Partner Spotlight: How BCGEU Fights for Fair Jobs and Housing
In this interview with BCGEU researcher Liam McClure, learn about the union’s efforts to protect good jobs, advocate for essential public services, and support sustainable community development. The BCGEU’s Affordable BC Campaign, launched in 2017, is taking bold steps to make affordable housing accessible by promoting land value capture, vacancy control, and direct funding for public housing. Additionally, BCGEU’s latest project near Royal Oak Skytrain station combines union offices with affordable rental units, aiming to provide below-market housing options for BC residents. With a strong focus on reducing housing and economic insecurity, the BCGEU is paving the way for new models of labor and community-led housing initiatives.
Canada’s broken promises to migrant care workers
Despite the government’s promise to offer permanent residency to migrant care workers applying to the new pilot programs, there currently remains a large number of unprocessed applications from migrant care workers who will continue to be drawn from the Global South and classified as temporary labour. Canada’s care worker programs have largely drawn from the Philippines in the past two decades. Exacerbated by long PR processing times, these workers face chronic uncertainty, prolonged family separation, continual precarious employment and economic insecurity. Migrant Care Workers Precarity Project’s investigation found that despite the elimination of the live-in requirement in 2014, many migrant care workers who arrived under the 2019 pilot programs are still economically compelled to reside with their employers.
New report: A Decade of Migrant Care Worker Programs – Addressing Racism and Precarity in Canada
For more than a century, Canada has seen thousands of migrant care workers enter the country to provide much needed care work. In June 2024, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada announced impending new pilot programs for migrant care workers. While the announcement brings hope that “new pilot programs will provide home care workers with permanent residence on arrival in Canada,” this report identifies persistent problems with Canada’s migrant care worker programs and demonstrates why permanency upon arrival is a requisite for necessary program changes. Given the ongoing and structural issues of Canada’s migrant care worker programs, the newest pilot programs will also need other critical improvements to ensure dignified work and meaningful inclusion for much-needed care workers in Canada.
