THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AFFAIRS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, February 15, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met with videoconference this day at 4 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on such issues as may arise from time to time relating to social affairs, science and technology generally.
Senator Ratna Omidvar (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: My name is Ratna Omidvar. I am a senator from Ontario, and I am chair of this committee.
I would like to begin by going around the table and ask my colleagues to introduce themselves, starting with the deputy chair of the committee.
Senator Bovey: I’m Patricia Bovey, a senator from Manitoba.
Senator R. Patterson: I’m Rebecca Patterson from Ontario.
Senator Kutcher: Stan Kutcher from Nouvelle-Écosse.
Senator Moodie: Rosemary Moodie from Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc, Quebec.
Senator Mégie: Marie-Françoise Mégie, Quebec.
[English]
Senator Dasko: Donna Dasko, a senator from Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Verner: Josée Verner, Quebec.
[English]
The Chair: Today we continue our study on Canada’s temporary and migrant labour force.
Our first panel is one witness in person and another on video conference. In person, we welcome Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier, Executive Director of the Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers, and by video conference we have Syed Hussan, Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
Thank you to both our witnesses for being with us today. We will begin with your opening statements. I remind you, please, that you have five minutes for your statements, which we will follow up with questions. Ms. Depatie-Pelletier, the floor is yours.
Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier M.Sc., LL.D., Executive Director, Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers: Dear members of the Senate Social Affairs Committee, thank you for inviting me to attend today’s meeting.
[Translation]
I’m Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier, Executive Director of the Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers and Doctor of Law, but also an adjunct professor in the Department of Geography at Université Laval in Quebec City. I’ve been studying migrant and temporary labour for over 20 years. I will speak to you in English given the interest shown in your work by various partners in Australia, Mexico, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.
[English]
Canada has a long history of using immigration policy to consolidate its labour force. This includes admitting workers and their families with permanent status, allowing them to work for any employer in Canada, to leave and return to the country, settle, if they wish and, after a certain time, become citizens. We also admit foreign workers on open work permits, which equally provides a right to work for practically any employer in the country.
However, at an increasing rate, the federal government facilitates the admission of workers on employer-tied work authorizations, making the right to legally work in Canada conditional on a relationship with a sponsoring specific employer. For many of these workers, no access or very exceptional access to permanent status keeps them in a perpetual state of dependency on their employer in order to maintain their right to legal employment in Canada. The imposition of employer-tied work permits and other similar federal measures negates the worker’s right to work for any other employer, undermining the worker’s capacity to resign, refuse unsafe work, assert their rights and seek justice in cases of violations.
This, as already confirmed by American jurisprudence, places the worker in a legal condition of servitude. Scientific evidence confirms that employer-tied work authorizations restrict workers’ physical liberty and are associated with higher risks of employer abuse, wage theft, psychological, physical and sexual harassment, assault, rape, debt bondage, human trafficking, as well as work-related illnesses, accidents and death. In fact, such legal status for migrant workers was characterized as a modern form of slavery in a 2006 unanimous decision by the Supreme Court of Israel.
The Canadian government has attempted to address the high risk of abuse through increased employer requirements, recruitment regulation, greater oversight over work contracts and legal information initiatives. These efforts systematically fail, unsurprisingly so, since the subordinate legal status that prevents, in the first place, migrant workers from asserting their rights remains enforced. Band-Aid solutions cannot mitigate the state-increased risk of rights violations inherent in a system where, as a general rule, the right to change employers is negated. The current situation is at odds with how Canada defines itself — as a free and democratic society founded on a principle of human dignity and equality. Furthermore, by removing competitiveness between employers, this unfree labour regime places a downward pressure on wages and work conditions within the affected sectors for all workers, including citizens. Righting this wrong cannot be achieved by tinkering at the edges of the problem.
At a minimum, Canada must abolish all employer-tying measures and emancipate the labour force currently unfree in the country. How would that be accomplished? It would require replacing employer-tied authorizations with open work permits. The hiring permits currently granted to specific employers or to specific groups of employers would be replaced by the establishment of annual skill quotas, based on provincial labour shortage assessments, to fix the numbers and skill of the foreign workers to be sponsored by the federal government. The international recruitment, placement and integration of workers must be accomplished through bilateral government services, state-funded community integration and micro-loan programs. This would minimize the high risk of abusive practices and debt bondage associated with recruitment industries dominated by private actors. With these reforms, Canada would achieve the objective of its foreign worker programs without severely compromising the fundamental rights of migrants, nor consolidating a growing underclass of unfree workers in the country.
Furthermore, to respect the fundamental rights to psychological integrity, we must automatically issue open work and study permits to the spouses and children of all workers, ensure that our programs stop destroying families and children and recognize the basic human principle of the family unit. In addition, since meaningful access to justice requires permanent legal status, workers must be provided upon arrival with independent access to permanent legal status.
Finally, an ongoing universal regularization procedure would be mandatory, as individuals with temporary permits systematically lose their legal status, often because of employer negligence or bad faith, fraudulent immigration consultants, if not because of illness, accident or pregnancy.
More details on the human rights issues associated with the current regime, and the necessary reforms will be included in a memo prepared by our organization for the committee’s attention. Thank you for your interest in these essential matters.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Depatie-Pelletier.
We will move on to you, Mr. Hassan, please, for your remarks.
Syed Hussan, Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change: Thank you so much for inviting me to speak here. I’m here on behalf of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, which is a membership-based body of migrant farm workers, international students, domestic workers, refugees and undocumented residents. I was asked to focus my remarks on the care economy, which is what I’ll do.
We have 2,065 members who are temporary foreign workers in the various caregiver streams who are predominantly from Indonesia, Philippines, India and the Caribbean countries. About half of the membership takes care of children, and the other half takes care of the sick and the elderly. In addition, we have 4,689 members who are refugee claimants or are undocumented who work in long-term care or other residential care facilities. They are primarily from Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, as well as from many other countries. This membership attends monthly meetings, gives direction about polls and surveys as well as focus groups, and they all participate in public activities. Our priorities and strategies are voted on by the membership, so my remarks today represent the experiences and demands of 6,754 migrant members of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
First, let me start with migrant care workers and the temporary foreign worker program. In a recent survey, 48% of the care workers reported working long hours of work, ranging from 10 to 12 hours a day, sometimes six or seven days per week. About 40% of the workers reported not being paid for the extra hours of work, averaging out to $6,552 stolen in wages over the previous six-month period. That’s about $12,000 a year per worker being stolen. One in three of the respondents reported being forbidden by the employers to leave the house, take public transit, send remittances home, visit doctors or meet with friends or family members in the country.
More than one in three lost their jobs or were fired during COVID-19 because their employer either lost income or they were working from home and, in some cases, employers died. When migrant care workers lose their jobs, they also become homeless. They don’t have access to health care, there’s no income support and they have to then find a new employer for an employer-dependent work permit to complete the 24-month work experience that is required. If they can’t do that, they become undocumented.
Nearly 60% of the respondents identified being worried about not being able to fulfill the 24-month requirement to apply for permanent residency. Over 30% could not secure the high English language score that is required for permanent residency or get an accreditation for one year of post-secondary education, which is another requirement for permanent resident status.
Let me now turn to refugee and undocumented health care workers. About 19.5% of our current membership, or 4,689 members, are personal support workers; 17% are direct hires at long-term care homes; 35% are working at long-term care homes via temporary health agencies; and 26% are working in other residential care facilities taking care youth, people with disabilities or people with addictions. As of February 2023, our members worked for a median of 13 months in these facilities, which means they turned to these jobs during COVID-19 because Canadian citizen workers and permanent residents left those jobs during the massive outbreaks in residential care facilities.
On average, our members have been in the country for 51 months. Many of them are undocumented. The median wage of our members is $18 per hour; however, over 40% of them reported stolen wages, particularly for unpaid overtime. Our members have been and still are the front lines of health care. These are the aides, nurses, orderlies, cooks, cleaners and support staff in residential care facilities where citizens and permanent residents have exited following massive outbreaks.
The central demand for both of these sections of our membership is full and permanent immigration status for all and landed status now. All migrants in Canada, including those that have become undocumented, should be granted permanent resident status immediately. All migrant care workers arriving in Canada in the future should do so with permanent resident status.
