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| Nicola Simpson |
In March 2025, Canada introduced two key immigration programs: the expanded Construction Worker pilot and the new Home Care Worker Immigration pilots. Both aim to regularize non-citizen workers who are essential to the Canadian economy. At first glance, the programs appear practical, targeted and responsive to workforce needs. But a closer examination through legal, gender and economic lenses reveals a deeply troubling disparity in how Canada values different forms of labour. This is not merely about policy nuance or administrative efficiency. This is about which workers Canada believes are worth dignifying with status, and which are deemed disposable.
Caregiving and the legal legacy of gendered immigration
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In 2014, the federal government replaced the LCP with the Caring for Children and High Medical Needs pilots. These programs removed the live-in requirement but introduced higher language and education thresholds. They also imposed a cap of 2,750 principal applicants per stream. The path to permanency was no longer based on service but on selectivity. Thousands of experienced caregivers already in Canada found themselves suddenly ineligible due to an English test score or an unrecognized diploma.
In 2019, Canada attempted course correction with the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots. These pilots provided open work permits tied to occupation rather than employer, allowed accompanying family members, and accepted applications from abroad.
Despite these improvements, structural inequities persisted. Applicants still needed high language scores, post-secondary credentials and 24 months of Canadian work experience to qualify for permanent residence. Most notably, the annual cap remained. In January 2023, one stream reached its cap within three hours. Thousands of caregivers, many without legal status or work authorization, were left to wait another year.
The 2025 Home Care Worker pilots: A measured step forward
The newly launched 2025 pilots introduced several promising reforms. Language requirements dropped to Canadian Language Benchmark level. A high school diploma became sufficient. Only six months of caregiving experience or training is now required. These changes better reflect the realities and skills of actual care workers. Immigration Minister Marc Miller described the new pilots as offering permanent residency on arrival and stated the government’s intent to make the program permanent.
Importantly, the pilots introduced a limited pathway for out-of-status caregivers who entered Canada before December 2021 and worked without authorization. For the first time, such work can count toward the experience requirement. This signals a more humane understanding of the vulnerabilities caregivers face.
However, the cap of 2,750 applications per stream remains unchanged. Only 150 of those spaces are reserved for out-of-status applicants. When the new pilots opened on March 31, 2025, the intake closed within hours due to overwhelming demand. Applicants faced technical glitches, bandwidth crashes and delayed updates. Many were left in limbo. With the stream for applicants outside Canada postponed until 2027, thousands with job offers in hand were denied any chance to apply.
This allocation method, based on a first come, first served digital sprint, violates the principle of procedural fairness. It rewards those with access to fast internet and legal support while excluding the most marginalized. Such a system, while facially neutral, disproportionately harms the very people the program claims to uplift. It functions as a barrier dressed in bureaucracy.
Further, the communication strategy exacerbated inequalities. Although the government announced the pilots in mid 2024, key details were not released until weeks before the launch. The last-minute rollout disadvantaged those who needed time to gather documents or secure assistance. This created confusion, panic and ultimately exclusion.
Pilot programs in Canadian immigration law
Immigration pilot programs are temporary initiatives designed under s. 14.1 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Because they are classified as pilots, they are subject to annual caps, do not require parliamentary approval and operate outside the core framework of Canada’s permanent immigration categories. Policymakers have discretion over intake levels, eligibility criteria and program duration. This flexibility can foster innovation, but it can also entrench precarity and gatekeeping. Had the caregiver program been legislated as a permanent stream, these arbitrary caps would not apply.
The Construction Worker pilot: Recognition without restriction
In contrast, the expanded Construction Worker pilot offers an affirming model. It aims to grant permanent residence to 6,000 undocumented construction workers across Canada. It builds on a successful 2019 pilot in the Greater Toronto Area, developed with the Canadian Labour Congress. Unlike the caregiver pilots, these construction programs require no formal education or language tests and feature minimal processing delays. Eligibility is based on work experience, years in Canada and community integration.
Moreover, the construction pilots were developed with input from unions, employers and community stakeholders. This participatory model fosters trust and better implementation. The rationale is clear. Policymakers frame these workers as critical to solving the housing crisis. Their contributions are economic, urgent and visible. As a result, the system responds with generosity, flexibility and speed.
By contrast, caregiving remains undervalued and peripheral. It is performed in private homes, dominated by women. The result is not just unequal treatment but the reproduction of social hierarchies through immigration policy.
A disparity rooted in gender and neoliberalism
Some might argue that housing is in crisis while caregiving shortages are less politically urgent. Others might defend the caregiver caps as necessary to manage application volumes. But these distinctions collapse under scrutiny. Caregiving is also in crisis. Canada faces chronic shortages of eldercare providers, personal support workers and childcare staff. The absence of reliable care undermines workforce participation, especially for women. It creates downstream costs for health care, mental health and education systems.
The persistent marginalization of care work in immigration policy reflects a broader neoliberal logic. Under this model, immigration is designed to serve measurable economic productivity. Construction work aligns neatly with this model. Caregiving, though essential, is harder to quantify. Its value lies in enabling other work to happen. But in a neoliberal framework, if labour is not easily monetized, it is not prioritized.
The caregivers who have fallen out of status are not few in number. Many have lived and worked in Canada for years, often times due to IRCC’s bureaucracy and backlogs. Their regularization is not an act of charity. It is a matter of legal and ethical coherence. The system cannot promise opportunity and then punish those who accept it on the government’s own terms.
A case for structural parity and permanent reform
The 2025 caregiver pilots demonstrate that reform is possible, but they fall short of structural justice. They gesture at inclusivity without guaranteeing permanence. They open a window but not the front door. To uphold the principles of equity, dignity and fairness, Canada must go further and do more to reduce the apparent gendered gatekeeping in immigration law. It must legislate a permanent caregiver program under the same legal framework as other essential worker streams. It must eliminate the legal blind spots, as well as the legal fiction of equity in immigration pilots resulting in arbitrary caps that transform opportunity into a lottery. It must recognize care work not as a compassionate afterthought but as a cornerstone of the national economy.
Construction workers build the cities and houses that shape our skylines. But caregivers make those cities habitable and those houses into homes. Their labour is not seen in steel beams or concrete, but in the quiet resilience of aging parents tended with patience, children raised with stability, and families held together in moments of crisis. Without care work, no other work is sustainable.
A just immigration system does not ask caregivers to wait at the margins. It invites them to the centre. Not because they have endured hardship, but because their contribution is foundational. Caregivers deserve more than a cap; they deserve a country to call home. To delay that recognition is to ignore the hands that steady the very ground on which this country stands.
Nicola Simpson is a family law and immigration lawyer licensed by the law society to provide legal services in Ontario. She is also a trained family law mediator with additional training in child-inclusive mediation.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, LexisNexis Canada, Law360 Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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