For the record, I did hand out policy briefs, which I think will be translated into French. They outline in greater detail some of my recommendations.
Canada does have a care crisis. The boomers are getting older. We have an elder care crisis, and people in my generation are having a lot of children so we need to address that care crisis.
One of the main calls for action the caregiver advocates have is to give caregivers landed status upon arrival. The need for care is constant, and giving caregivers landed status upon arrival reduces a lot of the abuse that caregivers face.
This proposal to have regulated companies, in other words agencies, act as caregivers' employers will simply transfer the abusive relationship from families onto agencies. Another proposal the caregiver advocates and researchers such as I are making is this should not happen. This system of transferring employment relationships to regulated companies will exacerbate abuse.
Another proposal is to deal with the backlog. The fact is, and other people have articulated this, and certainly this is the case for Mr. De Leon, caregivers have come to Canada leaving behind their own children to care for Canadian families. The fact that we have a backlog of 49,000 people is absurd.
We all know that family separation is difficult. Caregivers and their children face a lot of anxiety, a lot of mental and emotional health difficulties. We think addressing this backlog and—