On December 16, 2021, Prime Minister Trudeau promised a regularization program which means permanent resident status for undocumented residents. While we have participated in many meetings with the appropriate government bodies, no program has been created since. Migrants who may be given permanent residence tomorrow may continue to be wrenched apart from their families and continue to be deported today. I’m happy to share more details about regularization later in the discussion period.
Permanent resident status must be understood as the mechanism through which all other rights are accessed. It is only with permanent resident status that migrants can protect themselves against labour exploitation, have the power to leave a bad job or make a complaint without fear of reprisal. Permanent resident status allows access to essential health care services and allows for family reunification. Permanent residency will allow workers to move into health care, where workers are sorely needed.
As an interim measure for migrant workers in the so-called Home Child Care Provider Pilot and Home Support Worker Pilot, there must be some interim measure changes, which includes the removal of the one-year post-secondary education requirement, the high English language scores that exceed that for Canadian citizenship, the 2,750 cap, and the job offer letter should also be removed. I can explain more about why we ask for these demands in the discussion session.
Thank you so much. I look forward to our conversation.
The Chair: Thank you to both our witnesses for your remarks.
We will now turn to questions. I have a long list of senators waiting to ask questions. I would remind you that you have five minutes, colleagues, for your questions. The shorter the question, the longer the answer.
Before asking questions, may I request members and witnesses in the room to please refrain from leaning in too closely to the microphone, or remove your ear piece when you do so. This will avoid any sound feedback that could negatively impact the committee staff.
The first question is from Senator Pat Bovey, deputy chair of our committee.
Senator Bovey: I’d like to thank both our presenters. You gave us a lot of information to mull over and consider.
I’m going to focus my questions on the migrant caregivers, if I may. You both mentioned rights. I’ve got a few questions. Are there still caregivers entering Canada under what might be considered now defunct programs? When caregivers get here, how are they told of their rights? Once here, who enforces their housing standards if they’re live-in caregivers?
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: I will start, maybe, and then Mr. Hussan can continue.
Officially, there are some new initiatives and a new website with information that explains their rights in Canada. Since COVID, there is some funding for community organizations to reach out and inform workers and caregivers of their rights. Frankly, however, even when they know and they are aware of their rights, they will refrain from exercising them because they have so much to lose if they lose employment with the sponsor, if only because of delays to access permanent status. I have to be honest and say that while all the rights of the world technically apply to them, it’s not exactly the main issue. Sometimes language is a barrier, but even when they do have the information, most will refrain from complaining and asserting their rights.
Mr. Hussan: In terms of the people entering into the country, it’s a bit more complicated. The majority of care workers are already in the country. The new program allows people to come into the country on open work permits once they’ve been preapproved for permanent residency. During COVID-19, we saw almost no new workers arrive in the country on open work permits, but some workers were arriving on closed work permits.
Since those workers have started arriving, we’ve been getting FOI information from the federal government. These are sometimes people coming with families. It’s a different class makeup. The education requirements are higher and the language requirement is higher. The new care workers entering the country are very different than the care workers who are already in the country. By and large — and we coordinate the national immigrant coalition — no one is really in touch with these new workers, but there are very few coming in. It is the people who are already in the country who are stuck in a backlog or who are stuck because they can’t fulfill the requirements that I discussed, for example, the education, the language, the work permit, the job offer letter. There’s a 2,750 cap on how many people can apply for permanent residence status. It opens on January 1 each year. On January 1, 2023, it opened and closed within three hours because there are so many more people who want to apply who are already in the country. New workers are uniquely different based on countries of origin, et cetera.
In terms of information about rights, I agree with my colleague. It’s not about rights. It’s about the power to assert those rights, and that power comes from permanent residence status. You have to complete 24 months of work. But if you speak up, you get fired, you become homeless and you’re not allowed to work for anyone else. You can’t get income support. You have no access to justice, and you have to start all over again. The cost of speaking up is too high because you have to finish those 24 months within 36 months. If you can’t do that, then you become undocumented. That is happening — particularly because of COVID-19-related backlogs — to tens of thousands of racialized women.
Senator Bovey: This really concerns me because we’ve all had situations in our lives where we’ve needed to have care workers for those who are near and dear to us. They do amazing work. I’m well aware of some of the strictures that some of these caregivers have. You’ve outlined some of what needs to be done, but what can be done right away to make their situation better?
Mr. Hussan: We’ve talked to the federal government about creating a small temporary resident to permanent resident pathway that removes both the education and the language requirement. The work experience requirement has just been cut down to half as of April 30, 2023, but it is these other two other requirements in particular. A new program could be opened without the 2,750 cap. Get rid of these. This happened when the Liberal government came in initially in 2019. It was called the interim pathway. Many workers were able to get in. There needs to be a new interim pathway for care workers and for seasonal farm workers, actually. The government has shown an openness and interest to it, which removes the education and the language requirement.
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: Again, I would say that open work permits are mandatory. The caregiver program doesn’t apply in Quebec, so caregivers are all on closed work permits. They can’t access permanent status at all. Most of them are actually nurses, but they can’t work as nurses because they can’t change employers. There are all different sorts of issues. We’re talking about labour shortages, yes, but at least right away, if all their work permits would change to open, they would be able to access their equivalencies and maybe work in places where they’re more needed or would be valued.
The Chair: Would you kindly, colleagues, address your questions to whichever witness you’d like to answer.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you to the witnesses.
This is for both or either of the witnesses. The first question is whether there are different country sources of temporary foreign workers from which those workers — I’ll use the word “oppressed,” to cover all these different things you talked about — are more oppressed than from other countries. The second part of that is whether there are different employment sectors in which workers are more likely to be oppressed than other employment sectors. The third part of that is, if we know, what remedies are there currently available, and are they being applied?
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: I can maybe start.
About countries of origin, yes, the current regime is highly discriminatory. For instance, we offer open work permits to workers from France, Australia, the U.K., the United States, and these programs, which is a privileged program of open work permit, is not offered to other countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, the other Caribbean states and the Philippines, which are the highest countries of origin. So there is discrimination. Within, for example, agriculture, we know that Mexican workers must pay their airfare, but Guatemalan workers don’t pay the airfare but can be charged accommodation. There are all sorts of different rights and specific entitlement or not, depending on the countries of origin. The whole thing is highly discriminatory based on countries of origin. That’s one thing.
The second thing is the sectors — I have to be honest. Most people talk about unskilled work and specific sectors. I represent people from household work and agriculture. The fact is that all occupations now, including the highly skilled, are sometimes stuck and trapped in employment. I’m talking about postdoc students stuck with a specific professor. I have people in IT also saying that they’re working twice as much as all the other people because the employer knows they cannot work for any other firm in the country. Honestly, I have to say that even if there are more temporary foreign workers in some industries, such as agri-food and meat packing, and it’s increasingly developing into the seafood sector, the fact is they are present in all occupations in all sectors now. The employer-tied status is problematic everywhere, including for the highly skilled.
So I would say yes, again, open work permits and free labour is the only remedy to allow these workers to assert any rights in the country.
Senator Kutcher: Before Mr. Hussan answers as well, I would just like a little twist on this: Have you heard of concerns about human trafficking? If people are this oppressed and are this caught, have there been any issues raised around that?
Mr. Hussan: Very quickly, I think what we have to do is be very clear about terminology. When we talk about temporary foreign workers, which is where your question started, we are only talking about something like 90,000 to 100,000 people. If we talk about migrant workers in the country — people without permanent resident status — our best, most conservative estimate is 1.7 million. So who are we talking about? In the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, there are very few countries of origin. There are open work permits for most of the other, say, 1.6 million people, except for the undocumented people. As Eugénie was speaking about this, you can see that when we’re talking about Guatemala versus Mexico, these are different subsections of the program, but the IT workers are different. So we have to get very clear with who we’re talking about.
In that case, I would say the most specific form of discrimination is not happening at the level of the country of origin; it is the question of wages. People who are deemed low skilled and low wages do not have any access to permanent residency. Those happen primarily to be from racialized countries. And those who do, who are in jobs that are deemed high wages, have a slightly improved chance. The dividing line is wages and work experience, so the people who are deemed the most essential are the most excluded.
On the question of human trafficking, all of the conditions that I’m speaking about now — theft of wages, long working hours, lack of decent housing — this is all legal. This is legal, so we’re not talking about some exceptional cases of some rare bad employers. In Ontario where I’m currently sitting, a migrant farm worker is excluded from minimum wage, overtime work, hours of work, breaks and days off, which means you can work three straight months without a single day off, without a break, 12 hours a day, without being able to go to the bathroom, forced to sit on your knees under the raging sun, and that’s legal. You can put 18 people into a room, three on top of each other, and that’s legal. So we’re not talking about human trafficking. We’re talking about Canadian immigration law creating the conditions for employers as a rule to exploit migrants.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Hussan. We have to move on.
