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.

• On June 3, 2024, I announced new pilot programs that will provide home care workers with the opportunity to apply for permanent residence and provide a broader range of employers with access to the workers they need.

• Applicants arriving in Canada through these pilots will arrive as permanent residents – marking a shift away from two-step immigration and providing home care workers with the advantages of permanent residence directly, including labour mobility.

• The Department recognizes the need for stability in caregiver programming and expects the new pilots to be the last ones introduced before implementing a permanent program.

• The Department is exploring a permanent regulatory program that would include home care workers. More details will be shared when available.

If pressed
• The Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots provided a clear pathway to permanent residence for care workers and their families for five years. The pilots expired on June 17, 2024.

• Interest in the 2019 pilots was high, particularly for the Gaining Experience category of the Home Child Care Provider Pilot.

If pressed on Levels spaces:
• Although our permanent resident targets have been reduced to align immigration planning with community capacity, the 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan continues to ensure spaces for caregivers in recognition of their important role in supporting Canadian families with home care needs.

If pressed on processing delays:
• We know that some applicants have experienced considerable wait times with the processing of their applications. We have taken measures to improve processing times, including distributing files to additional offices to increase processing capacity.
• As of October 28, 2024, processing times for the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots were between 19-38 months depending on the category. As of September 30, 2024, the inventory for caregiver programming was approximately 37,400 persons (includes family members).
• Between January 1 and September 30, 2024, approximately 14,600 pre-assessment decisions were made for caregivers and their family members in the Gaining Experience categories enabling approximately 5,400 caregivers to work in Canada.

If pressed on language and education requirements:
• The language proficiency and education requirements will be adjusted under the new pilots. These requirements will better align to the occupational requirements, while maintaining a standard that continues to promote positive economic and social outcomes for home care workers and their families.

Overview of the New Caregiver Pilots
• The new pilots will provide a one-step immigration process for in-home care workers. This means that applicants will no longer be required to obtain work experience in Canada, and will be able to apply directly for permanent residence.
• Through these pilot programs, candidates that seek to work in Canada’s homecare sector will be selected through eligibility criteria that demonstrate their interest and abilities in the field. Applicants will be eligible to apply where they can demonstrate a minimum language proficiency of Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 4, hold the equivalent of a Canadian secondary school diploma, have recent and relevant work experience and have an offer of employment for full-time work in a home care occupation.
• Additionally, the pilots will expand the types of employers eligible to make job offers beyond private households to also include organizations that directly employ homecare workers full-time, but deploy them to different clients’ homes.
• Although there will not be any specific requirements for in-Canada work experience, spaces will be allocated to workers in Canada to support their access to the new pilots and help to transition temporary foreign workers to permanent residence.
Overview of Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker Pilots (2019 Caregiver Pilots)

• The Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots that were introduced in 2019 closed on June 17, 2024.
• The Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots provided a clear and direct pathway to permanent residence for in-home care providers. The pilots featured two streams, the Gaining Experience category and the Direct to Permanent Residence category.
o Applicants in the Gaining Experience category received an occupation-specific open work permit if they had a job offer in Canada and met the language, education, and admissibility requirements of the pilot. Caregivers were then eligible for permanent residence after they had accumulated the required Canadian work experience.
o Applicants who already had the required Canadian work experience could apply directly for permanent residence as a part of the Direct to Permanent Residence Category.

Current Status of Caregiver Programming

• The Department welcomed approximately 3,040 caregivers and their family members as permanent residents in 2023. Between January 1 and September 30, 2024, an additional approximately 5,050 caregivers and their family members were welcomed as permanent residents.
• Additionally, in 2023, over 13,000 pre-assessment decisions were made for caregivers and their family members applying to the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots from abroad, which enabled approximately 4,900 additional caregivers and their families to arrive in Canada and join Canada’s workforce.
• This momentum has carried forward into 2024, with approximately 14,600 pre-assessment decisions made for caregivers and their family members between January 1 and September 30, 2024, which has enabled approximately 5,400 caregivers to work in Canada.There are approximately 37,400 caregivers and their family members in the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots inventory (as of September 30, 2024).
Recent changes to the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker Pilots
• In 2023, changes were introduced to facilitate the timely admission of caregivers already in Canada and to better support access to the pathway for all interested applicants. These changes included:
o Introducing sub-caps to reserve some application spaces for caregivers who already have work experience in Canada from a previous work permit, and for alternate format application submissions, and
o Reducing the amount of Canadian work experience – from 24 months to 12 months – required for caregivers to qualify for permanent residence
• In 2024, shortly before the 2019 pilots closed to new applications, facilitative changes were introduced for applicants already in the inventory. These changes included
o reducing the pilots’ work experience requirements from 12 months to 6 months
o expanding eligible work experience to include experience acquired outside of Canada for the Gaining experience category
• The newly announced home care worker pilots enable more applicants to qualify without the need for Canadian work experience.

Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker Pilot Design Elements and Considerations

• The Department launched the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots on June 18, 2019. The pilots reflected lessons learned from the 2014 Caregiver Pilots, and responded 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 design of Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots intended to address these challenges and vulnerability concerns. Design elements included assessing applicants upfront for permanent residence eligibility, issuance of occupation-restricted open work permits, and family accompaniment at the temporary residence stage. These program design elements ensured applicants arriving from abroad had a clear and direct pathway to permanent residence and labour market mobility in Canada, and reduced barriers to family reunification.
• To ensure that home child care workers and home support providers coming to Canada have a clear pathway to permanent residence, the Department is not currently accepting new work permit applications for work in these two occupations from foreign nationals residing outside of Canada (with the exception of those who intend to reside and work in Quebec).

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 (2019-2024).
• 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 2024). As of September 30, 2024, over 4,800 in-home caregivers obtained permanent residence through the Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident Pathway.

None