Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 26th, 2009

[Tristan Downe-Dewdney]

I don't necessarily think it should be arbitrary, that the body would say “You, you, and you get to be licensed and you don't”. I think it should be a very clear list of what standards an agent or an agency needs to meet in order to be on the white list. Anybody who can practise effectively, according to the government, can be on it and then have their names removed if and when they breach the program.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

The second recommendation you made was to try for a significant reduction in waiting times. Could you elaborate on how the government could do that?

[Tristan Downe-Dewdney]

If a centralized processing centre could be created for that--and I believe there's one for other programs, but maybe not fully effective--and if there could be some body to which all those documents could be channelled, they could be reviewed under the same standards and the staff could be meeting the demand. I think that would be a good step forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Members of the committee, I'm going to give Ms. Mendes five minutes.

We have a problem. We've been with this gentleman for an hour, and he's probably had enough of us. I'm simply warning you that our next set of witnesses--two witnesses--are not here, unless they're somewhere in the building. At this particular point they are not here, so please keep that in mind.

To be fair to Mr. Downe-Dewdney, he's probably had enough, but we'll allow Ms. Mendes to have the final five minutes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mr. Downe-Dewdney.

I'll try to totally change the subject to make it a little different.

On Sunday night, CBC Newsworld, on the fifth estate , had a program called “Where the Women Went”, about the “Newfoundland ladies“, which I found absolutely fascinating. Are you aware of this program featuring Nova Scotia and Newfoundland?

[Tristan Downe-Dewdney]

Was this from two days ago?

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Yes, the day before yesterday.

[Tristan Downe-Dewdney]

No, I haven't seen it.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

These Newfoundland ladies are women who live in small communities in Newfoundland that have lost most of their fishery industries, and they find themselves without any possibility of work. Nova Scotia has an aging population in need of caregivers, so this program started between the two. It's a very informal program in which these ladies are going to mainland Nova Scotia to provide caregiver services to families in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia obviously finds this extremely interesting, both financially and in terms of the services that they are able to provide to the families, as the labour is not there to fulfill the needs of the population.

These ladies work for two weeks, 24 hours a day, no weekends, and then they get two weeks off. Nobody checks their qualifications. But they've been mothers, grandmothers, and they've lived their normal lives as women, if you wish, and that's the qualification they're asked to bring to the table on this program. And this is very informally done. That's what I understood from the program, and I checked it afterwards.

So I wonder why we are making it so difficult to apply some of these reasonably easy criteria to employ caregivers. Why are we so difficult in the qualifications that we demand of foreign caregivers? Why do we ask so much proof of whatever previous job in caregiving they've had in their country? Most of them haven't had caregiving experience per se, but they've been mothers, they've been grandmothers, they've been family members. We don't do it here to those we hire to provide that care.

Do you see some unfairness in this?

[Tristan Downe-Dewdney]

I couldn't speak to the appropriateness of it. My only assumption would be that because it's a program that offers a chance of immigration, the standards would be set differently. I wouldn't be able to comment on the appropriateness of that. I don't know all the ins and outs of the Nova Scotia and Newfoundland experience.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

But the fact is that perhaps one of the reasons we have so much trouble with the processing times for documents is that we demand so much of these caregivers, which inland we don't. But the fact is we don't have enough labour in Canada to provide for all the needs of our aging population. And we're not requesting all these proofs of qualification of our own caregivers here.

[Tristan Downe-Dewdney]

Certainly I think it would be beneficial to look at what those requirements are. There are some countries where you need the permission of your employer to go through with the process of going through a Canadian visa office, and certainly consideration should be taken for those standards that can be harmful where they are and can delay things significantly. When you're waiting on an employer who might not respect you to agree to let you go, that's a whole other ball game that needs to be looked at.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Well, exactly, and that's what provokes so much of the delay, even for those six months I'd have to wait here to change employers. I'm not even talking about the wait times abroad, just the ones here within Canada, which I believe an open permit would certainly resolve. If they came into Canada with an open permit, with no obligation to have one single employer, but definitely with the obligation to work, then the same conditions that apply to qualified workers, that you have no access to social programs, no social assistance during those first three years of your stay in Canada, would apply to the live-in caregivers.

[Tristan Downe-Dewdney]

Again, it's an attractive idea. I think one thing that may be looked at, though, is where the caregivers are working. If a caregiver is coming to Canada to work in northern Ontario, say, and it's not a very welcoming community to them and this isn't what they expected and they want to go to Toronto and get a caregiver job there, then there may be some problems in terms of meeting the demand from the families that need care outside major urban centres. But otherwise, I think there are a lot of good ideas there. It may be just a matter of creating essential support.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I think Mr. Tilson clarified the white list, so I'm done.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay, thank you.

Sir, we've had a good session with you, and I want to thank you for coming and giving your comments to the committee. It's been very helpful.

Ladies and gentlemen, unless something has happened quite recently, our next two witnesses have not appeared. It is now almost ten minutes after ten, so I'm assuming that they're not coming.

You are excused, sir. I should have said that. Thank you for coming.

So unless someone has any other bright ideas, I'm going to adjourn the meeting and then I'm going to suggest that we now have a subcommittee meeting, which would be representatives from each of the four caucuses, and that would be an in camera proceeding.

The meeting is now adjourned until Thursday at nine o'clock.

Thank you very much.