Evidence of meeting #17 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was caregivers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Okay. So let me offer you something else. Every caregiver who comes in gets what an entrepreneur gets: they get landing status, and at the end of two or three years, after they're able to fulfill their conditions, they go and remove conditions. So if you're coming into this country to start a business, you have two years to start the business, you go to Immigration Canada, you prove that you started the business, and then they relieve the conditions.
So what I'm saying to you, and I just want to get your opinion if this would work, is a caregiver is given landed status and she or he has an opportunity of two to three years to work in the field, provide proof that they work in the field, and then they go and remove their conditions. Will something like that work?
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
No, but in the problems we're facing--abuse, OHIP, and everything else--as soon as you come in as a landed immigrant, you have you regular OHIP, you have your SIN number, and you have an open work permit because you're a landed immigrant. That would definitely put you out of business.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
9:35 a.m.
Executive Director, Intercede
Do you know what, though? I believe that everyone who works in the social field should work themselves out of a business as part of proving success. So if that's what you're alluding to, that's not a bad thing.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
No, what I'm trying to tell you, Ms. Mason, is that the problems we're facing right now, you won't face any more.
9:35 a.m.
Executive Director, Intercede
No, because a lot of the problems that we're facing have to do with the relationship between the employer and the caregiver. And you know in this society, even for people who are landed immigrants and citizens, they have problems in the workplace. So caregivers come into an extraordinary or different workplace when they live in someone's home.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Ms. Mason, if they're landed, they will face less difficulty.
9:35 a.m.
Executive Director, Intercede
What would change, though, is that it will put them in a more just and equal position to come in as landed immigrants, like Europeans did years ago.
9:35 a.m.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here today.
I get the impression that history is repeating itself. I took part in the committee's consultations across Canada. Those consultations focused on temporary foreign workers and resident household workers. Consequently, across the country, I've often heard the proposals you've made. That's why many of them appear in the report we adopted a week ago. Among those proposals, there is the one concerning the open permits enabling an employee to switch from one employer to another once he arrives in Canada. He wouldn't be assigned to a single employer. There is also the recommendation that the obligation for household workers to live at the home of their employer would be abolished.
Having regard to those two recommendations, are you satisfied with the committee's report on the whole?
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
You need to direct that to some of the witnesses, unless they have no comment.
9:35 a.m.
Executive Director, Intercede
Actually, I only heard the last part of the second question, in relation to whether we agree with the report.
9:35 a.m.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
I wasn't talking about the report as a whole. There are a number of points in the report that I wanted to examine. I believe that Ms. Quash spoke to me about an open permit enabling domestic workers to switch between employers. That idea was taken up by committee members, as was the idea of abolishing the residence requirement.
The report also contains a proposal that I had put forward, and I thank my colleagues for supporting it. We require that temporary foreign workers, including domestic workers, meet with an organization such as yours or an NGO a few months before they arrive to enable them to leave their work place and to make sure that everything is going well.
The problem we've often observed is that these people often live at their employer's homes and are cut off from society. They have no way of knowing their rights or of saying what is going on in their work place. By compelling them, in a way, to meet with an organization, committee members thought that might help them report situations of abuse and gain a better understanding of their rights.
Do you think that measure adopted by the committee is a good one?
9:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Intercede
Yes, I agree with the process. In fact, we run orientation sessions, and I see a direct relationship between the people who have the information, who know about their rights and responsibilities within the first year of arriving in Canada, and the success after 24 months. Definitely, if people who come into the country under the program are allowed to get the information from the start, that will make a big difference.
9:40 a.m.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
The purpose of that recommendation was more than simply to enable them to meet with an organization; it was to make those meetings systematic. Currently, you can give these people training, but some of them escape you because they are still living with their employers and have no contact with the outside world. So they never go to see you.
The purpose of this recommendation was to include in the program a mandatory meeting after three months, for example, with an organization of that kind.
Do you think that could be useful for these people?
9:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Intercede
Yes, I think that would be useful. In fact, we had a caregiver who was imprisoned in a house for 14 months and not allowed to leave. So definitely, when she got the information in terms of her rights and responsibilities, she was in a better position to make an informed decision that improved her condition.
9:40 a.m.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
All right.
Another proposal made during our consultations, for which we did not get our colleagues' support, was that the employer be assigned responsibility for ensuring that recruitment agencies abide by the laws. We know that certain unscrupulous recruitment agencies do not comply with the laws by, among other things, illegally charging workers fees. These individuals have trouble getting their money back because the agencies are often hard to trace. They can operate from outside the country.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
9:40 a.m.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
Would you be in favour of enabling workers who have been cheated by their agency to turn to their employers for reimbursement of the fees that the agency has illegally collected and of those employers subsequently being reimbursed?