Question Period Note: CAREGIVER IMMIGRATION

Immigration Pathways for Caregivers and Processing Plan

• Caregivers from abroad play an important role in supporting Canadian families who are unable to find the care they need for a family member in Canada.

• The Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots provide a clear pathway to permanent residence for caregivers and their families. Under the pilot, workers can change employers to provide care elsewhere, which reduces their vulnerability.

• As of April 30, 2023, the amount of in-Canada work experience required for a caregiver to qualify for permanent residence has been reduced from 24 months to 12 months.

• Caregivers and their families will now benefit from a faster path to permanent residence and successful settlement in Canada.

If pressed on processing delays:
• The Government of Canada was able to exceed its admissions target in 2022 by welcoming over 437,000 new permanent residents.
• However, we know that some applicants have experienced considerable wait times with the processing of their applications.
• As of August 2023, processing times for the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots were between 29-34 months depending on the category and the inventory was approximately 35,400 persons (includes family members).
• We have taken measures, including distributing files to additional offices, to improve processing times.
• Our continued priority is to provide timely service to clients by moving towards a more modern environment in order to help speed up application processing.

Overview of Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker Pilots (Caregiver Pilots)

• The Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots were introduced in June 2019, they accept a maximum of 2,750 principal applicants annual, for a total of 5,500 per year, plus immediate family members.
• The Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots provide a clear and direct pathway to permanent residence for in-home care providers. The pilots feature two streams, the Gaining Experience category and the Direct to Permanent Residence category.

o Applicants in the Gaining Experience category receive an occupation-specific open work permit if they have a job offer in Canada and meet standard criteria for economic immigration programs. Caregivers are then eligible for permanent residence after they accumulate the required Canadian work experience.
o Applicants who already have the required Canadian work experience can apply directly for permanent residence as a part of the Direct to Permanent Residence Category.

Current Status of the Caregiver Pilots

• Interest in the pilots continues to be high. While the 2023 intake cap for the Home Child Care Provider has been reached applications continue to be accepted for the Home Support Worker pilot.
• From January 1 to July 31, 2023, the Department has welcomed approximately 1,900 caregivers and their family members.

• Canada benefits immensely from the work done by those in caregiving occupations and will continue to rely on their work beyond the expiry of the pilots. The Department is evaluating the future of caregiver programming with an eye to 2024 and beyond.

Recent changes to the Caregiver Pilots

Introduction of Caregiver Application Intake Sub-caps

• The Home Child Care Provider Pilot has reached its application intake cap quickly in the past and the number of Home Support Worker Pilot applications continues to grow.

• For this reason, on January 1, 2023, we introduced intake sub-caps for the remaining two years of the pilots, reserving 1,650 application spaces (60% of each pilot) for the Gaining Experience category and 1,100 application spaces (40% of each pilot) for the Direct to Permanent Residence category. The sub-caps were put in place to dedicate intake space to caregivers who already have work experience in Canada and to facilitate their timely admission.

• While generally applications for permanent residence are to be submitted online, a number of spaces for alternate format applications were also reserved for each category under the Home Child Care Provider Pilot.

Change to the Work Experience Requirement

• The s.14.1 Ministerial Instructions pertaining to the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots were amended to reduce the work experience requirement from 24 months to 12 months. Applicants applying under the Gaining Experience category will still benefit from a 36-month occupation-specific open work permit to acquire eligible work experience in Canada. This change took effect on April 30, 2023, and applies to new applications and applications currently being processed.

Pilot Design Elements and Considerations

• The Department launched the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots on June 18, 2019. The new pilots reflect lessons learned from the 2014 Caregiver Pilots, and respond to specific, chronic vulnerability concerns raised during consultations with stakeholders. Consultations revealed that many caregivers arrived in Canada as temporary residents without a clear pathway to permanent residence, faced isolation and prolonged family separation, and experienced particular vulnerabilities related to in-home work and having their employment status tied to a specific employer.

• The pilots are testing a two-step approach, whereby foreign caregivers receive an occupation-specific open work permit if they have a job offer in Canada and meet eligibility criteria for permanent residence. Once in Canada, caregivers must accumulate the required duration of full-time Canadian work experience in their occupation in order to finalize their application for permanent residence. Caregivers in those occupations who already have the required Canadian work experience can apply in one step for permanent residence.

• The occupation-specific open work permit is specific to either in-home child care or in-home support worker employment. The work permits are exempt from the labour market test requirement (i.e., a Labour Market Impact Assessment), and are occupation-specific (i.e., not tied to a named employer). These elements of the program design are intended to address the unique vulnerabilities that can arise from having your status tied to a private household employer (versus a professional business employer).

• To ensure that home child care workers and home support providers coming to Canada have a clear pathway to permanent residence, the Department does not accept new work permit applications that are not connected to the pilots for work in these two occupations from foreign nationals residing outside of Canada.

• Family members are eligible to apply for open work and study permits to come with the caregiver to Canada once the applicant is approved for the work permit associated with the Home Child Care Provider pilot or Home Support Worker pilot.

• The language proficiency requirement for the pilots is Canadian Language Benchmark 5. In addition to ensuring that caregivers have sufficient language proficiency to carry out their roles in supporting the health, safety and comfort of their clients, it equips caregivers for social and economic integration, and helps mitigate vulnerabilities.

Tools for Addressing Worker Vulnerability

• In Canada, the rights of all workers - including temporary foreign workers - are protected by law. Temporary foreign workers have the same rights and workplace protections as Canadians and permanent residents.
o Employment standards for caregivers largely fall under Provincial-Territorial jurisdiction, but the Federal Government has several foreign worker protection tools in place to ensure that employers who hire foreign national workers respect program conditions, and that workers can exit situations of abuse should they arise.

• In September 2022, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations were amended to enhance the protection of temporary foreign workers by establishing new requirements and conditions for employers under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and the International Mobility Program and by improving the Government’s ability to hold employers responsible for non-compliance.

• Key amendments include requiring employers to provide employees with information about their rights in Canada, having a signed employment agreement outlining wages, occupation and working conditions, and providing access to health care services when a worker is injured or becomes sick at the workplace. Additionally, the definition of abuse is expanded to include reprisal against a worker for making a complaint, and employers are prohibited from charging or recovering recruitment fees from employees.

Legacy Caregiver Programming

• Caregivers have had multiple pathways to permanent residence, including through the Live-in Caregiver Program (1992-2014), the Caring for Children and Caring for People with High Medical Needs pilots (2014-2019), the Interim Pathway for caregivers (2019), and the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots (2019-present). Of these, only the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots (2019 caregiver pilots) are open to new applications.
• Any applications received under closed programs continue to be processed until a decision has been reached.
• Additionally, foreign national caregivers already in Canada continue to be able to apply for work permit extensions in these occupations through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (supported by a Labour Market Impact Assessment). They may also apply for permanent residence through the new pilots or any other program they qualify for.
o For example, caregivers were eligible to apply under the Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident Pathway which ran from May to November 2021 and received over 91,000 applications (processing has extended into 2023). As of July 31, 2023, over 4,300 in-home caregivers obtained permanent residence through the Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident Pathway.

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