Canada’s dream daycare program

 

 

One of the recurring program changes that Canada Immigration considered between 2008 and July 1, 2012 was the proposal to impose a four-year limit on temporary foreign work in Canada and a four-year waiting period to return to Canada. This was supposed to include all temporary foreign workers, without exception.

 

On April 1, 2011, Canada Immigration implemented this program but Canada’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenney had a change of heart and exempted the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) from the four-year limit on temporary work visas, thus continuing the right of foreign domestic workers to apply for permanent residence after completing two-years of live-in service. Maybe the thousands of Filipino caregivers under the LCP have worked their magic charm on Mr. Kenney after they have hailed him as their hero and the “king of Canada’s multiculturalism.”

Filipino nanny takes care of employer's child. Photo courtesy of Kia, Marin & Liam.
Click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDsbr_X2uV8 to view  "Nanny Documentary 1."

But the exemption covers only those caregivers who have already completed their work contracts and have submitted their applications for permanent residence when the new rules took effect in 2011. We just have to wait and see if the final Rules and Regulations in January 2013 will still contain this important exemption for workers under the LCP.

 

There is reason to worry because this has been done before by the Canadian government. Before the Foreign Domestic Movement in 1981 and the LCP in 1992 were adopted, foreign domestic workers, particularly those from Europe and those of English ancestry, were given the right to enter and stay. Prior to the 1970s, domestics from Britain were granted permanent residence after providing live-in services for six months. These domestics were given this right with the eye toward their future roles as wives and mothers. But this right was not given to Caribbean women who were allowed to enter Canada under short-term work permits. 

The LCP and the previous Foreign Domestic Movement program were seen by Third World domestic workers as the necessary purgatory to obtain permanent residence. But this may change if the path to permanent residence will be removed from the program by Canada Immigration in 2013.

 

Right now, nanny placement agencies in Canada are looking for various alternatives in case the LCP becomes a four-year temporary contract without giving workers hired under the LCP to apply for permanent residence after two years. The only reason why the LCP has become so popular, especially among Filipino women, is because these workers look at their mandatory two-year live-in requirement as a transition to a better future. These workers are unlikely to complain no matter how exploitative their work and living situations are. Even if their work amounts to being underemployed and de-skilled, it is still better than remaining in the Philippines with no prospect of a better future. Judging from the success of their predecessors, they all know they can also do well in the open job market after becoming permanent residents.

 

An alternative being considered by nanny placement agencies is the hiring of au pairs from Europe for 12 months under the existing working holiday visas. These visas are faster to process and since holiday visa workers do not stay permanently after one year, this option for Canadian families is of low cost to the government.

 

Daycare has always been a critical problem for Canada’s young families, where many Canadian women are torn between the choice of keeping their professional careers and putting them on hold to look after their young children. The cost of daycare has also increased sharply in the last 20 years, driving spouses to consider alternative working hours so that one parent is left to provide care to the children while the other works. This is especially true for parents who prefer home-based child care rather than the child care centre. It is estimated that the national average for child care in Canada is more than $4,500 a year, and 7.8 percent of a family’s budget is directed to child care.

Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYtPycoW9ng to view "The
Canadian National Child Care Policy."

There has been a move toward regulated child care in all provinces, away from informal family arrangements. In Quebec, which subsidizes daycare heavily, 72 percent of children attend regulated centres. In the rest of Canada, the rate is 40 percent. It is also estimated that more than 165,000 regulated spots are needed to meet the demand for space.

 

In Quebec, its newly-elected premier Pauline Marois has promised low-cost day care for all families, a project which she launched 15 years ago when she was education minister in 1997. The heavily government subsidized $7-a-day daycare system has been plagued by a shortage of available spaces and many families have been on the waiting list for so long. Marois promises to create 28,000 new spaces, a project which will take four years and cost the province $261 million more per year. But this project, according to Marois, will eventually leave the province with a spot for every child.

 

A recent study showed that the Quebec daycare system works and it provides economic benefits to families and has helped single parents to enter the workforce. The study also concluded that the province’s daycare program added 1.7 per cent to Quebec’s GDP in 2008 and brought back $1.50 in tax revenue for the federal and provincial governments, combined, for every $1 spent by Quebec. In Ottawa, the last time the federal government toyed with the idea of creating a national daycare system based on the Quebec plan was during the Liberal government under Paul Martin.

 

At present, Canada provides cash transfers and tax exemptions for child care services that benefit disproportionately the wealthiest Canadians, but offer very little support to middle-class families. Outside Quebec, parents are paying between $1,000 to $2,000 a month for each child care space, an enormous fraction of a middle class family’s income.

