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 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 homecare workers. More details will be shared when available.

If pressed

• Since their introduction in June 2019, the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots have provided a clear pathway to permanent residence for care workers and their families. These pilots expire on June 17, 2024.

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

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 April 2024, processing times for the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots were between 26-36 months depending on the category. At the end of April 2024, the inventory for caregiver programming was approximately 42,000 persons (includes family members).
• In 2023, over 13,000 pre-assessment decisions were made for caregivers and their family members in the Gaining Experience categories. About 88% of those received a positive decision, enabling approximately 4,900 caregivers to work in Canada.
• Additionally, between January and April 2024, nearly 9,000 pre-assessment decisions were made for caregivers and their family members in the Gaining Experience categories enabling an additional 2,800 (approx.) caregivers to work in Canada.
• The new pilots will ensure caregivers and their families do not face prolonged temporary residence status in Canada as a result of delays in permanent residence processing. Caregivers arriving from abroad will arrive as permanent residents.
• 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.

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 care workers and their families

Overview of the New Caregiver Pilots
• Two new pilots will accept a maximum of 2,750 principal applicants annually, for a total of 5,500 per year, plus family members.
• 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, but will be able to apply directly for permanent residence. Applicants arriving in Canada through these pilots will arrive as permanent residents.
• 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 Canadian equivalent of a secondary school diploma, have recent and relevant work experience and have an offer of employment for full-time work as either a home child care provider or home support worker.
• 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 some 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 (Caregiver Pilots)

• The Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots will close on June 17, 2024. Applications will continue to be accepted where spaces remain available up until that date.
• The Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots were introduced in June 2019. They accepted a maximum of 2,750 principal applicants annually, for a total of 5,500 per year, plus immediate family members.
• 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 3,000 caregivers and their family members as permanent residents in 2023. Between January and April, 2024, an additional approximately 1,900 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 nearly 9,000 pre-assessment decisions made for caregivers and their family members by April, which has enabled approximately 2,800 caregivers to work in Canada.
• There are approximately 41,000 applications for caregivers and their families in the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots inventory (as of May 1, 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

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 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.

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), the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots (2019-2024),. The Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots (2019 caregiver pilots) that have not reached their intake caps will remain open to new applications until the pilots close on June 17, 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 April 30, 2024, over 4,800 in-home caregivers obtained permanent residence through the Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident Pathway.

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