Employment Minster Jason Kenney’s latest target for overhauling the temporary foreign workers program could be live-in caregivers, but critics say the group is being unfairly targeted.
Kenney said the live-in caregiver program has seen a "huge surge of applications" in recent months as foreign workers look for opportunities to achieve permanent resident status, and he suggested many are being hired by relatives in Canada.
"A very significant number of the participants in that program apparently were actually coming to work, ostensibly, for relatives -- somewhere around half of the participants," he told reporters at a skills summit in Toronto on Wednesday.
Kenney is looking to cut down on the number of live-in caregivers who come to work in Canada, then end up staying once they get permanent resident status.
Toronto immigration lawyer Chantal Desloges said Kenney has not stated what specific changes he'll make to the live-in caregiver program, but suggested he's coming at the issue from the wrong angle.
"I find this really puzzling," she told CTV's Power Play on Wednesday. "This is a program that's been there for years. Nobody is complaining about this program."
The live-in caregiver program currently requires foreign nannies to work in Canada for two years before they can apply for permanent resident status. Workers are allowed to change employers, but they must stay in the live-in caregiver program and are required to live with whichever family employs them.
Kenney recently included Canada's live-in caregiver program in his plans to tighten restrictions on the wider TFW program. His goal, he said, is to force businesses to hire Canadians first, which he hopes will cut down on Canada's reliance on TFWs for low-wage jobs. It will also reduce the number of TFWs who stay in Canada long enough to earn permanent resident status -- something many live-in caregivers from countries like the Philippines hope to achieve.
"Whenever someone comes to Canada visiting on a (work) visa… they sign the form saying that they do not intend to permanently reside in Canada. So we take them at their word," Kenney said. He added that TFWs who earn permanent residency are on the rise and taking up a greater percentage of Canada's population than in years past -- a trend he wants to halt. "Eighty per cent of Canadians tell us they think immigration levels should not be raised from where they currently are," he added.
Kenney said he wants to find a better way to distribute jobs so more Canadians can find work.
"We have a paradox in Canada of too many people without jobs, and jobs without people," he said.
But Desloges said Canadians simply don't want to do the work that live-in caregivers sign up for. Most Canadians would prefer to trust their children to nannies they know, Desloges said. But since Canadians don't want those jobs, parents must turn to foreign workers from countries like the Philippines. "This is not a program where it's taking jobs away from Canadians who desperately want to change diapers or live in someone's home for a couple of years. There's a demonstrated need," she said.
Desloges said any changes Kenney makes should target employer abuse – not the relatively low number of live-in caregivers transitioning to permanent residency. In the past year, Desloges estimates only 9,000 of approximately 250,000 permanent resident applications came from live-in caregivers.
(Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada)
University of Toronto professor Audrey Macklin, who specializes in human rights law, echoed Desloge's sentiments, saying Kenney may be targeting the wrong aspects of the foreign nanny service.
"There are various problems with the live-in caregiver program. It's not clear what the government has identified as a problem, or what kind of solution it thinks ought to provide for those problems," she told CTV News on Wednesday.
Live-in caregivers are more vulnerable to abuse because they are required to live with their employers, Macklin said. That can lead to overlong work days and underpayment. Macklin said there are also illegal recruitment agencies in foreign countries that take a percentage of caregivers' wages, making life more difficult for those workers.
Macklin said live-in caregivers look after Canadians' families so they can get a chance to bring their own families to Canada. "It's unclear why that would be characterized as a problem, because of course, that's something that all permanent residents are entitled to do, and indeed, family reunification is a cornerstone of Canadian immigration policy because we consider it important that families be able to live together," she said.
"It seems to me only fair and just that, at some point, they be entitled to re-unite with their own families and live together."
Macklin suggest a number of possible changes that Kenney might consider, including making the live-in requirement optional and reducing the mandatory two-year work requirement.
"It's not clear whether the government thinks any of those are concerns that it wants to respond to," she said.
Last week, Kenney told CTV's Question Period that his plan will be a "top-to-bottom" overhaul of the controversial TFW program. He spoke of a number of changes aimed at low-skill foreign workers and fast food industry employers, but did not get into specifics about the live-in caregiver program.
