Foreign domestic workers are among the most vulnerable and exploited group of workers in Canada. Despite the tremendous demand for their labour, these women are unable to enter Canada through the points system because the state does not define childcare as skilled labour. Through the Live-in Caregiver policy (LCP), women from the developing world are able to apply for entry into Canada, but while Citizenship and Immigration Canada celebrates this program as being beneficial to women from the Third World, in reality it is the Canadian state and Canadian families who benefit most from this supply of cheap labour. Although these women are fulfilling important economic demands, they are not entitled to the same rights as landed immigrants who enter through the points system. As temporary workers these women are subject to the rules and regulations of the Canadian collective, at the same time that they are denied fundamental rights. The fact that these women are not accorded landed immigrant status and are required to live in the home of their employers leaves them highly vulnerable to abuse.
Foreign domestic workers were not always defined simply as cheap labour. When white British women first began to come to Canada to work as domestics and to help settle the land, these women enjoyed a privileged position. They were identified as civilizers of the nation-state and recognized as ‘daughters of the empire’ and future ‘mothers of the nation.’ Today, most of the domestic workers who come to Canada are women of colour, and consequently are excluded from membership within the Canadian collective. But because of the poverty in their home countries, these women continue to come to Canada, often leaving behind their own families in order to take care of the children of white, middle- and upper-class Canadian parents.
The vast discrepancy of wealth between first and third world countries has created an opportunity for the Canadian state to benefit from the exploitation of skilled female professionals, while at the same time presenting itself as a benevolent government interested in the well-being of these workers.
The Live-in Caregiver program is an exploitative government policy that must be abolished. Live-in domestic workers in Canada are essentially indentured servants.
As Canadians, we should be ashamed of ourselves for sitting back and allowing our government to continue this policy of abuse.
