The Live-In Caregiver program and Canada’s National Childcare strategy

By Qara Clemente - Special for FF-WPR

With daycare costs on the rise and available spaces dwindling down, the need to create a national childcare program that genuinely addresses the needs of all Canadians has become ever-pressing. Speaking on this issue on the 22nd of August was guest host Qara Clemente and interviewee Kelly Botengan, a member of SIKLAB Ontario (a Filipino worker’s organization) and the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario. Botengan elaborated on the link between national childcare and immigration policy by discussing Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), Canada’s de facto national childcare program. According to Botengan, the LCP is a disservice both to Filipinos and Canadians alike as it fills in Canada’s need for cheap female labour from the Philippines and fuels the privatization of healthcare and childcare. The recent changes to the program, implemented this spring, has only concealed the crisis in immigration and childcare. As Botengan said, “the only fundamental change that can be made to the program is its scrapping, in other words, granting permanent residency to temporary workers upon arrival and creating a national childcare program.”