A UBC geography professor has said there’s no reason why present-day ethnic-minority caregivers should be treated differently from the mostly European women who came to Canada as domestic workers prior to the mid 1970s.

Geraldine Pratt, an expert on the federal government’s Live-in Caregiver Program, explained that starting in the 1890s, Europeans who came as nannies were granted permanent-residency status immediately upon entering the country.

According to Pratt, that privilege was taken away in 1973 when Canada implemented a predecessor to the LCP that mostly saw women from non-European countries being employed as caregivers.

Pratt recounted the history of foreign domestic labour in Canada in response to changes to the LCP proposed by the federal Conservative government on December 12.

These include eliminating the requirement of a medical exam when caregivers apply to become permanent residents, and making nannies eligible to apply for permanent residency after 3,900 hours of work, as opposed to the two years of employment currently required. Employers will also be required to pay caregivers’ travel costs from their country of origin, workplace safety insurance, and other fees.

However, the changes don’t include granting caregivers permanent-residency status upon arrival.

“There’s lots of little things that may make a difference, but the structure of the program hasn’t been changed at all,” Pratt told the Straight by phone. “It’s still this temporary work-visa program that dates to 1973.”

But according to immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, giving permanent-residency status to caregivers when they land could be problematic, as the country’s experience with people who arrived as entrepreneurs or fiancés has demonstrated.

“If you give people permanent-residency status conditional on some obligation—conditional on marrying, conditional on opening a business, conditional on fulfilling a two-year live-in contract—it will not work,” Kurland told the Straight in a phone interview.

That’s because people change their minds about their commitments, he explained. “The experience is proven in other categories,” Kurland said. “They change their mind, and what are you going to do about it?”

The proposed changes to the LCP were published in the Canada Gazette on December 19. The changes will be finalized after a 30-day comment period.