federal departments, and with provincial governments. The solution should also include the ability to apply for permanent residence status as soon as they arrive in Canada. The combined effect of such measures would be that newcomer women working as live-in caregivers would not feel vulnerable nor be forced to put up with years of abuse in order to get permanent status in Canada.

From temporary to permanent: building a country, integrating immigrants

The experience of immigrant women with the live-in caregivers program highlights the situation of racialized newcomer women in Canada under temporary visa arrangements. A wide range of abuses and breaches of contract have been detected in several sectors that employ women as temporary workers, including for instance the hotel industry.

Access to permanent residence in Canada after being a temporary worker is uneven for different categories or groups of people. The newly created Canadian Experience Class (CEC) makes permanent residence available for temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in the National Occupations Classification (NOC) categories “0” (management), “A” (university-level training) and “B” (college-level training), but leaves out temporary workers who fall under categories “C” and “D” (which include work requiring less or no training). While 50% of men who are currently temporary workers in Canada are within categories 0, A or B, only 20% of female TFWs in Canada are within those categories. That means that 4 out of every 5 women TFWs currently in Canada will not benefit from the CEC. OCASI also points to the need for further analysis of access to permanent residence through the CEC according to country of origin, which would yield a picture of differential access along race lines.

OCASI restates that Canada’s immigration programs should favour permanent instead of temporary status. Permanent status is the only way to ensure that the people we bring here to help build this country can live just, healthy lives, which is the only means to have healthy, prosperous communities, and optimum labour market, economic, social and cultural outcomes for Canada. The current overt emphasis the federal government is putting on temporary visa arrangements works against such objectives.

Rethinking IRPA for coherence with its central values and goals

In recent years, the country has witnessed a rocketing expansion of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, the increased recourse to the Provincial Nominee Program, the introduction of the Canadian Experience Class and the failures of the Live-In Caregivers Program. With the proliferation of programs and measures that skirt the main avenues within the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), Canada’s immigration strategy increasingly looks like a series of exceptions built around the rule. The shortcomings, unfairness and dysfunctional ways in which many of these programs work have lead to the growth of the non-status population in Canada. And all these populations – former and current temporary workers, rejected refugee claimants that never had access to their legal right to an appeal based on the merits of their case, and other people without a full status – all of these populations are actually needed on a permanent basis in communities across the country.

OCASI believes there is an urgent need to rethink our immigration legislation with a view to ensuring that the central values and objectives in Canada’s immigration vision are upheld and met: to build the future of this country through immigration, with a serious commitment to give permanent residents and eventual citizens all they need to become full, equal participants in all aspects of this country’s life. Such rethinking should be guided by a commitment to gender-justice and anti-racism, so that racialized immigrants, including racialized newcomer women like the live-in caregivers are actually brought here for the good reasons and are integrated to Canadian society in a fair, equitable and accomplished manner.