Thank you.
Mr. Chair and members of the committee, excuse me if I read from my notes. I don't want to omit anything.
I have experienced, as a person executing the power of attorney for my late mother, all of the situations I'm about to describe.
First, Employment Canada's method of determining an applicant's ability to adequately cover all expenses associated with a caregiver is limited and inaccurate. Their basis of judgment is to look at the past year's CRA assessment—line 150, I believe. This method is fair for someone who is employed, but for most retirees looking for caregivers, it is inaccurate.
For example, my mother's income was generally less than $50,000 per year; however, she had in excess of $350,000 in investments and outright ownership of her home. It took a protracted and lengthy discussion with Toronto to prove that my mother's claim about ability to pay was in fact valid.
Second, the processing time is a huge detriment to elderly persons wishing to hire in-home caregiving. In my mother's case, it took 21 months from the time the LMO, as it was then called, was initiated until I finally had a caregiver in her house. My mother celebrated both her 99th and 100th birthdays with full-blown dementia and increasing states of total confusion while I was trying to provide for her adequate in-home care. Some days we had to put her into institutions, which she totally detested.
Third, the duplication of information—and this is very key—asked for by various departments in supporting the LMO and temporary foreign worker issuance of a work permit is a lot of duplication and, I feel, a waste of applicants' and government employees' time. This should be simplified and perhaps streamlined. There should be some method of interaction between the various agencies in the employment and immigration departments so that the duplication could be reduced and thus the time of 21 months reduced as well.
For example, I was seeking to hire a lady from the Philippines who had been referred to me. She met all the criteria demanded by the TFW program for elder care, yet the embassy on one occasion sent an email to her, and part of that email was in fact forwarded to me. She did not realize that she needed to... [Technical difficulty—Editor] the email.
My honest opinion is that if an agency is working to ensure that the TFW is legitimate and the employer is viable, then the agency—immigration or employment—should be asking me directly, or, if they feel that they have to send it through the applicant in the Philippines, they should at least copy me on it so that I can respond. This almost caused a dismissal of the whole application, after some 14 to 16 months. It's thanks to a particular individual's intervention that we managed to get the embassy to reinstitute the application.
Fourth and last, if a situation arises in which the TFW is here in Canada and in the employ of an elderly person, and that elderly person passes away, the TFW is severely disadvantaged, particularly with the changes that were brought in the last year, I believe, in August 2015, changing from in-home care, with the caregiver living in the elderly person's home. Suddenly that person is faced with the need to procure new employment, a new LMIA—it's no longer the LMO process—and all the commensurate delays and such that go with that.
My feeling is that TFWs, when they enter Canada with an LMIA contract in hand, should be allowed to extend that contract. The changes that were brought in in August 2015 have driven the economy of TFW elder care virtually underground because of the in-home live-in change, and the increase in wages has made it virtually impossible for elderly people to sustain them. Also, an increase of $5 per hour does not make it any more attractive for the TFW to live out.
I don't find that is an equitable way to deal with a TFW who has come to the country under what I view as a three-way contract between the elder care person—or, in my case, I was acting as a power of attorney—the TFW themselves, and the Government of Canada, because the government does act as the agent vetting, if you will, the LMIA process. We're filling out a Government of Canada form. It's a three-way contract, and just because one party is deceased should not cause that particular contract to be void.
The intent of the TFW program—particularly for elder care, I believe—is to provide quality in-home care for our elderly who wish to stay at home and be less of a burden to the taxpayer. If they can support themselves and support a temporary foreign worker in-home caregiver, then we have extended their quality of life. After all, we're talking about people who have given much to Canada in forming the fabric of our country. I think we should examine how we can... [Inaudible—Editor] useful for the TFW and the elderly.
Thank you for seeking my thoughts.