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Filipino Nurses Support Group
Press statement
Speakers on CBC’s The Current overlook Modern-Day Slavery inherent in Live-in Caregiver Program
May 6 , 2008
On Friday, May 2 CBC’s The Current discussed the increasing demand for live-in caregivers for seniors, using Canada Immigration’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). The Filipino Nurses Support Group (FNSG) of BC and Quebec assert that the show gave over-emphasis to the racist, dehumanizing comments of recruiting agencies, overshadowing the concrete experiences of Filipino women and the extreme exploitation built into the LCP. None of those interviewed on the program gave an analysis or context to the LCP and instead allowed those interviewed to blame Filipino women for the current crisis in Canada’s healthcare system.
The LCP relegates hundreds of Philippine-trained professionals, many of whom are nurses with outstanding clinical experience, into the private sphere of domestic work and 24-hour live-in home support work.. Live-in caregivers under the LCP, 95% of whom are from the Philippines, prepare meals, do household chores, assist the elderly and people with disabilities with their personal care such as toileting, bathing, medical consultations, medications, physical exercise and mobility. The live-in requirement creates the condition for many caregivers to work 24-hours, on-call throughout the night, earning as little as $2.00 per hour. Florida Catig, a Philippine-trained physiotherapist and a live-in caregiver for a senior with Parkinson’s, explained to the CBC that she oftentimes gets up in the middle of the night to assist with toileting and she doesn’t sleep well through the night as she tries to listen out for her employer.
Under the LCP, caregivers must complete an employer-specific, live-in work contract for 24 months within a 36-month period while holding temporary work permits. In 1992, Canada Immigration renamed the Foreign Domestic Movement (FDM), the nanny program for children, to the Live-in Caregiver Program that expanded to include the home support program for elderly and people with disabilities. Since the FDM, nearly 100,000 Filipino women have come to Canada to work as live-in caregivers.
In 2001, FNSG’s community-based research confirmed that many Filipino nurses doing domestic work and 24-hour home support work under the LCP face deskilling and stalled development. Additional discriminatory accreditation barriers make it more difficult for Filipino nurses to return to the nursing profession. In fact, many Filipino nurses who have been able to complete the accreditation process remain trapped under the LCP.
It is illogical for highly-educated Filipino nurses to work in Canada as modern-day slaves in the midst of a dire nursing shortage.
The group asserts that while Andrea Texeira, caregiver recruiter, boasts on CBC of her booming business where 75% of her business shifted from nannies for children to nannies for elderly in the last 6 to 8 months and 99% of her caregivers for seniors are from the Philippines, and while Pat Irwin, of Eldercare Canada, spews racist, dehumanizing, and chauvinist rhetoric on CBC about Third World standards of care, the Canadian public suffers from the slashing of public health care funds and the expansion of privatized health care. Canada is using the LCP as part of its push to privatize health care, a system that only benefits Canadians who can afford private live-in care.
Since 1995, FNSG has been lobbying all levels of government and nursing institutions for the full accreditation and reciprocity of Filipino nurses. FNSG believes these changes will help advance the Filipino community’s full socio-economic and public participation in Canada and will help alleviate Canada’s nursing shortage and health crisis.##
For more information, contact Leah Diana (Vancouver) 604- 215-1103 or FNSG Quebec (514) 678-3901.
Link to the CBC's "The Current" piece: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2008/200805/20080502.html
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