Filipiniana News - Rhyme or
Reason
15 March 2009
It is with deep sadness that we learned
about the recent passing away of Juana Tejada, the Filipina caregiver diagnosed
with cancer who was initially refused permanent residence in Canada because her
illness will cause an excessive demand on the Canadian system. A few days after Ms. Tejada’s death, the
Toronto Star published a series of investigative articles on the unscrupulous
practices of immigration consultants who prey on the desperation of mostly
Filipina caregivers to enter and eventually obtain permanent residence in
Canada. What struck me most about the
article was the fact that government agents, particularly those from the Canada
Border Services Agency, admitted knowing
about these illegal activities and the fact that they have a list of known
agencies who perpetrate various types of fraud against the caregivers. Despite this knowledge, the government does
not appear to be taking any aggressive steps towards stopping these illegal
activities. Instead, the CBSA officers
simply punish the victimized caregivers by refusing to issue work permits and
immediately removing them from Canada.
The guilty agents (recruiters and/or purported employers) on the other
hand, are not held liable for their illegal acts. As a result, the exploitation continues as
more prospective caregivers end up getting prejudiced not only by the
exploiters’ heartless misdeeds, but also by the government’s indifference
towards upholding justice and fairness in these situations.
Caregiver advocates therefore conclude that
it is time to aggressively push for reforms to the Live-in Caregiver Program
(LCP). I totally agree. However, we also have to ensure that these
reform initiatives will not end up as being token gestures because they fail to
dig deeper into the systemic issues that have long plagued this controversial
program.
First of all, the Live-in Caregiver Program
should be strictly enforced to be just that – a program to provide caregiving
duties to children, the elderly or disabled.
It is technically not a domestic worker program or worse, a license to
conduct modern-day slavery. As we all
know, despite the provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act
and Regulations limiting the function of the caregivers to taking care
of children, the elderly or the disabled, a vast majority of employers require
their “caregivers” to perform substantial household chores such as cleaning,
cooking, washing clothes and dishes, shoveling snow, washing vehicles, serving
their guests during lavish house parties or even staffing their business and
cleaning their relatives’ and friends’ houses, ON TOP of their caregiving
duties. The caregivers are often required
to work long hours with no overtime pay.
They are often deprived of private living quarters, are forced to eat
food they do not like, or refused proper breaks or vacation and sick
leaves. The tales of excessive hardship
and abuse of LCP workers are endless.
Why, one may wonder, would these caregivers
choose to endure these clear violations of their most basic human rights
instead of reporting them to the authorities?
There are various complex reasons.
First, the LCP itself is deeply flawed.
These flaws are a reflection of the skewed mentality behind the creation
of the LCP vis-a-vis the immigration system.
Among others, the program was created mainly as an economic strategy,
without a full and proper review of its social implications. It preys on the LCP participants’ vulnerability
and desperation to obtain permanent residence in Canada. Second, the government lacks the political
will to effectively implement all relevant laws that will protect the rights of
the caregivers. Third, there is no
proper coordination between the relevant federal and provincial government
agencies with respect to enforcing all relevant laws and regulations.
A major overhaul of the LCP’s policy
framework and specific provisions is long overdue. The perennial argument that there is
currently a great demand for live-in caregivers (hence the need for the LCP) is
based on the fact that the employers, recruitment agencies and others concerned
are taking advantage of the loopholes in the program. There is a demand because they are able to
freely exploit the caregivers with the legal sanction of the LCP. If the government is more diligent in
prosecuting the unscrupulous practices and more vigilant in protecting
caregivers’ rights, there could arguably be a reduced demand because of the
reduced opportunity to exploit other people’s desperation to enter in, work and
become permanent residents of Canada.
Where the demand will likely increase is for the government to provide
broader caregiving services such as a universal daycare system, as well as
increased funding for elderly and disabled care. Since these are much more costly programs,
the government is obviously choosing the easier alternative without a proper
consideration of its moral and human rights obligations.
One of the main objectionable features of
the LCP is the mandatory requirement for the caregiver to live-in with the
employer. This requirement gives rise to
numerous problematic situations and makes the LCP extremely conducive to
exploitation. By its very nature, the
live-in requirement makes it almost impossible to properly enforce the labour
code provisions on hours of work, overtime pay, working conditions, vacation
and sick leaves, etc.. Since the
caregiver is also living in the workplace, there will often be a blurring of
lines between what is considered “work” and what is not. The extensive discussions and analyses on the
valuation of household work in feminist, labour and human rights literature are
clearly applicable in this context. This
is mainly why the LCP should be strictly treated as a “caregiving” program, in
the same way that the jobs of nurses, personal support workers and other
live-out caregivers are treated and valued.
If the employer will require additional services such as cleaning,
cooking, etc. then they should either hire other workers to do the job or
properly compensate the caregivers for these extra duties, in accordance with
applicable laws and regulations.
Another major problem with the LCP is the
discrimination arising from the fact that nearly 90% or a vast majority of the
participants of the program are women from the Philippines who have left their
own families behind to take care of other people’s families. It is a truly sad commentary of the current
state of Philippine affairs that its highly-educated citizens would choose to
leave their families behind and endure exploitative working conditions just to
earn more money and support their families.
However, the Canadian government which introduced the LCP is equally
guilty in that it is taking advantage of this sad state of Philippine affairs
by allowing a deeply-flawed program to exploit its participants and mask what
is actually a form of modern-day slavery.
The stereotyping that results from this statistical reality is also
greatly contributing to the vulnerability of these workers. If the LCP’s objectionable features are
removed and the government effectively monitors its proper implementation, then
it is possible that prospective caregivers from other countries will also
become interested in joining the program instead of simply attracting workers
from a poverty-stricken country like the Philippines.
There is a need to fully support the call
for specific and concrete changes to the LCP which admittedly, will be more
practical and perhaps quicker to implement for being more politically
acceptable to those in power. Hopefully,
these changes will also encourage the caregivers to more actively report abuses
instead of simply enduring the exploitative practices in exchange for the
promise of permanent residence for themselves and their families.
These proposed changes to the LCP include
the Juana Tejada law which calls for the exclusion of LCP participants from
medical inadmissibility based on excessive demand; the removal of the second medical examination
requirement; the provincial medical
health coverage for LCP open work permit holders; the granting of province-wide or open work
permits, instead of employer-specific work permits; the expeditious processing of work permit
extensions and permanent resident applications;
the removal of the mandatory live-in requirement; the granting of open work permits and study
permits to family members from the outset to avoid prolonged family
separation; to name a few of the
existing proposals. However, without a
clear recognition of the value of the work that caregivers provide and a strong
political will to protect and promote the basic human rights of these
vulnerable workers, then any changes that will be introduced will not be truly
effective in eradicating the exploitation that these caregivers have long
endured.
If the Canadian government is truly intent
on pursuing its proud tradition of upholding human rights for all, then a
serious overhaul of the LCP is an absolute imperative.
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