Opportunity or Exploitation?

The Live in Caregiver Program (LCP) was implemented as a way to fill caregiving needs of Canadians while providing an opportunity for individuals come to Canada and achieve permanent residency through a 24 month period in exchange for their work. However, the reality of this program has failed to reflect this idealized version of the LCP and the expectations of a better life in Canada has often been met with unfair, and exploitive treatment of these workers.

“You just collapse from all those expectations that you have, hoping that you’ll have a good life in Canada, and then you’re treated as less than a human being.”

Kristina Torres

The hardships of the LCP begins before the workers are even admitted to the program as they are required to have extensive work experience and English proficiency. Further, the process of applying can be very costly as they have to pay money to companies to find an employer in Canada. Once they arrive in Canada the conditions of the LCP including temporary status, a live-in requirement, and an employer-specific work permit makes these workers vulnerable to various types of unfair and discriminatory treatment within their work environment. Further, because they face removal from Canada if they violate these regulations the workers put up with exploitive work conditions. This includes things like being overworked, underpaid, and experiencing various types of physical, sexual, or verbal abuses. In addition, these workers also experience the hardship from being away from their own families and lack of social support within Canada.

Once the workers complete their twenty-four months of caregiving work they are eligible to apply for permanent residency but still face long wait times to be able to sponsor their families. In addition, due to the societal devaluation of caregiving work many of these women who are qualified and experienced in other types of work have a hard time finding jobs due to the stigma of caregiving work.

The LCP has been a disheartening program for its lack of protection of foreign workers rights and the structures that have led to its creation need to be acknowledged. Although individuals in the LCP may have had positive experiences and are grateful for the opportunity to come to Canada, support their families, and obtain permanent residency. The problem with the program is the reality that the structural relationship of the LCP allows for these foreign workers-many of which are women, to be exploited without the adequate safeguarding measures of protection.

Canada’s Caregiving Problem and The Live in Caregiver Program

“Caring is not something that we must will ourselves to do it is something that we always, already do.”

Fiona Robinson

Although caring for others is an essential part of the human experience, the importance of caregiving in Canada has been greatly undervalued and unacknowledged. This has manifested in a variety of inadequate solutions to Canada’s need for caregiving from the Canadian government. Some of these solutions have included, the implementation of immigration policies that bring foreign caregivers (many of whom are women) to Canada. These solutions are influenced by neoliberal ideologies that deals with care in a privatized way, often placing the responsibility of care on women who are positioned lower on the global hierarchy, as seen in the Live in Caregiver Program (LCP).

Canada’s history of attempting to fill the need of caregivers with the migration of domestic workers from abroad has been complicated and often exploitative. Many of these workers are women from poorer countries and are motivated to work as a caregiver in Canada in the hopes of providing for their families and obtaining permanent residency. However, before the Live in Caregiver Program was implemented the right to permanent residency was often unfulfilled, with limited numbers of permanent residency status approved and preferential acceptance towards European caregivers. Further, due to the devaluation of caregiving work in the society these caregivers were often considered to be unskilled, invaluable, and disposable workers leading to unfair and discriminatory treatment.

As a result of the unfair and often exploitive treatment of these workers, they began to unite and through various demonstrations, lobbying, and activism demanded a right to permanent residency and regulations to protect them from unfair treatment. This contributed to the creation of policies that granted these foreign workers the automatic right to permanent residency through the Foreign Domestics Movement in 1981, which was later revised as the Live in Caregiver Program in 1992.

The implementation of the LCP allowed participants to enter Canada as a temporary worker for up to 3 years and granted the participant the eligibility to apply for permanent residency after 24 months of caregiving work (caring for children, elderly, or disabled persons). On the surface this program appeared to be a mutually beneficial situation that would meet the needs for caregiving in Canada and provide an opportunity for individuals from poorer countries to come to Canada and obtain their permanent residency. However, the conditions of the LCP including workers having a temporary status, a live-in requirement, and an employer-specific work permit has made these workers vulnerable to unfair treatment, and exploitative work environments.