Work Permits

Episode 28 – Canada’s Caregiver Programs

Steven Meurrens

Natalie Drolet is the Executive Director / Staff Lawyer for the Migrant Workers Centre.

We discuss the history of Canada’s caregiver programs, current issues and what the future looks like.

2:30 – What is a caregiver and how have Canada’s caregiver work permit and immigration programs traditionally worked?

7:00 – What are employer specific work permits? How do these impact caregivers?

14:40 – How do Canadian caregivers find families who are overseas?

16:00 – Why is the caregiver program necessary? Why are Canadians not applying for these positions? What role do wages play?

21:10 – How does the Interim Pathways program work?

29:14 – Could an Expression of Interest Intake model come to the caregiver program?

31:30 – What are employer compliance issues in the caregiver program? What are some of the abuses that occur?

38:00 – Are the problems now similar to problems that the program has traditionally faced?

43:00 – Where do caregivers live out typically stay?

45:00 – What will the program likely look at in the future?

56:00 – Do the caregiver programs allow governments to avoid funding daycare?

57:30 – Where do most caregivers come from?

Episode 25 – Protecting Foreign Workers and Employer Compliance Inspections, with Meera Thakrar

Steven Meurrens

The Government of Canada, as well as several provincial governments, have introduced several measures to protect temporary foreign workers and maintain the integrity of Canada’s foreign worker programs.

Meera Thakrar is a Canadian immigration lawyer whose practices focus on helping companies recruit and retain foreign workers.

Meera joins Peter Edelmann, Deanna Okun-Nachoff and Steven Meurrens to discuss various measures that different levels of government have introduced to protect foreign workers, challenges do governments face in this task and how employer compliance inspections work.

2:15 – Deanna discusses vulnerabilities that caregivers face. These include nonpayment of wages, excessive hours and more. What aggravates the situation is that because caregivers typically seek permanent residency and reporting abuse could potentially jeapordize this.

4:30 – What are some of the motivations of caregiver employers who exploit their foreign workers? What are some possible solutions to reduce the vulnerability of caregivers?

10:20 – Do what extent does the caregiver program deflate Canadian wages? To what extent does the fact that foreign workers provide cheap labour, making goods and services affordable, create a disincentive to stricter enforcement of foreign worker rights.

12:20 – An overview of how the government’s enforcement of compliance in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and the International Mobility Program works.

14:55 – Canada and British Columbia have an agreement whereby foreign workers who have been exploited can get a six month open work permit. How is this working out? What about the new British Columbia law to protect vulnerable foreign workers? How likely is that to succeed?

25:30 – Peter summarizes a criminal case that he had recently in which a trucking company was charged criminally for paying foreign workers by the mile instead of by the hour.

33:00 – Meera summarizes the case of a Canadian mine was fined for hiring Americans at a higher wage than the mine told the government that it would pay them.

36:20 – Meera discusses a case in which a company faced fines for not tracking the hours that a senior manager who made $500,000 a year was working.

40:00 – Steven discusses a case in which a company got fined for providing training to a worker in a different occupation than what they were supposed to be working in.

41:00 – What are ways to target policies and laws to actually protect foreign workers? Why do authorities seem to be keener to punish workers than prosecute employers?

Episode #24 – The Temporary Foreign Worker Program, with Meera Thakrar and Kyle Hyndman

Steven Meurrens

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program, also known as the Labour Market Impact Assessment, is the main program through which Canadian companies hire temporary foreign workers. We discuss numerous aspects of obtaining Labour Market Impact Assessments, including prevailing wage, recruitment, transition plans, processing times, job match, the Global Talent Stream and the Owner – Operator LMIA.

Kyle Hyndman and Meera Thakrar are both Canadian immigration lawyers whose practices focus on helping companies recruit and retain foreign workers.

3:00 – What are the first questions or things that Kyle and Meera tell Canadian employers that want to apply for Labour Market Impact Assessments?

3:57 – What is the difference between the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and the International Mobility Program?

8:00 – Why are companies generally reluctant to obtain Labour Market Impact Assessments?

8:20 – What are the recruitment requirements for a Labour Market Impact Assessment?

12:50 – What is Job Match?

19:00 – What do companies have to show and demonstrate through the recruitment process?

23:20 – What is the wage requirement for a LMIA? What is the prevailing wage?

25:00 – Do employers hire foreign workers to undercut Canadian wages?

26:30 – Can employers of foreign workers offer raises or bonuses?

30:00 – What are Transition Plans in High Wage LMIA applications?

36:00 – How does the Low Wage cap work?

37:00 – How does an employer show they can afford to pay the foreign worker?

39:00 – Can recruitment have a language requirement?

41:00 – What is an Owner Operator Labour Market Impact Assessment?

42:15 – What is the Global Talent Stream?

47:25 – How long do LMIAs take to process?

51:45 – What changes would Kyle and Meera like made to the Labour Market Impact Assessment process?