Pinky Paglingayen, a former live-in caregiver who immigrated to Canada from the Philippines, speaks during a demonstration outside former Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino’s office on July 4, 2020, demanding more rights for non-permanent residents in Canada. Photo courtesy Migrant Workers Alliance for Change/Facebook.

Canada relies on migrant care providers. These workers, most of whom are racialized women from the Global South, sustain our economy and care for our loved ones, taking on essential roles such as personal support workers, home support workers, live-in caregivers, childcare providers, and nurses. And yet, on December 19, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) quietly announced that it would indefinitely pause two care-related pilot programs that offer home care and childcare providers pathways to permanent residence. The potential fallout from this pause is catastrophic. Without permanent residence, migrant care providers in these programs can be deported if they lose their jobs—and they are unable to bring their families to Canada. The disruption could also exacerbate existing shortages in elder care, home care, and disability support, further endangering the stability of long-term care. Ultimately, the pause reflects a broader trend in immigration policy that treats migrant care providers as disposable.

The number of temporary foreign workers in Canada has more than doubled in the last decade, from over 356,000 in 2011 to more than 845,000 by 2021. Temporary foreign workers have become increasingly important to the Canadian labour market, particularly in care-related sectors such as social assistance and health care. Decades of research show that the uncertainty built into temporary and pilot care provider programs—especially employer-specific permits and delayed or inaccessible pathways to permanent residency—produces profoundly negative consequences for migrant care providers, including chronic stress, deteriorating mental health, and prolonged family separation. According to a BC Federation of Labour report, exploitation and abuse are a regular feature of the migrant care provider experience. Some employers strategically use these workers’ precarious immigration status to deter formal complaints, suppress wages below accepted labour standards, and require extended or unreasonable working hours.

As a result, we are left with a stark contradiction: migrant caregivers are treated as too transient to deserve the same rights and security as the Canadians they look after, even as they are deemed essential to sustaining the economy and caring for our loved ones. And migrant care providers are not the only ones who suffer under this system. When workers face chronic stress, fatigue, and burnout, the quality of care declines for recipients as well. In the short term, low wages and precarity may boost the profit margins of corporate employers, but an economy that relies on essential labour while structurally enabling its exploitation ultimately undermines its own capacity to recruit, retain, and sustain a stable workforce.

Solving this issue requires reckoning with the unequal power dynamics—ones shaped by race, gender, and global economic inequality—that are foundational to the programs that bring migrant care providers to Canada, such as the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). Canada’s TFWP has evolved from a relatively small, exceptional labour-market tool into a central pillar of the Canadian economy, while continuing to rely on employer-specific permits and restricted worker rights that were never designed to govern labour at such a scale. These shifts are consistent with global patterns in which migrant labour is brought in to meet economic needs while denying workers the social and political rights that come with permanent status. Organizations such as the BC Federation of Labour connect the dots between the rampant abuse, precarity, and wage theft that many migrant care providers experience to specific policy choices, such as how the TFWP ties a care provider’s right to remain in Canada to a single employer. This creates incentives for exploitation and prevents workers from advocating for basic labour protections.

Many officials have called for an end to the TFWP, some out of concern for the wellbeing of migrant workers, while others manufacture panic about migrants taking jobs away from Canadians. The debate is already affecting policy. The consequences IRCC’s December 19 announcement to pause caregiver pilot programs are already apparent. Community activists interviewed by CBC say many caregivers currently employed in Canada are left in a state of protracted uncertainty because of the halt, especially if they lose their jobs or need to leave abusive work environments. Because permanent residency is required for family reunification, the pause also restricts caregivers’ ability to reunite with their families. It may further exacerbate existing shortages in elder care, home care, and disability support, undermining the stability of long-term care. These gaps can lead to missed care, added stress, and the breakdown of trusted relationships that many people rely on to feel safe and supported.

The solution is not to end care provider immigration pathways, but to transform them. For example, open or occupation-specific work permits that enable employees to leave abusive employers without risking deportation should replace employer-tied work permits in immigration policy. Stronger enforcement measures are also required in Canada to address employer violations of labour or immigration laws. As the aforementioned BCFED report shows, lax enforcement allows abusive employers to act with impunity.

On a more fundamental level, the Canadian government must treat care labour as crucial social and economic infrastructure. Ensuring the wellbeing and security of care providers is vital to the long-term sustainability of the Canadian labour market. If the workers who enable others to work cannot remain safe or healthy, the economic system they sustain becomes unstable. Migrant care providers deserve straightforward pathways to permanent residency, the freedom to change employers, and protection from the exploitation documented across current programs.

Nathania Ebegbare is a Master of Public Policy candidate at the University of Toronto, specializing in health, social, and urban policy. She is a Registered Social Service Worker (RSSW) with experience in mental health research and frontline service delivery, including work with the Canadian Mental Health Association and St. Michael’s Hospital. This piece was written as part of the Centre for Global Social Policy’s Opinion Piece project, with funding from SSHRC and the Canada Research Chairs.

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