Senator Moodie: It’s a good segue into my question. I want to set the tone. I would ask this question to both of you. Do you agree that the government policy on temporary foreign workers has reflected systemic racism and discrimination? If so, has this policy-making improved in terms of discriminatory bias in recent years? What improvement, if any, has the federal government made to address the vulnerability of Canada’s gendered and racialized migrant care workforce?
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: The short answer is yes. We’re talking about sustaining a regime that has been in place since the 17th century. Quite frankly, we have had indentured workers for a long time. This is just now that we are maintaining a system of unfree workers who happen to be from very racialized countries of origin. Initially, yes, it started with the Jamaicans. They were Black. Yes, it has been developed in a system that maintains a labour force. So I believe it maintains a form of state racism.
Before I talk about a few solutions, going back to human trafficking, the fact is, on these employer-tied work authorizations and just in general temporary status, there are so many ways in which a worker or an individual can fall between the cracks and become undocumented. The high risk of ending up in various networks of human traffickers is mostly when people are not even aware that they’re not undocumented anymore. They’re being told, yes, you can do that, and yes, I’m going to give you access to permanent status. There are so many fraudulent immigration consultants. There are so many people who actually come here legally and actually become undocumented and then are stuck in all sorts of very bad apple networks just to be able to stay and remain and feed themselves and their family. I agree with Hussan that it’s literally the system that produces this systematic undocumented worker who falls into human traffickers’ hands. So yes, the risk is high, and a lot of human trafficking and forced labour comes from people that came in within the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and now it is being recognized. Yes, the risk is there, but initially, it was because the whole system made them vulnerable to that condition. Again, open work permits and access to permanent status is mandatory.
Mr. Hussan: The majority of our current members are African, either from the Caribbean countries or — and we see a very clear amount of racism and discrimination. Recently, our members from Jamaica, hundreds of them, wrote a joint letter in which they said that they are living in systems of systematic slavery. We have made a formal complaint to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on racism on Canada’s experience of treatment of migrants. So absolutely, we are meeting the legal definition of racial discrimination within the Temporary Foreign Workers program.
In terms of what needs to be done, what we need first and foremost is a regularization program. The over half a million undocumented people in the country, the majority of whom are failed refugee claimants, many of whom are from Africa and the Latin American countries, should be given permanent resident status. Second, we need permanent resident status for everyone in the country.
In 2000, there were 60,000 work permits issued in Canada. In 2020, that number was 600,000. There has been a complete transformation of this country into a temporary agency. Today, 1 in 23 residents in the country, at the most conservative, are non-permanent residents. At the current rate of growth, in 10 years, that will be 1 in 13 people. Canada is transforming itself into a temp agency where low-waged people from racialized countries will be brought here, exploited, forced to work and kicked out every three to four years. Some will remain and become undocumented. That is the trajectory that subsequent governments from both political parties have put into place. It is racist. It is discriminatory on the basis of wages and on the basis of gender. Our membership is very clear about this because we’ve been tracking this stuff for 20 years.
The Chair: Thank you.
I have a short question of my own. In this committee, in previous hearings, we’ve heard from employer associations, like agricultural food associations and farmers associations, et cetera, and we will likely continue to hear more from them. They have said to us that open work permits do not work for them because when an individual has an open work permit, they will not work in that industry and will migrate to another industry. Therefore, they are left with no workers for the agriculture industry, for the mushroom industry, for all kinds of other industries. What is your response to that point of view?
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: I will say two things. First, captive labour and unfree labour are not the solutions for our retention issues. For instance, in World War II, when Canada and the provincial governments decided that the food and agriculture industry was important, the governments organized accommodation and camps for families. There was also a place for children, buses and transportation. There are all sorts of ways in which we could actually help the agricultural industry other than human rights violations and unfree labour. The fact that we have work conditions in agriculture that are literally conditions from the 18th century is the reason — actually, I think it is a good thing that there is competition between the agri-food and other sectors, because then, yes, work conditions would be better. Maybe Canadians would be back in that sector. And maybe, if we want cheap food, there are other ways we can subsidize agriculture. Human rights violations are not the answer.
Mr. Hussan: All of us know that the cost of food has skyrocketed over the last little while. Every one of us knows that there has been a huge increase, but none of that money is trickling down to workers. We have to understand that this is not an uncontrolled labour market where supply meets demand and increased supply means increased wages or that profits are being rationally divided.
What is happening is that the entire rural economy has been structured in a way that there are no schools. You can’t have families when you work there. There is no transportation. There is no housing being developed. It’s not just about access to work permits and people walking away. We as a country have developed the agriculture industry. Canada is the world’s fifth-largest agri-food exporter. This is an agri-specific economy, and yet there has been no workforce development in that industry. The only way it is able to work is if you bring in an indentured workforce, you force them to live in warehouses, there are no roads for them to go anywhere, they can’t come with their children because there are no schools and there are no health care facilities. That’s how the whole rural economy has been developed. That’s a massive mistake, and it is not sustainable.
When employers say, “If these workers leave, what will we do,” and no one will work for them, it will force an improvement in labour conditions and an investment in housing and infrastructure development that is necessary for the Canadian agriculture sector to enter the 21st century — in fact, to enter in the 19th century, as pointed out, because it is still living in the 18th. There is a massive investment to be made. Employers can be brought on to see this development as positive rather than actually controlling only one factor, which is an indentured, enslaved, captive, primarily Black workforce.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Ideally, my question is for both witnesses. I ask you this while being fully aware that there are challenges in terms of permits, and that the types of permits lead to problematic power relationships; that is at the heart of the matter.
That said, what role can information, education and awareness campaigns play in terms of the tools and laws available to workers, what is their importance?
I ask this because I wonder if we’re doing enough. Are there enough tools and education? Do workers use them enough? That’s basically what I want to know. Is there a limit to those tools due to the power relationship, which is problematic? Perhaps Mr. Hussan can answer first, but I’d also like to hear your response, Ms. Depatie-Pelletier.
[English]
Mr. Hussan: We are the largest migrant-led body in the country. We produce educational and informational materials that are distributed to about 37,000 people. We are on YouTube, WhatsApp videos and TikTok at a level no one else is doing. We run six hot lines that run 24/7 for any migrant from anywhere in the country to call us. I can tell you that people call us not because they don’t know what their rights are, not because they don’t have information, but because they don’t have any rights or the power to assert those rights. We are fundamentally opposed to this constant logic that says we need to just do more education. The Government of Canada is throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars into this so-called rights education, which is being wasted across the country. It was alluded to earlier about the new funding mechanisms that have been created. They are completely pointless. We have the same people producing the same information in 30 different ways so as to get funding from the government. It is not an issue of information and education at all. This is about fundamental transformation of the system with permanent resident status for everyone here and permanent resident status upon arrival here in the future.
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: I will just add a few points to that. I totally agree with what Mr. Hussan has said. However, we could fund more community organizations on the ground to support — not necessarily educate, but to support, legally speaking, when there are rights issues. Right now, there are millions given away, but I have to be honest, for example, that a huge part of it has gone to employers’ coalitions to make rights education for workers. So, again, it is not unbiased information. The whole integration has been delegated and privatized toward employers because it costs nothing to Canada, so the whole “go to the airport, take care of the worker, give them a coat and accommodation and everything;” employers are responsible for access to health care.
That’s problematic. So even right now, we’re saying that we are funding education initiatives, but again, employers are paid to educate their workers. So, no. That would again be useless, all of it — or not useless, but almost useless — if we remain in a structure that is an employer-tied legal status and where people, even if they know their rights, will not act on them.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.
Senator Verner: Good afternoon, Ms. Depatie-Pelletier. I’m from Quebec City. I was pleased to learn that you had studied in my city.
My question is for you in particular, because you live in Montreal and you defend the interests of people working in Quebec and those working elsewhere in Canada. As you know, Quebec has its own agreement concerning immigration.
Since you’re interested both in workers in Quebec and those elsewhere in Canada, are the problems the same under the federal program and the Quebec program? Could one program share lessons learned with the other? Do they both have essentially the same difficulties?
