The real moral of nannygate
Thomas Walkom
The Toronto Star
May 16, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story : (27)
Hidden behind the delightfully juicy contretemps over how Brampton MP Ruby Dhalla treated her Filipina nannies lies a larger, more important question.
Why does Canada have a special, temporary immigrant program for nannies? If we truly lack qualified live-in caregivers, why not admit them through the normal immigration stream?
And if we don't need foreigners to take care of children or the elderly, why admit anyone at all?
Abuses under the nanny program have been documented for years, most recently by my colleagues Dale Brazao and Robert Cribb. Started more than three decades ago, it has long been criticized as a legalized system of indentured servitude
Technically, Ontario's live-in nannies are supposed to receive at least minimum wage, work no more than 48 hours a week and get annual paid holidays.
In fact, many are paid much less and work much longer hours often in sweatshops that have nothing to do with caregiving.
As temporary migrants, many nannies are afraid to complain lest they be deported.
More important, they have an incentive to stay silent. Those able to prove they have worked 24 months within a three-year period may apply for permanent resident status the first step toward coveted Canadian citizenship.
It's a back-door immigration route that, at one level, satisfies all of the actors. Families with young kids (or, in the Dhallas' case, an elderly parent) get domestic help without having to pay the wages a Canadian might demand. Foreigners who otherwise don't qualify to get into Canada win a chance at citizenship.
Meanwhile, governments are able to appease middle-class voters who might otherwise demand a national child and elder-care system.
As a Commons committee reported this month, the nanny program is just one small part of a “temporary” foreign-worker system that has careered out of control.
In 2007, more than 115,000 temporary foreign workers (including 13,840 nannies) entered Canada for the first time up 22 per cent from the year before.
Some of these temporary workers have special skills that employers say they can't find in Canada. But many don't.
In Alberta, for instance, doughnut shops were allowed to import temporary coffee servers.
The committee, which has recommended that the temporary-worker category be eventually scaled back, points to the obvious problems of this system.
First, it discourages employers and governments from training Canadians to do necessary jobs. Why spend money training unemployed citizens to build houses when skilled carpenters can be imported from abroad?
Second, it keeps a brake on wages. If employers can tap into the global reserve army of labour, they have no incentive to increase the productivity, and thus the wages, of their existing workers.
Most important, perhaps, it creates two classes of immigrants.
On the one side are permanent residents who, confident of their status, can commit themselves to Canada for the long run.
On the other are temporary workers: fearful, exploitable, marginalized and insecure.
The committee's answer is to give all temporary foreign workers, not just nannies, the chance to apply for permanent-resident status after a few years labouring here.
Yet surely, that would just expand the indentured servant problem. As the nanny experience shows, the promise of eventual citizenship is a powerful incentive to grin and bear otherwise intolerable working conditions.
Even then, it's a crapshoot. A study done this year by the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants estimates that only half of the nannies admitted to Canada manage to gain permanent residency the first rung on the ladder to citizenship.
What to do?
At one level, Canadians have come to rely too much on immigration as the miracle answer to every problem from the aging baby boom to the lack of family doctors.
We fret that we won't have enough immigrants. Then we fret that we won't have the right kind.
We insist that permanent immigrants be rigorously screened to ensure that their education standards are as high as possible.
Then we wring our hands when, because there aren't enough openings for nuclear physicists and rocket scientists, these highly qualified newcomers end up driving cabs.
Most of all, we prefer the ease of cheap or pre-trained labour.
Ruby Dhalla's brother, Neil, didn't need foreign nannies to remove the lint from his many suits; he could have taken them to a dry cleaner. Calgary doughnut shops unable to find coffee servers could let customers pour their own. Buy Canadian trade policies could ensure that Leamington tomato pickers earned a living wage.
But all of these would cost us something from higher tomato prices to costly dry-cleaning bills to more investment in equipment or apprenticeships.
The recent decision of the cash-strapped Toronto district school board to shutter a state-of-the-art Scarborough trade school and the Manitoba government's campaign to recruit skilled tradespeople from Iceland are not unrelated.
As for the Dhallas, I find it hard to believe that they couldn't find a Canadian housekeeper, lint remover and shoe shiner willing to live in a basement apartment as sumptuous as the one that the Brampton MP has described. Perhaps she and her brother, both chiropractors, should have offered higher wages.
But if we really do need to bring in foreign housekeepers, tomato pickers and nannies, why treat them as second-class immigrants? Give those who qualify permanent-resident status straight off. That would allow them to bypass dodgy employment agencies.
It would also give them a little more bargaining power with imperious bosses, the key words here being “a little.”
As Ruby Dhalla might point out to her critics, nannies aren't the only Ontarians illegally forced by their employers to work unpaid overtime.
Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday and Saturday.
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A Mess that needs attention
A very good article.WHY does the Foreign Worker Prog allow potential employers to offer work if there's an unemployment problem? The Dhallas were given permission to offer work.In the appl.the rate of pay was “supposed to be”$9.25/hr/40 hr work etc.There are no JOB DESCRIPTIONS.There is NO protection for(1)workers trying to get landed status (2) the “honest” employers. Like the man with 4 kids who sponsored a “nanny” and was left high and dry after 3 short weeks How can an employer defend against that? Especially now when this is such a hot topic and subject to public perception?? The abuses can be/are 2-sided. The Dhalla case centers around a high-profile Fed. politician so it brought this problem into the limelight. It's good on one-hand but it also has caused very serious damage.This problem needs to be addressed in a very serious manner. The programs scrapped or more clearly defined and MONITORED. ~
Submitted by CarolynD at 5:31 AM Sunday, May 17 2009
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J.H.