 

The concept of a national childcare program has been proposed by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1970. Finding that reliable child care is fundamental to women’s equality in employment, the Commission recommended that “the federal government immediately take steps to enter into agreements with provinces leading to adoption of a national Daycare Act.” The Vanier Institute of the Family also noted that “most women and men expect to have jobs and careers. With the high cost of living, most families require two earners to achieve an average standard of living.”

 

Nothing has been accomplished at the federal level and the provinces—with the exception of Quebec—in successfully implementing an effective and low-cost daycare program.

By virtue of default by the federal and provincial levels of government, the Live-in Caregiver Program has become Canada’s substitute daycare program: home-based daycare plus the added benefit of a caregiver who looks after housekeeping, cooking and other menial chores that Canadian mothers would prefer not to do by themselves. It’s a dream daycare program: low-cost to the government, and an affordable and comfortable luxury to families who can afford to hire a live-in caregiver.

 

However, the mandatory live-in residence requirement for LCP workers undermines the LCP workers’ personal freedoms and increases their vulnerability to every form of abuse and exploitation. Domestic workers have to endure two years of indentured service just to have a shot at the prize of landed or permanent resident status.

 

Whether live-in caregivers keep their chances of gaining permanent residence after two years of work, the obvious winner in this type of arrangement is the Canadian government. Foreign domestic workers bear the heaviest of burden among all new immigrants—that of modern-day slavery only to get a crack at that much-vaunted Canadian life in the future, while others get instant landed status and the opportunity to pursue the careers they’ve prepared for.

The end of Canada’s multiculturalism

 

 

Very recently, Jason Kenney, Canada’s Minister for Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism announced that Canada will soon have an immigration system that works for Canada’s economy. Instead of a system plagued with backlogs, by the end of 2013, Canada’s new immigration system will become more flexible and responsive to the labour market, Mr. Kenney said.

 

The overriding objective of Mr. Kenney’s initiative in overhauling Canada’s immigration system is to install a fast, flexible just-in-time immigration system. To Mr. Kenney, the bottom line is to make the system work for Canada’s economy, anything short is unacceptable.

 

Mr. Kenney’s package of initiatives will be implemented on January 2013, a totally revamped immigration program that features a new point-grid which harkens back the old era when Canada’s immigrants and settlers were primarily people of European Christian heritage. This was prior to 1967 when Canada’s immigration policy, just like most other countries at that time, used race, ethnicity, religion and language in selecting new immigrants.

Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. Photo courtesy of Andrew Forget,
QMI Agency. Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru5sTwBmWX4 to
view "Minister Jason Kenney on the Irish Late Late Show."

Of course, the new immigration policy will not directly identify race, ethnicity or religion as criteria in choosing newcomers in this country, obviously an indication that Canada is also sensitive to issues of racism and discrimination. However, the emphasis placed on proficiency in either of the official Canadian languages of English or French as the most important decisive factor in the selection process unmistakably tilts it in favour of certain source countries. Already, critics of this potential shift from non-English speaking countries have pointed out the return to Canada's ethnocentric roots, which was the main reason for adopting the points system in the first place.

 

When Canada adopted the points system for selecting new immigrants, it was hailed as a Canadian innovation. The system removed any type of formal discrimination from immigration policy. Individuals would no longer be denied immigration to Canada, as it was in the past, based on their ethnicity, nationality or religion.

 

Mr. Kenney has emphasized many times that proficiency in English or French accelerates the integration of newcomers in the workforce and in the larger Canadian society. “Extensive research has consistently shown that the ability to communicate effectively in either French or English is a key factor in the success of new immigrants,” said Minister Kenney.

 

Language proficiency will not only be imposed as the most requirement for new immigrants but also to applicants for Canadian citizenship as well. With this stringent language requirement for citizenship, immigrants who have been successful as permanent residents and have lived, worked and contributed to Canada for years will find it more difficult to become citizens.

 

Effective November 1, 2012, applicants for citizenship will be required to submit acceptable evidence of their language proficiency, such as the results of a CIC-approved third-party test, or evidence of completion of secondary or post-secondary education in English or French, or evidence of achieving the appropriate language level in certain government-funded language training programs. This requirement will be in addition to passing a harder citizenship exam and a 75 percent minimum passing grade. There will also be no automatic citizenship for foreign-born children and for everyone born in Canada of immigrant parents.

 

Making proficiency in English or French as the most important requirement for social integration and job placement strikes at the heart of Canada’s policy of multiculturalism. In 1971, the federal government has recognized the cultural and racial diversity of Canadian society, and acknowledges the freedom of all members of Canadian society to preserve, enhance and share their cultural heritage. That Canada is not mainly English or French, but a composite of many and diverse ethno-cultural communities.

