Sulong, Itaguyod ang Karapatan ng mga Manggagawa sa Labas ng Bansa – BC
Statement

Mothers' Day Statement of Overseas Filipino Workers and Their Families in Canada

May 13, 2007

Warm and militant greetings on this Mother’s Day from SIKLAB – Advance the Rights and Welfare of Overseas Filipino Workers!

On this Mother’s Day, we, as overseas Filipino workers and our families in Canada, honour the millions of Filipino mothers in the Philippines, in Canada, and in many other countries around the world who have made courageous sacrifices and have shown their steadfast strength to ensure the survival of their families.

We also honour the many Filipino women who have sacrificed their lives and became one of over 1000 victims of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances in the Philippines since 2001. The long-standing civil war and the chronic economic and political crisis in the country is the reason why we or our mothers have been forced to migrate abroad to countries like Canada in order to support our families back home.

With 10% of its people staying or working abroad, the Philippines has been described as one of the largest migrant nations in the world whose overseas workers annually remit over $13 billion US dollars to the Philippines – thus propping up an ailing economy.

In the last two and a half decades, over 100,000 Filipinos in Canada have come through Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s (CIC) Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP). We came as migrant workers working in the private sphere of the household for as low as $2/hour.

In the last six years alone, 95% who came under the LCP were Filipino women thus, highlighting the need by Canada for cheap labour and the “forced” migration of Filipino women. The LCP sentences people, mainly women, to a lifetime of live-in domestic, cleaning, and other service sector work. We are hailed as “modern-day heroes”, but in fact, we are “modern-day slaves” working as live-in caregivers in Canada. The LCP steals our dignity and strips us of our previous experience and education.  Even after we finish 24 months of live-in domestic work and LCP contracts, we are trapped as a segregated pool of cheap labour.

Instead of implementing a universal childcare program accessible to all Canadian women and their families, Canada continues to recruit Filipino women to do live-in childcare and home support work in a private home.

Despite this sorry record of violating the human rights of Filipino live-in caregivers and despite statements that Canada wishes to regularize undocumented immigrants, Canada continues to expand its temporary foreign workers program or movement.

The expansion of Canada’s recruitment and exploitation of temporary migrant labour should also be seen in the context of bilateral and multilateral agreements under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), Mode 4 and in the context of Canada’s need to compete for and maintain sources of cheap, docile labour.

The formation of SIKLAB in 1995 is a landmark development in the history of educating, organizing, and mobilizing the Filipino community for our genuine rights and welfare in Canada.

As overseas Filipino workers in Canada, we honour all of our brave mothers and call on our sisters to fight for our rights and welfare in Canada, our genuine emancipation as women and for our nation’s genuine freedom, democracy and a just and lasting peace!

SIKLAB
May 13, 2007