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Filpino Nurses Support Group - Vancouver, Montreal
Open Message to the Philippine Nurses Association
Filipino Nurses Support Group in Canada greets the Philippine Nurses Association in Manila
October 20, 2008
The Filipino Nurses Support Group (FNSG) in Vancouver and Montreal congratulates the Philippine Nurses Association for their 86th Foundation Anniversary and their 51st Nurses Week Celebration & National Annual Convention on October 21-23, 2008. This year’s theme “"Nurses: Delivering, Serving, Leading Primary Health Care" is important especially when examined within the current context of neo-liberal globalization and the continuing exodus of nurses from the Philippines.
FNSG, an organization of over 800 Filipino nurses in British Columbia (BC) and Quebec, understands that the health care system in the Philippines is strained by the massive out-migration of Philippine-trained nurses. The country’s grinding poverty and chronic political economic crisis forces hundreds of thousands of Filipino nurses to seek work abroad.
Canada is a popular destination for Filipino nurses. Since the 1990s, Filipino nurses have come to Canada en-masse to work NOT as registered nurses. Instead, Filipino nurses are exploited and oppressed as domestic workers and 24-hour home support workers under Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). In 1992, Canada changed the Foreign Domestic Movement (FDM), a childcare/nanny program, to the Live-in Caregiver Program that now includes care for Canadians with disabilities and the elderly. At that same time, the nursing profession was removed from Canada Immigration’s point system making it impossible for nurses to immigrate into the country as permanent residents. Filipino nurses seeking work in Canada had little choice but to come under the LCP.
The LCP imports Filipino nurses into a program of modern-day slavery, economic marginalization, de-skilling, and stalled development. Through FNSG’s years of community-based research, we have documented that many Filipino nurses under the LCP earn as little as $1.50/hour. This hourly wage is in stark contrast with BC’s legal minimum wage at $8/hour and registered nurses’ starting wage at $28/hour. Filipino nurses under the LCP are stripped of their professional skills, education, and dignity as they cook, clean, provide personal care, and give medications for families wealthy enough who can afford private live-in care. Filipino nurses also face a discriminatory and lengthy accreditation process that further keeps them out of the nursing profession. Filipino nurses are trapped as low-paid caregivers even years after completing the LCP.
FNSG analyzes the LCP and the discriminatory barriers within Canada’s nursing regulatory bodies as a clear injustice especially when Canada currently faces an intensifying nursing shortage. The Canadian Nurses Association predicts a nursing shortage of 78,000 registered nurses by 2011 and 113,000 registered nurses by 2016. Immigration and accreditation barriers that Filipino nurses face purposefully segregate them into a pool of cheap labour. As part of neo-liberal globalization, Canada exploits the cheap labour in its efforts to erode publicly funded health care and to privatize it. The reserve pool of cheap health care workers drives down the wages of unionized nurses, thus cheapening the nursing profession.
The current situation of Filipino nurses under the LCP is in sharp contrast from the Filipino nurses who arrived in Canada during the 1960’s and 1970’s. At that time, reciprocity agreements immediately recognized the education and skills of Filipino nurses and allowed them to work as nurses upon arrival. Filipino nurses have a legacy in building Canada’s health care system.
The Philippine Women Centre (PWC) and SIKLAB (Sulong Itaguyod Karapatan ng mga Manggagawang Pilipino sa Labas ng Bansa), through their own community work, recognized that the presence of Filipino nurses doing domestic work is part of women’s exploitation inherent in the nature of neo-liberal globalization. Thus in 1995 in Vancouver and in 2007 in Montreal, PWC and SIKLAB helped organize FNSG to address the urgent need to empower Filipino nurses to resist the exploitative and oppressive nature of the LCP and to demand for their full right to practice their nursing profession. FNSG conducts community-based work that educates, organizes, and mobilizes Filipino nurses to understand their realities and assert for genuine social change.
FNSG has been successful in its community-led work. Through self-reliant efforts and peer-leadership of FNSG members, FNSG continues its nursing and English review classes, advocacy, peer counseling, clinical practice labs, and accreditation support. Through FNSG’s community-based initiatives, 300 Filipino nurses have been supported to become registered nurses in Canada.
Through FNSG’s advocacy and lobby efforts, we have been successful at affecting positive change in the immigration and accreditation processes. For example, some Filipino nurses under the LCP who have been able to acquire their nurse licensure have been able to leave the LCP and work as nurses in Canadian hospitals. Also, through FNSG’s assertion, Filipino nurses can obtain Interim Permits to practice nursing while waiting to write the Canadian nursing exam.
However, FNSG continues its community-based work towards the full participation of Filipino nurses in Canada. Many Filipino nurses continue to come to Canada under the LCP. Canada Immigration and the nursing regulatory bodies continue to ignore the full recognition of Filipino nurses already in Canada, especially Filipino nurses under the LCP. In fact, government and institutions continue to propose policies that make it difficult for Filipino nurses under the LCP to return to their profession.
FNSG continues to call for the scrapping of the Live-in Caregiver Program and to fully recognize Filipino nurses through reciprocity agreements.
FNSG congratulates PNA on the occasion of the 86th Foundation Anniversary and wish the National Convention a success!
Leah Diana, RN BSN
On behalf of the Filipino Nurses Support Group
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