Wave of appeals by dismissed immigrants to Justice Pro Bono, especially for permits for vulnerable workers

Temporary workers are calling in large numbers for help on an information line from the Justice Pro Bono organization that is intended for them. Among them, many are asking whether they can access an open permit in a context where the emergency program for vulnerable workers is blocked.

The duty revealed last Friday that the program to help closed-license workers escape abuse has suffered significant delays since January.

Open permit applications should be processed on a priority basis, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), but processing times can take up to several months. These delays mean the program can no longer fulfill its role as a closure and protection, several organizations say. Employees who attempt to leave an abusive employer are therefore plunged into even greater financial and psychological misery, as several employees have testified in recent months.

“There has been a wave of layoffs in recent months and many employees are consulting us,” explains Caroline Dufour, coordinating lawyer for the support of temporary foreign workers at the organization Justice Pro Bono.

She, too, has noticed increasingly longer processing times for the same program since “about the second half of the fall.” Despite the fact that the IRCC promised for four years that files would be processed within five working days, “it has rarely seen this deadline respected.” IRCC has quietly removed this listing from the program page, telling us that the delay currently averages 52 days.

Without much publicity and after only one year of existence, the Justice Pro Bono legal information line is more popular than initially expected. “When I arrived, we initially wondered how we would inform the public about the existence of our service. We haven’t done anything special, but the line is really overflowing,” M explains^e Out of the oven.

Not only have these hundreds of employees called to request open permits, she says, but this is also one of the common reasons for consultation. In recent months, “many people have reached out to us because they have been laid off, laid off or laid off,” she notes. They get stuck, because in order to continue working they have to apply for a new closed permit. “It is long and complex, because you have to find another employer who is willing to take the steps,” she says.

Rare options

One solution could be to move to the open permit program. The latter is reserved for victims of violence, whether physical, psychological, sexual, financial or in the form of retaliation. So not everyone is eligible.

Being fired is not in itself a reason to call yourself ‘vulnerable’, but other factors surrounding these employment goals sometimes are, she explains.

“We will first demystify the program for the employee because it can be confusing. (…) Is there anything other than dismissal that could involve violence? Have there been any irregularities? Or is it purely a dismissal within the margins of the law? » says the lawyer.

When employees call, “sometimes they let situations drag on for a long time because they didn’t know it was illegal. They consult us because they already have problems and feel abused.” It can also be difficult to compile files due to the lack of written evidence. “If someone reports missing pay slips, they simply will not receive them,” she gives as an example.

This information line does not send requests to the IRCC program for every call. M^e Nevertheless, Dufour is currently supporting a number of people in this matter: one of these requests has been pending for more than two and a half months. “It’s very problematic because people don’t have a job while they wait. Every day is important. »

To watch on video