Caregiver confidential

Quebec labour laws don't necessarily apply to domestic workers

BY WAYNE HILTZ

Aa far as immigration is concerned, it seems that anyone can become a Canadian citizen--for a price. Under the Immigrant Investor Program, wealthy people from around the world can come to this country in exchange for an investment of $450,000.

For immigrants who are not independently wealthy, however, there is a different price to pay. According to a local advocacy group, new arrivals who come here under the Canadian government's Live-in Caregiver Program are subjected to conditions they refer to as "legal slavery" or "indentured servitude."

"We're now at the end of the 20th century but our laws are way, way behind the times," says Denise Caron, director of the Association pour la défense des droits du personnel domestique (ADDPD). The ADDPD is currently stepping up its efforts in an attempt to rectify what Caron calls "a really desperate situation."

Recruited from abroad, domestic workers--also called home caregivers--are obliged to work at their employer's residence, under a work permit in their employer's name. Only after working as a caregiver for two years can they apply for landed immigrant status.

In many cases, this situation can result in abusive relationships with their employers. Marie, a 43-year-old ADDPD volunteer who worked as a caregiver for four years, said she wasn't paid for months by two different employers--seven months with one, three months with another. When she asked for her pay after seven months with the first employer, she was promptly shown the door. "In order to keep your job, you're obliged to keep quiet and to let a lot of things pass," Marie says.

And the caregivers' predicament is worse in Quebec than in many other provinces. Here, live-ins are subject to different labour standards than other workers: they are paid slightly less than the minimum wage and only receive overtime pay after working 51 hours, rather than 44. Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia, in contrast, have no such salary or work-week distinctions.

The ADDPD is organizing a commemoration of International Home Caregivers' Day on April 5, as well as a full-day conference on the caregiver situation on April 25.

Whatever happens this year, Caron says the ultimate aim is simple. "We don't want pity. We want justice."