 

In 1988, Parliament passed the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, and enshrined this policy of multiculturalism in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, guaranteeing among others, equal protection and benefit of the law, and freedom from discrimination on the basis of gender, religion and racial or ethnic origin. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act also upholds Canada’s multicultural policies in its objectives by respecting the federal, bilingual, and multicultural character of the country.

Vancouver Multicultural Day Committee’s National Multicultural Day event.
Courtesy of BC Gov Photos. Click link to view "The State of Multiculturalism
in Canada," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZytZWw7ByM

As immigration continues to change the country’s demographics, Canada’s multiculturalism program has focused on making its institutions more responsive to the needs of Canada’s diverse population. Therefore, this new language proficiency requirement for new immigrants and citizens is unquestionably a step backward, a decision that ignores the ethnic and cultural make-up of Canada’s present-day immigrants.

 

Since 1991, China, India and the Philippines have been the top source of immigrants to Canada – countries where neither English nor French is the first language. Other immigrants and refugees come from countries in the Third World where they don’t speak English or French as their mother tongue. In due time, these immigrants have mastered their ability to speak English or French. Although not without the hardship that usually comes with every immigrant’s struggle to survive, they have contributed to the country’s economy and have become established and law-abiding citizens.

 

While mastery of the language might produce better economic outcomes for immigrants in the short term, it could also make it more difficult to find enough people with sufficient levels of fluency to maintain Canada’s immigration levels. And language is not the only focus of the present overhaul of Canada’s immigration system.

 

A study conducted by Prof. Naomi Albiom of Queen’s University has found that the present government’s immigration policies are making Canada less welcoming as it was. The new emphasis on reducing backlogs and short-term labour market needs is reshaping Canada’s future as a country for immigrants. Prof. Albiom has also criticized the pace these changes are being made through undemocratic methods like embedding them in omnibus and budget bills, and giving the immigration minister with almost unlimited authority to set policies with little public or parliamentary oversight.

 

All this makes us wonder if Immigration Minister Kenney’s reform initiatives are simply a reaction to the failure of multiculturalism in Europe where the leaders of Germany, France and Britain, have each declared that multiculturalism has been a failure in their countries, serving to separate and segregate, rather than integrate. Is Mr. Kenney trying to avoid a similar backlash against multiculturalism in Canada by revamping the immigration system now, rather than wait for the kind of European upheaval against accommodation of diversity issues?

 

The 2004 United Nations Mission on contemporary racism, for instance, concluded “that racial discrimination in Canada was tangible as reflected in the high incidence of poverty, overrepresentation in the prison population, racial profiling and under representation of ethnic and racial minorities in the upper and middle layers of political, administrative, economic, cultural and media institutions and mechanisms.” An effective way, it seems for the present government to prevent this situation from blowing up is to control the influx of new immigrants, and to ensure that these immigrants will conform to Canada’s original ethnocentric values and culture.

 

So, the Conservative government’s immigration momentum appears to run counter to the basic idea of multiculturalism that successful integration occurs when newcomers retain a sense of their heritage and culture while also becoming engaged in the larger society. While Europe has struggled with this concept, the defining feature of Canadian culture seems to be under siege not much from the immigrants this country fears may strike like their counterparts in Europe, but more from a government that seems tied to old-fashioned assimilation.

 

Like Europe where mandatory civic integration policies are now being implemented, Canada is similarly paving the way to a more comfortable road to assimilation of its new immigrants by ensuring that they conform to its ethnocentric culture right at the gates. Against a backdrop of increasing social isolation of immigrants and their rising political radicalization, it is only a matter of time when Canada eventually sheds off the reputation of being the first country in the world to adopt a policy of multiculturalism.

 

When Mr. Kenney insists on language proficiency and emphasis on hiring of temporary foreign workers without a path to permanent residence and citizenship, the undercurrent in this policy is clear: Canada can no longer tolerate a live-and-let-live attitude towards immigrants. New immigrants to Canada, to the Conservative government’s approval, must be “Canadian first,” at least in relation to public life. If their ethnic identities are to be preserved, these must be expressed only in private and not be the basis for political claims to multiculturalism.

 

The death knell to multiculturalism has already been sounded. Allan Gregg wrote in The Walrus that the elite consensus on a feel-good multiculturalism is blinding us to the reality of growing ethnic divides and animosities. Canada is not immune to the European conundrum and failure to contain multiculturalism.

To avoid the ethnic and religious divisions that are so visible in Europe, Jason Kenney is learning his lessons fast. He may not admit that he intends to abolish multiculturalism as an objective of immigration reform, but his immigration policies appear to be directed towards post-multiculturalism, a new order that avoids the excesses of multiculturalism without imposing the harsh policies of assimilation that are happening in Europe where he has been borrowing most of his ideas of reform.