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: The short answer is that they are both as problematic on the same level. It’s worse in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada because from the outset, Quebec excludes all workers in low-paying jobs from accessing permanent status, a priori, while there are exceptions in other provinces, in some cases. Workers can access permanent status, particularly in the case of female workers providing help or care at home. Throughout Canada, they have access to permanent status. Quebec refuses to grant that. Honestly, I’d say that it’s worse in Quebec than elsewhere, but overall, the structures for workers who are not free and in servitude are nonetheless problematic in both cases.
Senator Verner: I have another brief question. Mr. Hussan could also respond.
You talked about the relationship with the employer, which is problematic. You used the term “servitude”; that’s troubling.
Where do you think this obligation comes from? Has it always been like that? Historically, has the relationship of servitude, the unique relationship with the employer, always been there, in the application of the program in Quebec and at the federal level? Mr. Hussan may also have information on that.
This bothers me a lot. What was the intention behind that relationship?
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: Initially, it stemmed from the debt for international migration — it costs a lot. Historically, it has always been a situation where someone said: “I’ll give you an advance, you come and you’re bound to me for four, seven, ten years.” The worker cannot work for anyone else until the debt is repaid, because the employer invested in him.
The problem lies in the fact that, now, if a worker leaves a job, the employer calls the police and says: “Bring him back to me, he’s my property, he’s my production unit that has left.” People talk about “runaway slaves”; law enforcement is literally sent to find workers who dare leave their job.
The problem with investing that much is that, for years, the employer paid a lot, the federal government paid a lot for the permit, it invested a lot, and all of a sudden, the worker left for another sector. That’s the problem. No employer should be allowed to develop a feeling of ownership over a human being; which is why the federal government should sponsor all foreign workers.
As for what is not covered, there should be microcredit programs. In that way, foreign workers’ debts would be owed to an institution, not the specific employer. It’s very important to end that relationship, to not allow the development of a sense of possession, or even ownership over the worker.
[English]
Mr. Hussan: I believe your question was about the history of this program. Is that it? That’s what I got through the translation. I apologize.
The first program was created in 1966, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. It followed the late 1950s, and the intention was to have workers tied to their bosses, literally tied to their bosses. The intention has always been the same.
I want to be clear, though. Canada has gotten far more sophisticated in its exploitation. Employer-dependent work permits are now the minority. There are only about 100,000 of them. A lot of people are coming on other kinds of work permits, such open work authorizations. In fact, the largest group of migrant workers in the country is current international students. Many of us are not able to see it that way, but international students are coming here, living and working here for a few years, working in low-wage industries and then leaving. They are part of this revolving door workforce.
Now, Canada is facing a challenge where the majority of the population is aging, and the workforce that’s required right now is in the millions. The Canadian government has refused to grant most of these people permanent resident status, and that’s been the central dilemma since at least the 2000s, where these two streams that have existed have now multiplied to the point where, yes, Canada may take half a million permanent residents, but there is going to be 1.2, 1.3, even 1.4 million temporary permits that are issued, and those people, because they don’t have permanent resident status, will become undocumented at huge levels. That’s really what is going on here. Whatever the initial intention is, now the tension is between these two factors, the aging workforce and the need for a workforce and the refusal to give them rights.
Senator Verner: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Mégie: Thank you to both witnesses for all the clarifications. For the question I wanted to ask, I have a half answer from Ms. Depatie-Pelletier and a quarter answer on the other side.
I wanted to know if the federal government could be responsible for making the change, if it receives a proposal.
If I understand correctly, if the worker had used microcredit, the employer would have avoided feeling that they were close to losing their investment. On the other hand, I wonder why — and Mr. Hussan touched on this — steps could not be undertaken to obtain permanent resident status for the workers. Currently, the worker is given temporary status to come here, but could steps be taken to obtain permanent status for them once they arrive? Do you think that’s possible? Are there other ways, as part of a plan developed by the federal government, to prevent this modern slavery status?
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: Yes. I believe so, even though I think it’s important for Canada to return to granting permanent status to immigrant families upon arrival. Mr. Hussan spoke about demographic challenges, but it must also be taken into account that there will probably always be an American engineer who will come here just for a week. There must still be a functional temporary permit system, that is human-rights compliant.
The idea isn’t to abolish the temporary permit framework. There will be cases where someone is brought in for one day, quickly, for strategic reasons.
What’s important, in fact, is that once a worker is here, he be given access to permanent resident status, because it is the exercise of rights generally that is problematic in a temporary framework. As I explained, there are so many ways to fall through the cracks and end up without status. It’s very important for access to be provided upon arrival, particularly because it takes some time to obtain permanent status, let’s be honest. If it’s addressed upon arrival, at least, at some point, it will happen.
That said, that doesn’t mean that a framework can’t be maintained for granting work permits. The important thing is that it is an open work permit, offering access to permanent status.
Senator Mégie: Mr. Hussan, do you have anything to add?
[English]
Mr. Hussan: Yes, absolutely. As I said at the beginning, whatever I say is based on our membership. If our membership votes are in opposition, that is not my opinions but that of the largest group of democratically organized migrants in the country.
There is already a way that you can come to the country with permanent resident status. About half a million people have that path, and there are another million and a half who don’t. What’s the difference between one versus the other? It is not their country of origin; they are coming from the same countries. It’s wages. Low-wage workers are coming into exploitable situations far more than those who are not. It’s as simple as that. At the same time we are on the streets celebrating the fact that these essential workers kept us alive during COVID, Canada denies them permanent resident status.
I want to be very clear. Permanent resident status is not about whether you live here or not. Migrant workers and undocumented people already live here. It is about your ability to access every other right. We’ve created a system where permanent resident status is the mechanism through which you get health care and education for your family or can stand up against a bad boss. It is not possible to provide that entire family the umbrella of rights that effectively determines your life in Canada without permanent resident status, which is why our position is to simply let people come here with permanent resident status on arrival, as has historically happened. This turn of the century —
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Hussan. We’re going to go on to Senator Bernard. I’m sorry, but there is so much interest.
Mr. Hussan: No, no. I’m sorry.
Senator Bernard: Thank you to both witnesses.
I consider myself a person who is rather well informed about issues of systemic racism and discrimination, and I’m finding myself feeling very troubled by what I’m hearing here today. I want to ask a broader question, which is, how did we get here? How did we get to this state-sanctioned, modern-day enslavement of mostly African people doing care work that other Canadians don’t want to do? How much of this is tied to Canada’s shameful past of enslavement and colonization? And what is blocking change? You’ve both identified a number of barriers. You’ve shared a number of really good solutions that I’m sure you’ve shared widely. So why are we still in this place where we have such horrible conditions?
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: One answer is that a captive labour force has been present in household work and agricultural work for centuries in North America. Some groups of employers have been more efficient than others in making sure that the unfree labour supply is maintained throughout time and in the last decades. Now other employers and coalitions are seeing what is happening with these captive labour forces in other sectors, and they want in. They want the same. They also want to have captive labour forces and captive employees.
You want to know what the barriers are? Well, lobbies. Of course, agriculture is one of the strongest lobbies in Ottawa — actually, in every province — but there are also oil, agri-food and hospitality lobbies as well. So, quite frankly, I think governments are in a very difficult position because you have strong coalitions of employers who want more of it. They like it. They really love captive employees.
Quite frankly, I hope there will be some political change, but we are preparing to go to the Supreme Court for that. I think this is against basic constitutional rights and the charter, so at some point somebody will have to say to the government, “You know what? Tying workers to specific employers and an unfree labour force? Sorry.” Now we have a charter. Maybe that was a good idea in the 19th century, but now we changed and we want free labour, so I think we will need the help of the courts.
Mr. Hussan: Very quickly, I think the first thing to remember is that there are changes. As I said earlier, care workers are disappearing. There is a constant transformation in the industries and the kinds of work. We have to follow the changes and, as you said, look at the big picture.
The reason for the big picture is that there is a global impoverishment of people, particularly post-COVID-19. People around the world, in part because of Canadian intervention, have nowhere else to go. Particularly low-wage people are willing to take massive amounts of risk to come here, either as migrant workers or as refugees or as international students, whatever path, as tourists and then becoming undocumented. There is a global impoverishment of people that is forcing them to move, and Canada is just taking advantage of it.
