Immigration Committee - World Conference on Religion for Peace (WRCP)
Organization profile published 1980

Publisher:  World Conference on Religion for Peace, c/o Jean Campbell WCRP Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Year Published:  1980
Resource Type:  Organization
Cx Number:  CX1093

Abstract: 
The World Conference on Religion for Peace, Canada (WCRP), a national organization with local chapters, seeks to promote interfaith dialogue with a view to justice and peace. The Toronto working group on Immigration of WCRP has focused on the struggle on long term migrant workers, namely female domestics.

According to the present immigration laws, women from the Third World particularly, are permitted to come to Canada as domestic workers on a one-year work permit, which can be extended to three years. The possibility, however, of attaining landed status is non-existent for these women.

Seasonal migrant workers, in Canada for a few weeks each summer doing agricultural labor, are protected by the Employment Standards Act; but the same protection does not apply to domestic workers. Domestic workers are also the only occupational group excluded from Human Rights Code and the protection of the Workman's Compensation Board. These latter exceptions are violations of the statutory objectives of Canada's immigration policy.

The WCRP Immigration Group is working in collaboration with INTERCEDE (International Coalition To End Domestic's Exploitation) and shares the following objectives with INTERCEDE:

- to ensure that a bill bringing domestic workers under minimum wage legislation be passed in the Ontario legislature this year;
- to ensure that the contract which is signed by Federal Immigration and employers of domestic workers on work permits be made legal and binding on employers;
- to work with the Federal Immigration Department to ensure that every woman on a work permit in Canada has the opportunity to apply for landed status.

Through the attainment of these goals WCRP hopes to take the fear of deportation away from domestics, so that they can make their substandard working conditions.

This abstract was published in the Connexions Digest in 1980.

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