They do not take jobs that Canadians don't want. I know unemployed Canadian women who would gladly take a nanny job. As long as labour laws were adhered to. The problem with this program is that employers can take advantage of women who come from dirt poor countries knowing they will do anything to get permanent status. I am sure the Ruby affair is just the tip of the iceberg nannies put up with. End the program now.
Submitted by ChangeAgent at 10:36 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
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The Important Issues
Thanks Thomas Walkom for highlighting the important issues in relation to this caregiver problem. What a world! This is what they call evolution: Humans treating each other like wild animals. The big dogs are eating the small dogs. There's little love and principle out there. As rational beings, some of us see that and ask Why? That's entirely appropriate. Thomas asks Why? We should think on why. My thought would be: The paradigm of 'riches for the strongest' has two components, namely 'riches' and 'ego'. Worldly people are glory seekers, but for glory to be glory, others must see it. By taking from others (mainly by breaking rules that everyone who claims to want peace and order agrees to) so that they have less than you and no power (or willingness to respond in kind to various forms of aggression), you both put yourself above those who you deprive and you force them, and others, to notice you and your superiority. Those who play that game better hope there's no God.
Submitted by Arby at 8:00 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
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Best analysis seen so far
I am glad to see a journalist using a longterm look at a fundamentally exploitive labour practice, rather than getting caught in the red herrings of the politics involved. The foreign domestic worker program in Canada has certainly created not only a subclass of workers, but a subclass of citizens, good enough to prop up our underfunded social programs but not good enough to be treated like real workers. Kudos on breaking down this story into real issues!
Submitted by LouisaLee at 5:50 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
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Uhhh….
“Did Ruby put a gun to their heads? If the nannies felt that they were being exploited, all they had to do was leave. Simple, really.” They did… unless you consider under two weeks a long-term contract? They fled when they could get their passports back. Question is, why are you defending Queen of Mean? Liberal supporter?
Submitted by cygnus2112 at 3:35 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
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not that simple
These workers take the jobs that no one else wants.
Submitted by J. H.'s opinion at 3:05 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
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Looking for the Real News
Well written Thomas, your article exhibits the kind of branch plant mentality Canada suffers from. We see ourselves as hewers of wood and drawers of water. Naturally given our geography and abundant resources we have found it easier to extract, drill, and chop our way to prosperity, apposed to building from within. We are not self sufficient like Sweden or Switzerland. It is ironic a country with the abundance of wood finds itself importing Swedish furniture. We are dismantling our manufacturing economy bolt by bolt. Stelco is being broken down and shipped to India to produce the steel for cars we will one day import. We are missing the forest for the trees. We should be building a country from within. How do replace a $30 dollar an hour job at a lumber mill, or steel plant, with a $12.00 an hour service job? You dont. This attitude informs our policy makers to treat temporary immigrants as nothing more than chattel.
Submitted by Ron McAllister at 2:56 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
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A CRIME SO MONSTROUS, By E. Benjamin Skinner
In Canada and the USA, slave labourers don't know their rights. Our governments enable employers to exploit their rights. http://acrimesomonstrous.com/
Submitted by Frank Docherty at 1:20 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
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caregiver protection program
since this law exist last april 2009(caregiver protection program) all abused and exploited caregivers are now have couraged to help stop the bad things happenning about the caregivers and the dhalla case is just one of them…
Submitted by yaya2004 at 1:15 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
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it's an old isue but new to the public
employers know their responssibility but some of them will take advantage of live-in caregiver program the lowest paid job…
Submitted by yaya2004 at 1:07 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
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satisfies all of the actors
No, I don't think so. Some Canadian is cheated out of a job so some well heeled person can get cheap labour. Ruby Dhalla, is not much different than most upscale persons, they mostly feel they are entitled to exploit the poor & especially the vunerable. I'm sure there are thousands of cases of this kind of thing going on right now. Without a union “most” employers will exploit the vunerable to the full extent they can. Mr farmer, of course Canadians don't want to be your serfs; if you don't like welfare/EI people you could always raise wages to where you could select the people you would like. Of course this is even better, they work hard & cheap with no attitude; what could be better. Yes I will pay more for my food. Don't know any Dominicans but you sure are right about the Jamaicians & especially the Mexicans, they are great people, we could use (not abuse) more of them.
Submitted by biker650 at 12:21 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
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Nannis are just
trying to make money to send home and I understand that. I hired so far three live in support for my father when I'm not home to keep him company and cook for him and help with daily routines because he is 92. This first “nanny” went home to her native country after working for a year and a half. The second and third we fired because we caught them stealing from my father. The fourth has been with us now for three years and all she wants to do is sit and eat and sleep. We pay her biweekly, give her room and board and ttc fare for the weekends when she goes home but when we ask her to do some cleaning, dusting, vacuming she starts freaking out and says it's not her job. My father says don't worry about it I'm too old to look at any more workers. My point for this is that except for one five nannies don't want too work, they just want the money and free room. Maybe the MP did abuse her nannies but really unless you light a fire under their ass they won't work.
Submitted by joeyh at 12:18 PM Saturday, May 16 2009
