As many people who will read this blog post know, I live in
an integrated condo complex that has an on-site user-run homecare service,
which provides personal care services to the circa 14 User-Members, who,
because of our various physical disabilities, require these services in order
to live independently in our own homes. Given the relatively small size of our
homecare service, and the personal, daily involvement of our aides in some of
the most intimate aspects of our lives, the User-Members and the staff have,
over time, bonded as a unit, and consequently, we’ve come to function very much
as a community—even a family, of sorts.
As with any family, the level of function/dysfunction within
our group waxes and wanes over time. And, as with many families, it is
particularly in times of loss and adversity that our little community comes
together to share our grief and fight our battles. Over the years, we’ve had our
share of both losses to grieve and battles to fight. But rarely (thankfully!) have two major
losses befallen us in one week, as they did last week.
On Monday, June 29, Brenda Moore, passed away in hospital,
after spending just under 24 hours in ER. One of the founding Members of
Creekside Support Services, Brenda was a lifelong advocate for the right of
people with disabilities to learn, work, and live alongside their able-bodied
counterparts. She was 59 years old and had Muscular Dystrophy. Given that Brenda
had already blown numerous predictions about her life-expectancy out of the
water (through sheer force of will, I think), and that she had been dealing
with some complex health issues for the last few years, it would be incorrect
to say that her death was completely unexpected. And yet, the suddenness of her departure left us all
reeling.
Just four days later, on Friday July 3, Roscyl Carido, who had been working as an
aide at Creekside for the past two years under the Temporary Foreign Workers
program received a call from Canadian Immigration ordering her to get out of
Canada that day. As with Brenda,
Roscyl’s departure wasn’t entirely unexpected either, since she had come to
Canada from her native Philippines for a two-year term, which had, in fact, now
expired. However, over the last four months, Creekside Support Services had
made no less than four attempts to obtain the Labour Market Impact
Assessment (LMIA) which was necessary to
have Ms. Carido’s term of employment as a foreign worker extended. All four
attempts were strangled in a web of bureaucracy. “It was VERY difficult to get
information from anyone,” says Joy Gossel, Coordinator of Creekside Support
Services, “The phone lines were very busy and the website does not clearly have
the process laid out… Citizenship and
Immigration (CIC) is extremely difficult to reach. They won't speak with you in person unless
you have an appointment but when you can't get through on the phone to make one????”
Joy Gossel goes on to say that, notwithstanding the constant
frustration that she had experienced throughout the process of trying to get Roscyl
Carido’s TFW Visa extended, she was stunned by the abruptness with which Roscyl
was ordered to leave Canada within 24
hours. “I was very surprised as the information we had received the day
before was not the same as what we received Friday.” Gossel concludes, “This is
not an easy process anymore - they've made it so difficult to understand - this
is going to hurt people for sure.”
From where I sit, this has already hurt people. Creekside
has lost both a founding member, and one of our most dedicated aides in a
single week—one through death, the other through bureaucracy. Both hurt in
different ways, of course. Ironically, the second loss seems even more senseless
than the first. When she ran into my condo to bid me a hasty goodbye last Friday
afternoon, the one thing Roscyl lamented was that she wouldn’t be able to attend
Brenda’s funeral the next day.
Canadian Immigration trumps even death, apparently.