Senator Dasko: We certainly have a picture of a labour force that’s very problematic. Just to follow up on your points, Ms. Depatie-Pelletier, you talked about the interest of employers. You’ve talked about employers who are enthusiastic about the program, and you would like to see the program gone. Mr. Hussan would also like to see the program gone. Because it’s been with us for so long, because it is so popular and because the government also likes the program alongside the employers, I’m going to assume that this program is going to continue. Closed permits are an essential feature of this program. We’ve learned that from other witnesses. Hypothetically, given the continuation of this program, what can we do to make it better?
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier: The short answer, again, is nothing. There are so many Band-Aid solutions. From what I see, it is smokescreen reforms, Band-Aid solutions and initiatives that are called harm reduction measures, but in the end, they really do not address the root cause so I would not recommend them. However, there is now a campaign for open work permits, so it could be done quite easily. Maybe I am a little bit less enthusiastic than my colleague here, but I think it is possible. I think we can improve the program.
Certainly, sectoral permits or occupation permits are equally problematic. Again, in Israel, employer-tied work permits were declared a system of slavery, so the Israeli government then created sectoral and agency-tied permits. In the end, if you are in a sector where employers can collude or are well organized, taking advantage of workers is very efficient. As well, if somebody complains or if there are work accidents, they are out. There was a Human Rights Watch study conducted afterwards saying that when you have a restriction on the right to quit and the right to change employers, conditions will not improve.
Honestly, we can discuss how to find some other Band-Aid solutions, but I would really hope that you refrain from doing that. Again, we’ve been doing that, trying to find ways of limiting the problem for 60 years. This is a huge unfree labour force, and honestly, somebody will have to address that as it is. Now the numbers have skyrocketed, so I think now is a good time to ask yourselves if this is the kind of Canada you want.
The Chair: We’re coming fast to the end of our session, Senator Dasko.
Senator Dasko: I would just like to ask Mr. Hussan that same question.
Mr. Hussan: I just want to say that the program has grown and expanded over time, and there have been changes. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program itself, which is the system of employer-dependent work permits, has grown and reduced itself. In 2014, it went down. It’s coming back up again. None of it is essential to it. It can be changed. The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program had the creation of so-called sectoral permits. You just heard about how useless they are. There are changes happening all the time. These are not essential features of the program. The essential feature of the program is that the agri-food industry has been subsidized to the point where people are unwilling to make any changes. There needs to be political will to make substantive changes, and permanent resident status is the only mechanism that can do that because people need that to be able to fight it.
In terms of other kinds of changes, we are organizing ourselves like a union. We currently have farm worker members who are joining and making changes. We also have workers in fishery — so all across the food chain — who are winning contracts from employers and making changes where they are, and they will continue to do that. There are a lot of ways to improve where workers have power to fight back. That is the thing. At the federal government level, the solution is permanent resident status. But farm workers are winning changes all the time. We’re coordinating wildcat strikes, getting increases in wages and improving housing conditions all the time. Farm workers aren’t just sitting down and taking this level of exploitation. They’re fighting back and winning.
The Chair: As you can see, there’s lots of interest. To our two witnesses, thank you so much. You have enriched our understanding of the context hugely. We may be getting back to you with some more questions. In the meantime, thank you very much.
We are now welcoming Professor Geraldine Pratt, Canada Research Chair in Care Economies and Global Labour, Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. Welcome, Professor Pratt. We also have Ethel Tungohan, Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism, and Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at York University.
Thank you for being with us today. I now invite you to kindly provide your opening remarks of five minutes. Then we will follow that with questions from the senators. Professor Pratt, the floor is yours.
Geraldine Pratt, Canada Research Chair in Care Economies and Global Labour and Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Good afternoon and thank you for this invitation.
My comments are focused on a specific temporary foreign worker cluster of programs that bring home childcare providers and home support workers to Canada. I have prepared a table that summarizes these programs. I really did it to clarify my own thought about what I find to be an extremely confusing array of programs. I have submitted this table to your committee, hoping it might be of some use to your committee as well.
I have three quick points. My first point has been made by so many others, which is that the backlog in processing of permanent resident, or PR, applications must be resolved immediately. The effects of the stalled processing of PR applications radiate in all sorts of directions. I’ll draw attention to one, which I studied quite carefully, and that is the impact of prolonged family separation.
The research I’ve done on family separation was done during the time of the Live-In Caregiver Program, or LCP — an earlier program — when the delay in PR applications was incredibly short compared to the situation today. It seemed long at the time. Even so and even then, mothers in the LCP were separated from their children for a median of eight years. Children arrived in Canada once their mothers got PR status at, on average, 13 years old. That was when they were reunited with their mothers. Putting that long separation together with a teenaged child, you can imagine that the family struggles at that point of reunification were quite extreme.
Most disturbingly, we found that high school drop-out rates were very high among Filipino youth. At that point, it was mostly Filipino women coming through that program. High drop-out rates and low grade-point averages for those who stayed in high school were experienced because of what is essentially a quite arbitrary state-regulated family separation. This is just to point out that the intergenerational costs — not just to the individual workers but to communities of migrants — are very high.
My second point is that this is a chaotic array of programs. Pilot programs created since 2014 attempted — I think genuinely — to respond to criticisms of the LCP. In the first generation of pilot programs brought in in 2014, the live-in requirement was removed. The second generation of pilots were introduced in 2019, and that went further to attempt to address criticisms with the LCP by creating the opportunity to acquire an occupationally specific open permit that does not require a labour market impact assessment. They also appeared to accommodate families migrating together. However — and I think we heard this in the previous session — these innovations and improvements seem to exist only on paper. Care providers still, for the most part, live in their employers’ homes, and the anecdotal evidence suggests that open permits are scarce and few family members have been able to migrate together.
At the same time, the pilot programs have created new barriers, most notably by introducing quotas. My understanding is that the quota of 2,750 results from the fact that these are pilots. The quota is a statutory requirement that attends pilot programs. At this moment, one of the things we need is clear, systematic research to understand how the pilots have or have not worked to achieve the intended goals. Given that the last round of pilot programs will expire in 2024, the time to be gathering that evidence is now. In my view, with or without this research, the home-based care provider programs should be taken out of pilot status and the quotas removed.
Here is my third point. In my ideal world, care work would be valued as the essential skilled work that it is. I would introduce sexism along with racism to the pot. In an ideal world, care work would be seen to be as skilled as it is, and those workers who come through these temporary care-related work visa programs would come through regular immigration channels.
When I prepared these remarks in December — because this meeting was delayed several times — I wrote that short of this, the number of months required in the caregiver program to establish eligibility for PR status should be reduced from 24 to 12 months. As was mentioned in the last session, that has happened, which is some change for the better.
Also raised in the last session is that, in the past, the concern about reducing the number of months required in a temporary work visa program was tied to a concern that workers would leave these jobs, leave the occupations where there is a labour market need as soon as they had attained permanent resident status. I want to underline the fact that even if those who come through home-care programs leave after 12 months, the Canadian labour market needs will still be met. Research shows that attaining PR status does not radically change the occupational fields of home care providers. It has been found that one in six coming through the LCP continues working as a domestic worker, even after ten years in Canada, and one in five works as a personal support worker or health care aide — so outside the home but still in this health care area. In other words, home childcare providers are moving into other facets of the labour market where there are also extreme labour shortages.
Finally, I want to end with a reflection by the respected Canadian political theorist Joseph Carens who was reflecting on temporary work programs in general, writing:
… denying people the right to have their families with them for more than three months would be harsh and for more than a year would be unconscionable.
I think this is certainly the normative assessment, but it seems to me —
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Pratt. We must go on to Professor Tungohan.
Ethel Tungohan, Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism and Associate Professor, Department of Politics, York University, as an individual: Good evening. Today, I’m here to talk about the caregiver program and the challenges that caregivers face within the program.
Since 2006, I have examined the experiences of caregivers, and I have spoken to close to 3,000 caregivers over the years. My most recent project was undertaken with a migrant advocacy organization, Migrant Resource Centre Canada, and GABRIELA-Ontario, a Filipina feminist organization, involved examining care worker’s experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through in-depth focus groups undertaken over three separate sessions with 78 care workers across Canada, care workers shared with us workplace and immigration challenges.
The majority of the care workers who we interviewed were part of the home child care and home support worker pilot, although there were also care workers who were international student visa holders. All of the challenges care workers faced stem from tied work permits and from onerous citizenship requirements. All of those challenges, in turn, stem from Canada’s system of two-step immigration, which requires that migrants enter the country on temporary visas first before being able to apply for permanent residency later.
