Filipiniana News - Rhyme or Reason
April 2010
Nearly four
months after Minister Jason Kenney’s announcement in December 2009 regarding
the changes to the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), Citizenship and Immigration
Canada (CIC) finally released the implementing guidelines for these changes
which took effect on April 1, 2010. A
summary of these guidelines follow.
Administrative Changes
The following
changes affect the processing of LCP work permit applications where the related
applications for a labour market opinion (LMO) are received by Service Canada
on or after April 1, 2010. These
changes mainly pertain to the additional requirements in the signed employment
contracts between the live-in caregivers and their employers. Under these changes, the prospective
employers must agree to pay for the following benefits in favor of their
prospective caregivers:
·
transportation to Canada from the live-in
caregiver’s country of permanent residence or their country of habitual
residence to the location of work in Canada
·
medical insurance coverage provided from the
date of the live-in caregiver’s arrival until he or she is eligible for
provincial health insurance
·
workplace safety insurance coverage for the
duration of employment and
·
all recruitment fees, including any amounts
payable to a third-party recruiter or agents hired by the employer that would
otherwise have been charged to the live-in caregiver.
In addition to the old requirement of
specifying the job duties, hours of work, wages, accommodation arrangements
(including room and board), holiday and sick leave entitlements, LCP contracts
are now required to include provisions on termination and resignation terms.
The CIC and Service Canada websites provide a new sample contract for this
purpose which outlines the above requirements in great detail.
Regulatory Changes
The regulatory
changes on the other hand, mainly pertain to two aspects of the LCP permanent
residence application: the medical examination and employment
requirements.
A. Removal of
the Second Medical Examination
The new
regulations provide that those who will or have applied for their initial LCP
work permits (from a visa office outside of Canada) will, as a rule, not
anymore be required to undergo a second medical examination. Instead, the medical examination conducted
when caregivers apply for their initial LCP work permits will become more
extensive in that it will include not only an examination of health condition
that could pose a risk to Canadian society but also that which could
potentially trigger an excessive demand on health and social services in
Canada.
However, it must
also be noted that: “Officers retain the discretion to request a
medical examination at the application for permanent residence stage….
Instructions regarding the basis for requesting medical examinations at the
application for permanent residence stage over the longer term will follow.
These instructions will be designed to ensure that, over the long term, such
requests will be rare and the exception to the rule.” (Operational
Bulletin 192, 1 April 2010)
In the event that a live-in caregiver is
required to undergo a second medical examination as part of the LCP permanent
residence application, and it appears that the medical examination results
could lead to a refusal of the application, “officers are encouraged to
take a generous view” of requests for exemption from inadmissibility or written
requests for consideration on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
B. Extension of
LCP Employment Period to Four Years and 3,900 Hours
The second
regulatory change is two-fold: a) live-in caregivers now have four years
(instead of three) within which to complete the two years of full time
caregiving employment within a Canadian household; and that
b) the two-year full time caregiving requirement can now be met by
proving either 24 months of full–time live-in caregiving work or 3,900 hours of
live-in caregiving work within a minimum period of 22 months (but which may
include only a maximum of 390 hours of overtime work).
If the caregiver chooses to satisfy the
employment requirement by proving 3,900 hours of live-in caregiving work, the
following documentary requirements must be submitted with their LCP permanent
residence applications: a) timesheets
signed by current and previous employers clearly indicating the date and number
of hours worked for all overtime hours claimed; and b) the new Live-in
Caregiver Employer Declaration of Hours Worked (IMM 5634) form completed
and signed by current and previous employers.
Implementation and Continued Advocacy
While these changes will surely benefit
many LCP participants, it remains to be seen if these will indeed result in
reducing if not eradicating the problems arising from this program. As is well known, strict enforcement of
well-meaning legal reforms is often an entirely different story. .
Since the LCP work permits are still
employer-specific, the caregivers’ immigration status still conditional and precarious,
and their dependents remain subject to criminal and medical checks at the PR
application stage, I can already foresee the many issues which may still arise despite these changes. Although a request for humanitarian and
compassionate consideration is one possible remedy to address issues that were
not anticipated by these changes, the final decision on such requests is still
discretionary hence still quite unpredictable.
Therefore, even as we are very grateful
for these recent changes, more work needs to be done in terms of achieving
comprehensive, meaningful and lasting reforms for the long disadvantaged
caregivers.
The author is
an immigration lawyer in Toronto and may be reached at
mdsantos@osgoode.yorku.ca.
Comments
Post a Comment