National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada
Mother's Day 2008 Statement

Ina, Abante! Kumilos, makibaka para sa hustisya, karapatan, at dignidad!  
Mothers, move forward to struggle for justice, our rights and dignity!

May 11, 2008

This year, member organizations of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada, pay tribute and honour the many Filipina mothers here and abroad celebrating Mothers’ Day.

The worsening social-economic crisis in our Motherland, drives our people abroad in order to support their families. With the rising prices of rice and basic commodities and little to no employment, 3000 Filipinos are leaving their families daily, to more than 190 countries across the globe including Canada. Filipinas are going abroad as domestic workers, entertainers, mail-order brides and prostitutes. Without addressing the need for jobs, justice and food, this forced migration facilitated through the Philippine government’s Labour Export Policy serves to diffuse social tension.

Since the early 1980s, nearly 100,000 women have entered Canada through the Live-In-Caregiver Program (LCP), and its predecessor the Foreign Domestic Movement. The LCP’s “four pillars” create the conditions for exploitation and all forms of abuse.

The LCP is a racist and anti-woman program.  95% of all women under the LCP are Filipino, and many of them are highly-educated and mothers. As temporary workers forced to live and work in their employers’ homes, many women work on-call 24 hours a day making minimum wage or less. Many women who are unable to complete the strict requirement of 24 months of live-in work within three years because of bureaucratic hurdles and poor working conditions are unjustly deported. Women are also susceptible to all forms of abuse including rape. 

Canada is not asserting the need for Universal Childcare for all women in Canada.  The LCP provides childcare options only for more affluent families in Canada, leaving working-class families with little to no options. Because of the increasing privatization of Canada’s health care system, and because nursing is not recognized under the immigration point system, many Filipino nurses are trapped working as live-in caregivers in private homes of the elderly or disabled. Meanwhile the nursing shortage in Canada worsens.

Women become de-skilled through the LCP and because their foreign education is not accredited, they often end up in multiple low-paying service sector jobs.  The long hours women work take their toll on families. Many relationships break down because of long family separation and many women become single mothers and/or are vulnerable to abuse and long-term economic marginalization even years after the LCP.

Through the LCP, parents and children are separated for an average of five years and often more.  They are only allowed to bring their families to Canada once they complete 24 months of work within a 36 month period.  These years of family separation have significant negative long-term effects on families.  When mothers are finally able to bring their children and spouses over to Canada, they are reunited as strangers. 

Many newly-arrived youth also face personal and systemic racism in Canada. Many drop out of school to work in low-paying jobs.  The harshest impacts of the LCP can be seen in the recent deaths of live-in caregivers like Editha Mangaoang, Jocelyn Dulnuan and Arcelie Laoagan, and the children of former live-in caregivers: Jomar Lanot, Deeward Ponte, and Charle Dalde. It is every mothers’ worst nightmare to lose a child especially after being away from them for so many years. We pay tribute to these women and youth whose lives have unjustly been lost and honour their mothers who sacrificed so much to bring them to Canada.

This Mothers’ Day, we stand in solidarity with all mothers who are away from their children, who have lost children, and children who have lost their mothers due to the unjust policies of the Live-in Caregiver Program. 

We also pay tribute to the many women and children victims of politically-motivated killings and forced disappearances in the Philippines. While many families back home are able to survive on their wives’, mothers’, daughters or sisters’ remittances, the country does not reap any long-term benefits.  This is why while some would prefer to retain and reform the LCP, we stand militant in our call for the scrapping of the LCP, so mothers will not continue to be exploited and suffer the grief of family separation anymore.  We also demand an end to the forced migration under the Labour Export Policy and for genuine democracy and freedom in Philippines so that we can return and live in our Motherland.

We continue to draw inspiration from the many Filipina women and mothers who continue to struggle for genuine change in the Philippines and abroad for the betterment of this and our future generations.

Ina, Abante! Kumilos, makibaka para sa hustisya, karapatan, at dignidad! (Mothers, move forward to struggle for justice, our rights and dignity!)

Scrap the racist and anti-woman Live-in Caregiver Program!

End forced migration and the Labour Export Policy!

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