What are the challenges emerging from such a system, and how were those challenges magnified during COVID? Caregivers live with their employers, which meant that, during COVID, they had to shelter in place with their employers. They found their working hours increased. They also found employers imposing restrictions on what they could eat and who they could visit.
Some caregivers who took care of seniors mentioned to us the challenges of being the sole care providers without any rest or respite, because lockdown provisions meant that family members could not visit and thus could not take over momentarily for care workers. Care workers had to provide around-the-clock care. Most did not get paid for the hours they worked.
There were also caregivers who were laid off during the pandemic. Because their employers could no longer pay for them to work — at least that was the rationale — these caregivers were put in limbo and had to find ways to support themselves. Some caregivers who were laid off continued to live with their employers, but others had to seek housing elsewhere. We interviewed a number of caregivers, in fact, who were living in shelters.
Caregivers also shared numerous immigration-related challenges. Under the old caregiver program, the Live-in Caregiver Program, LCP, in place from 1992 to 2013, all caregivers who met the two-year live-in requirement were eligible to apply for permanent residency. While there were a lot of problems with the LCP, the majority of caregivers received permanent residency.
The 2013 caregiver program changes and other pilots passed since then have, for many reasons, made life harder for caregivers. They imposed quotas on the number of caregivers who could enter Canada annually and asked caregivers to meet language and credential requirements that were not in place under the LCP. Caregivers have uniformly described the home child care and home support worker pilots as being difficult and expensive.
Those programs were difficult because the language requirement required that they prove English comprehension at an intermediate level. Note, too, that in my research, the language test did not really test English comprehension; it was actually testing of cultural competence. For example, during the oral interview, which supposedly tests conversational skills, a caregiver shared with us that she was asked about her favourite winter sports. I, therefore, wonder why these language tests are in place. Caregivers have to pass those language tests before they can come to Canada, and they also improve their English and French in the years they spend working here. Asking them to complete another language test is unnecessary.
The high fees required for each test — $308 plus tax for each sitting — also place caregivers at financial risk. The requirement that caregivers complete one year of Canadian post-secondary education also magnifies caregivers’ financial precarity. Some have to pay high international student fees to meet those requirements.
In my remaining time, I would like to stress that Canada’s needs for caregivers are constant and ongoing. Having successive pilot programs doesn’t make sense from a policy perspective. Constantly shifting rules are hard to follow for families and caregivers. While the recent change reducing work requirements to one year, as announced last Friday by Minister Sean Fraser, is laudable, it would be better to give caregivers and their families permanent residency upon landing, which would include eliminating credential and language requirements that impose an undue burden upon care workers. I would also like to suggest getting rid of the quota system.
Thank you very much for your time.
The Chair: Thank you to both our witnesses. You have provided us with deep dives into the world of caregivers. We really appreciate that.
Colleagues, I must tell you that we have a hard stop at six o’clock because another committee has to move in here. I don’t particularly like being a traffic cop, but that’s the job you have given to me, so I will try to keep the traffic moving.
I will remind colleagues again to not lean too much into the microphones. If you do so, remove your ear piece to protect the safety and health of people in the room.
Senator Bovey: I’d like to thank the witnesses. What a story.
My overarching question isn’t that different from Senator Bernard’s in the last session. Are we, as a country, proud of this situation? It just makes my heart stop.
My question is really small and simple. You’ve all talked this afternoon about the need for permanent residency being extended on entry into Canada. I would like to know whether that will really work. If we can make that recommendation as our up-top recommendation, do you think we’ll be fixing or attempting to fix the situation rather than just putting a Band-Aid on? I’d like to hear from both our academics, east and west.
Ms. Pratt: That would go a long way. That’s not a Band-Aid; what you just suggested is huge. That’s removing the temporary foreign worker program, essentially. That is massive.
Senator Bovey: As a mother, I’m shattered by the idea of parents being separated from their children for eight years and having them turn up in another country and another culture as they are starting high school. High school as a teenager is bad enough when they know the ropes.
Dr. Tungohan, can I have your thoughts, please?
Ms. Tungohan: Absolutely. It’s not a Band-Aid solution at all. If we provide this as a policy solution, it will remove most, if not all, of the barriers that care workers are facing. Remember that current pilot programs still give the employers tremendous power over care workers. A lot of employers hold the carrot of citizenship over care workers’ heads, so giving permanent residency would solve a lot of these issues because they’d come here with status and don’t have to worry about being undocumented. Also, if they are able to come here as permanent residents with their families, then a lot of the problems pertaining to family separation and the issues that emerge upon families reuniting get lost as well. So it’s not a Band-Aid solution. I would highly endorse this as a solution to what we’re talking about.
The Chair: It is a transformational solution, but it has a back end to it. I will explore that with you. If we lift the closed or open work permits and replace them with permanent residency on arrival, it also means we would have to increase our immigration levels considerably. We are now at 500,000 or so — not right now, but next year. Am I right in concluding that, by closing down that program, our recommendation must also include an increase in permanent resident spots on an annual basis?
Ms. Tungohan: I’m sure Professor Pratt will jump in as well, but I’m pretty sure we’re aligned.
With respect to increasing the quotas, I want to say two things. The first is that the majority of care workers are already in Canada. A lot of the care workers we’ve interviewed are still just waiting for their applications to get processed. A lot of them are facing barriers.
In our research project, one thing that has been such a source of frustration is the fact that care workers feel that they have to pass the IELTS English language level test and get credentialing requirements when they tell me that they’re already working here and contributing. “What else do I have to prove? This is just another hurdle that I have to jump over.” As Hussan said in the other session, we need to ensure that there are TR to PR pathways for care workers who are already here.
With respect to the question of increasing immigration numbers, I don’t actually see that as being a problem given the immense needs that Canada has with respect to care work, which we saw during COVID. The fact is — and this applies to our project as well — I was surprised, senators and witnesses, that some of the care workers we interviewed were international students. They were hired as care workers because, at that point, restrictions on work hours were lifted because Canada had labour shortages. If we actually increase immigration quotas to accommodate care workers, that is a win-win. It allows us to deal with the human rights abuses stemming from tied work permits for care workers, but it also allows us to meet Canada’s care worker needs and care giving needs, which will increase in the years ahead. I don’t think that’s going to decrease.
Ms. Pratt: I would agree with Ethel that it’s not going to change things immediately because there are so many care workers here who have been waiting for years for the processing of their permanent resident applications. In the long term — once that’s all cleared away — these workers will be factored into the immigration estimates, but this is valued work.
The other point that was made in the last session is that the reliance on temporary worker programs has expanded. It’s actually new. Historically, we can look back and we didn’t rely on this labour force. Many of the Filipino women that are coming here — mostly women are coming to do care work — come with medical training. In the past, however, they would have been admitted to Canada. In the past, we did admit Filipino nurses and health workers to Canada as regular immigrants. It’s not new, in a way. It’s returning to what was existing in the 1970s.
The Chair: Colleagues, just for your information, the work plan does include a session on international foreign students as low-skilled workers.
Senator Bernard: Thank you to both witnesses. I’m really pleased to see the investment in this research and the fact that you’re both Canada Research Chair holders doing this work.
I think it was Dr. Pratt who talked about the intergenerational cost of family separation and reunification. Around the country, there are lots of programs, run by community-based agencies mostly, to help with that reunification. Is there any research looking specifically at that? Has there been any kind of economic analysis done of the cost of the family separation and reunification?
Ms. Pratt: I don’t know if there’s been any economic analysis. Ethel, you might know.
About 90% of the women coming through the LCP have been coming from the Philippines. It’s changed a bit in recent years, but traditionally the cost of this is felt within the Filipino community, which is one of the largest migrant communities. What’s really shocking is the Filipino community is the group that stands out as unique in Canada where the first, or one and a half generation children, have lower educational attainment than their parents. The costs are very high in terms of the loss of skills within the community and the loss of educational attainment.
Ms. Tungohan: I would like to emphasize that I’m always super careful about making sure that, when we look at lower educational attainment rates among the children of care workers, we look at the larger structural systemic issues at play and that this is not because the children were at fault. This could be because of racism in schools. It could be because their education from the Philippines is not seen as being equal to Canadian education. A lot of children who come here are automatically put into the English as a second language stream. There’s a lot of deprofessionalization, deskilling and a lot of larger adjustment issues with respect to culture too. Remember, it’s not easy to adjust as an immigrant to Canada. It’s even harder to adjust if you’re a child immigrant.
