Canadians looking to hire foreign workers as nannies are having to face unexplained delays due to changes introduced to the caregiver program. The problems are exacerbated by poor communication from federal agencies, with some recruitment agencies reporting that no applications have been processed in the past four months.

Canada’s Live-in Caregiver program was a part of the Temporary Foreign Worker program, and was widely used by Canadians to hire nannies and other caregivers. It would usually take up to 6-8 months to hire a caregiver, but the recent changes to the program have lead to further delays and confusion.

Under the new rules, foreign care workers are no longer required to live in the homes of their employers. Other changes to the application  process were also introduced in a bid to encourage more Canadian applicants for these jobs, following claims that the program had “mutated” into a family-reunification scheme. Now any family that is interested in hiring a foreign caregiver is required to show that there were no Canadian applicants available for the said job by applying for a Labor Market Impact Assessment (LMIA).

Once the family gets an approval on the LMIA, they can then apply for a work permit to hire a foreign caregiver for the job.

According to one family applying, he spent four weeks trying to find a Canadian nanny, but didn’t get a single application for the job. He then applied for an LMIA – twice, after the first application was lost by the government agency responsible.

When queried about the delays, Employment and Social Development Canada claims that in February, 80 percent of all LMIA applications received were processed within 30 days. However they were unable to provide LMIA processing times for just the caregiver program.

Some believe the latest changes to the caregiver program were an ill-conceived knee-jerk reaction to problems with the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

Attorney Colin Singer Commentary

The previous Caregiver program has a long history of controversy including exorbitant placement fees charged to both caregiver and family, excessive delays in processing, abuse of caregivers and an inflexible system.  In 2014 new rules took effect which created two separate streams of permanent residence (Caring for children and Caring for People with High Medical Needs) and placed annual quotas on the numbers of caregivers who can apply for  permanent residence under each stream at 2750 for a total of 5500.