There are emerging scholars doing this work. We need to kind of elevate their work and support their research. I know of a PhD student, Dani Magsumbol, who is looking at the intergenerational costs of care work. Research is being done.
I feel like the previous federal Conservative government was worried about the economic costs of the live-in caregiver program and the so-called burden that children of care workers bring to Canada. However, I don’t think that looks at the systemic issues that are at play. I find that there’s a lot of blame being directed to children of care workers. There are a lot of negative stereotypes. I speak as a member of the Filipino community, where nannies’ children are seen as being truants. I want us to have a holistic assessment of what is really going on here, which is that perhaps it’s also structural. Perhaps we shouldn’t look at individuals; perhaps we should look at school board policies. Even professional credentialing policies make it harder for care workers to practise their chosen profession.
The long and the short of it is a lot of research is being done. I’m excited about emerging research being done here. I want to emphasize that we can’t look just at individual children of care workers. We have to look at systemic issues at play.
Ms. Pratt: In addition, one of the systemic issues we’re looking at here is immigration policy, which is the structural issue that is primary.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you very much to our witnesses. I have two unrelated questions, but I would like your thoughts.
Frankly, I’m having trouble with this concept of unskilled worker. There’s nothing unskilled about childcare or elder care. I would really like your comments on that and on why we are categorizing it “unskilled” and “skilled” workers.
The other thing that strikes me, after both your testimony and that of the other witnesses we heard, is that these realities have been known for some time. We haven’t seen much effective bureaucratic action to remedy these inequalities. We heard thoughts that it might be because of employer lobbies, but do you think there may be a structural racism problem within IRCC?
Ms. Pratt: I think there’s also a structural sexism program. When you raise the issue of why is this skilled work seen to be unskilled, I think that’s a pertinent question, particularly when the women, mostly, who come through the LCP are highly skilled, often as nurses or midwives. They’re very skilled, but those skills are not recognized.
Ms. Tungohan: In addition, I want to emphasize that I’ve also interviewed policy-makers who are well aware of the caregiver file. I do think that those people who I interviewed are aware of the problems with the program, but they feel that their hands are tied because of ministerial directives. A lot of immigration policy-making seems to be dependent on the minister in power and on the party in power. Based on my interviews with folks, they feel that it’s a bit harder to put in changes that they personally would like when they have to follow the chain of command. That’s one thing.
The other thing I wanted to mention — and I’ve heard this as well from politicians, from MPs — is that because care workers aren’t Canadian citizens, they can’t really afford to listen to what this constituency wants because they don’t vote. That’s why there seems to be this power imbalance where if you can vote for the MP, then they’d be more likely to take up your cause.
A lot of care worker organizations are being strategic in mobilizing social movement action to get their voices heard. Those of us who are scholars in this area know that the only reason why care workers were given the right to permanent residency in the first place, in the 1970s, was because the care workers mobilized around the Seven Jamaican Mothers campaign. The right to apply for permanent residency and Canadian citizenship was not given to them freely, so care workers had to mobilize.
I wanted to echo what Hussan was saying in the previous panel. There are organized groups who are campaigning for care workers’ rights, and listening to them and looking at their reports is really important to make sure that our policies align with what care workers want.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you to the previous witnesses and our current witnesses. We have really been blessed with knowledgeable, evidence-based testimony that I certainly have found enormously helpful.
My question is geared to the current programs. I think I know the answer, but I really would like to have this on the record. In the current programs, which are characterized as pilots, is there any mechanism available to the mostly women in these programs to take complaints of gender-, sex-, race-based discrimination, as defined by our existing legislation in Canada, either the provincial human rights codes, for example, the labour codes, or our constitutional standards? Is there any mechanism that’s available to them?
Ms. Pratt: I do know, years ago, a Charter challenge was attempted unsuccessfully. In terms of the labour codes, that’s a tricky one because they are governed provincially, and in B.C., my province, it is complaint-driven, which individualizes the process.
Ms. Tungohan: I think what Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier presented in the last witness panel is really provocative, and I have spoken to her about this as well, about issuing a court challenge. Maybe it is time to go to the courts to talk about the systemic issues that we keep raising as well.
I know the federal government had a hot line so that care workers who faced abuse could call this hot line. As we said then — and organizations such as Migrante and GABRIELA said then and they say now — you can’t complain about your workplace situation if —
Senator McPhedran: Please forgive me for interrupting you, but our time is very short, and I do want to get this on the record. I will try to frame it as a yes or no. In the current programs, the mostly women who are in these programs do not have access to provincial human rights complaints processes and do not have access to the federal Canadian Human Rights Act processes? Yes or no? I believe I know the answer, but —
Ms. Tungohan: I feel like as academics, we always try to put in qualifications, but — no. No. It would be hard for them to access these.
Senator McPhedran: Do we have agreement from both of our witnesses on this? I’m getting a nod up and down.
Ms. Pratt: I’m wanting to hedge, but I would say history tells us no.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you so much.
[Translation]
Senator Mégie: Thank you to our two witnesses. I’d like to come back to the issue of health care aides, but I’m thinking of those who are unskilled. I wonder what organization does the selection to bring them here to hold those positions.
When family reunification is the goal, I understand that a family member makes the request; in this case, people are referred to as “unskilled workers.” They could be placed in jobs for which no qualifications are needed, but if they’re sent to long-term care facilities (CHSLD), that raises issues, as noted by Senator Kutcher. Who does that selection and decides to send them to long-term care, CHSLDs? Do you know?
[English]
Ms. Pratt: Ms. Tungohan, you may have more to say about the home care, but neither of these programs would be supplying workers. These are home care programs that we’ve been discussing.
[Translation]
Senator Mégie: Home care is still care for seniors. Do they receive at least some short training, somewhere, before starting work? Do you know?
[English]
Ms. Pratt: Yes, and the requirements for the home support workers, who are caring for individuals with higher medical needs, they definitely have requirements. There is training required for both streams, actually.
Ms. Tungohan: I am a little confused. Maybe it’s the translation, so forgive me. What do we mean by “unqualified”?
[Translation]
Senator Mégie: I will ask you the question. When you talk about “unskilled workers,” what does that mean? I also heard: These people assigned to care are nurses whose diplomas have not been recognized or other workers whose diplomas have not been recognized.
How do you know? How do you get the information that allows you to say that because the person was a nurse in another country, it’s not serious, they don’t need training, they’re sent to provide home care?
I need you to understand that when you say “home care,” the duties matter. If the person is mopping the floor, that’s one thing; but if they’re caring for someone, that’s another. Minimum qualifications are needed to do that. I hear “unskilled,” and “nurses.” Can you explain that?
[English]
Ms. Pratt: There is training required for each of the categories, different training requirements. In the first instance, they are employer-driven, really, the hiring process. It’s not a care home that would be hiring in these programs.
Ms. Tungohan: Absolutely. Under the terms of the program, you won’t even be able to qualify if you do not meet the criteria set forth, which includes evidence that you’ve trained. For me, the program requirements speak for themselves. Now, there are, of course, competing narratives at play between employers and care workers, where I find that charges of not being qualified come from employers who expect care workers to do more, quite frankly. The program itself, based on the technical rules, has criteria, and for you to be able to enter the program, you have to meet these criteria, so qualifications are put into play there as well.
Senator R. Patterson: This is a critical discussion because of the crisis in caregiving in Canada. I will pull on that thread a bit more and talk about credentialing. Maybe I can help my colleague Senator Mégie with that because that’s the background I come from.
We know people need to come to an employer with a qualification. We need to definitely address the federal policy that looks at going from a temporary worker to a permanent worker. The second element of this is recognizing qualifications, to take them from what turns out to be a very gendered and racialized, lower-pay work to get the credential within this country pulls it to the next level, including on salary. However, those credentials are normally provincially regulated. Whether it be Ontario personal support workers to provide care or people who are registered within professional colleges, it is getting that credentialing requirement recognized.
We have two pieces here, a federal policy and a provincial policy. In the research that you have done, have you had a look at what needs to be done to bridge that? Do you have any other comments that specifically link back to systemic racism within how we look at qualifications? I hope that makes sense.
Ms. Pratt: The complexity of these programs is that they touch on so many different policies. Earlier, Ethel was saying that when you think of what is going on with youth, ESL schools are also a factor. Here we are looking often at provincial kinds of credentialing of nursing or midwifery or whatever. I will say that in my province of B.C., the nurses’ professional organizations resisted the international credentials for a long time. There has been movement there, and I suspect there could be more movement. All I can say is that I don’t actually know the details of where we are right now in B.C., but I think you touched upon a very important issue in terms of credentialing of midwifery, nursing and other health care educational credentials that domestic workers come with. When I was doing my research around the LCP, 90% of the women coming into the LCP had post-secondary education. There are a lot of credentials there to be called upon. This is not an uneducated group of workers.
Ms. Tungohan: If I may interject, with respect to the pilot programs, one policy change that perplexes me is the fact that we’ve imposed a language requirement that’s actually pretty high in terms of meeting the bar, and also a one-year Canadian post-secondary requirement which expires in five years. This was not in place under the Live-in Caregiver Program. What we’re finding is that, in order to meet these requirements, women — while also doing care work — are taking post-secondary classes and paying international student fees all to meet this new criteria. That is troubling.
I also think there is a lot of money to be made with migration. There is an entire migration industry. In order to get your qualifications assessed, you have to go to companies like WES and other credentialing bodies that ask you for more money. There is this cascading effect where you have to keep paying out of pocket to prove that you can do the job that you are already doing.
Senator Moodie: My question is perhaps asking you to restate something you’ve just said, just to highlight it. This is the whole question of international-level school fees for temporary workers who pursue any kind of further education, English training or whatever. Can you clarify what you mean by that? Here in Canada, are people paying more than they should be for basic training? Are these fees higher than if a Canadian wanted the same training?
Ms. Tungohan: Absolutely. International education is expensive. Some of the care workers who we’ve interviewed, in order to meet even the English-language criteria, they have to go to a language school which charges exorbitant amounts of money. Or if they are part of an organization — some of these organizations such as Migrante Alberta, which does a fantastic job doing this, provide the English-language training for free. Access to these services doesn’t take place universally.
I also think that to meet the Canadian post-secondary requirements, although some care workers have the equivalent back home, they have to convince the credentialing body that the education qualifications they have back home matches up with Canada’s requirements. When the credentialing body rules that it doesn’t actually match or is not equivalent to one year of Canadian post-secondary, then they have to pay international student fees to get further training. I’m hoping this makes sense.
Senator Moodie: It makes a lot of sense. I’m trying to understand, do we provide any assistance to people to do this?
Ms. Pratt: No.
Ms. Tungohan: No.
Senator Moodie: Exactly. Great, thank you.
Ms. Pratt: I wanted to add, there is also this proliferation of private universities or colleges to provide training for home care, again very expensive, six-month courses that train people to do the work they have been doing.
Senator Moodie: I ask because I know this. I’m asking you to state it for the record.
The Chair: I want to probe that a little. Let me get that clearly on the record. A caregiver who is here as a temporary resident, not yet a permanent resident, if they wish to take a course at a community college or a university, they pay international student fees, not domestic student fees. Is that right?
Ms. Tungohan: Yes.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Bernard: I have a question for clarification as well around the recognition of foreign credentials. You’ve both mentioned that many of these temporary foreign workers have post-secondary education from their home countries. Would you say that, depending on the country of origin is, that would have an impact on whether or not those credentials would be recognized? For someone coming from a more racialized country, for example, would they have more of a challenge having their post-secondary education from their home country recognized in this country?
Ms. Tungohan: I would say so, yes. There is a hierarchy when it comes to the way Canada assesses qualifications from abroad. A degree from the Philippines won’t count as being equivalent to a degree in Canada. Yes, there is a hierarchy that you note, absolutely.
Senator Bernard: Has it to do with systemic racism? There was a follow-up question. I’m not sure if they heard it, chair.
The Chair: Please.
Senator Bernard: My follow-up question was whether it has anything to do with systemic racism.
Ms. Pratt: I would suggest yes.
The Chair: Ms. Tungohan, you have to go a little beyond nodding your head so that we have it on the record.
Ms. Tungohan: Yes, absolutely, it 100% unequivocally has to do with systemic racism.
Senator Bernard: Thank you.
Senator Kutcher: Credentialing is one route. There are other routes. I liked your thoughts on competency-based assessments, which gets around the issue of uneven credentials from different places, regardless of how those credentials have been achieved. Are there sufficient competency-based assessment programs for the people that are coming in that would be able to determine if they have specific competencies, regardless of what credentials they may have with them?
Ms. Tungohan: Can I ask you to repeat the first part of the question? It wasn’t clear.
Senator Kutcher: Sure. There are lots of different ways to determine whether a person with a profession can actually do the job that they need to do. One of them is credential recognition, but there are issues around that we all know about. There is another way which is called competency-based assessment. Regardless of where your credentials are from, you go into the same competency-based assessment and you graduate from that competency-based assessment. I am a physician, so that’s the way that’s evolved in our field. Are there similar things for personal support workers or others who can then easily access these competency-based assessments and move into the profession of their choice? Are there enough of those programs?
Ms. Tungohan: I would say that I’ve heard of no such programs. Now we are going away from the caregiver program. Now we are looking at PSWs and health care aides, which is clarifying that. A lot of live-in caregivers do end up working as PSWs, but even if they finish the care worker program, show they have successfully cared for a family, successfully cared for seniors, a lot of employers actually still would prefer that they take a PSW course. So it is not competency-based. It is still the credential. It is still being able to show that you have a certificate showing that you graduated from this college and that you completed a PSW course. I have not heard of competency-based assessment. All I’ve heard is that these credentials are what is the most important in order for people to get a job in long-term care.
Senator Kutcher: Very narrow.
Ms. Pratt: My experience would be the same in British Columbia. I haven’t heard of a competency-based assessment, no.
The Chair: I have a couple of questions, unless there are other questions. Perhaps they will emerge as I speak.
I want to go back to the issue of language. The language we use in this construct is the language of “low-skilled, unqualified, unskilled” — and this language is pervasive in the policy narrative of our immigration programs. I know that language and labels have an enormous impact on the way we imagine people in our perspectives. Would you recommend that the Government of Canada, in its immigration policies, pivot from the language of “low-skilled and unqualified workers” to “essential workers”?
Ms. Pratt: Absolutely, 100%.
Ms. Tungohan: Absolutely.
The Chair: I’m looking for some hope here, because this has been a pretty devastating two hours, to know that the country that we call one of the freest countries in the world has such systemic racism and discrimination, and it is so pervasive in our government systems.
Caregiving is a high-demand occupation in other parts of the world as well. Leaving aside the United States and the emirate countries, Singapore and Hong Kong, can you tell us, in your research, do you know of other countries — maybe New Zealand, Australia, possibly Germany — where they do things that we should be looking at?
Ms. Tungohan: This is a provocative declaration, but I think Germany, for example, has had mass regularization programs. A lot of the care workers who have lost status, I would argue, have lost status through no fault of their own, for example. They tried. I know some women who have taken the IELTS test like seven times, but they can’t pass it. They can’t get a level 5 which is actually higher than some of the other permanent immigration streams. Maybe this is not going to be possible given current political agendas, but why can’t we imagine a mass regularization program for undocumented workers who are already here? That’s what Germany has done. I am being provocative on purpose, but I leave that as food for thought for all of the senators here.
Ms. Pratt: Ireland during COVID was an example, but I actually think Canada could be a leader here. We may be able to point to some isolated examples, but I think we could show leadership.
The Chair: The regularization program for construction workers was recently announced — 10,000 construction workers about a month ago. Would you recommend that a special regularization program for caregivers in this case also be explored?
Ms. Pratt: Yes. I think it would be a very low-risk regularization program.
Ms. Tungohan: I absolutely agree. It is low risk. Care workers are already here. I don’t think this regularization program should require that care workers submit more documents in order to apply, which is the case in the TR to PR pathway. A mass regularization program, which is what Greece did, as you said, would be to Canada’s advantage. It’s a win-win for Canada, for the care workers and for the families too. I am a mom, and I can’t tell you how important it is to have care workers provide care for my children.
The Chair: Thank you to our witnesses, Professor Pratt and Professor Tungohan. Your enthusiastic participation is hugely appreciated. We learned a great deal.
We will continue our study at our next meeting, which is tomorrow morning at 11:30 a.m.
(The committee adjourned.)