Human Resources Committee on May 9th, 2013

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Do you launch a review as a result of a complaint, or do you just review sporadically?

[Alexis Conrad]

We do both. If allegations come to light, we will follow up. But we do different types of sampling of employers, random and non-random compliance reviews, to ensure overall compliance with the program.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

In terms of a specific number of complaints that were lodged with the department by temporary foreign workers or on behalf of temporary foreign workers, is that information that you can get and present to this committee?

[Alexis Conrad]

Yes, presumably I can. I just don't have it with me here.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Okay. Do you know offhand what the timeline is for responding to a complaint? Is it timely at all?

[Alexis Conrad]

Absolutely. In a lot of cases, when something comes up, we're literally on the phone the next day or in the days after. We take that very seriously.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

That wasn't the case with these two allegations of abuse in my province. We couldn't get anybody from your department to actually look into these allegations.

[Alexis Conrad]

I regret that I don't know the specific details of those cases. But I would just say that, as far as the compliance problems with the program go, oftentimes we'll talk to an employer if there are wages unpaid. Sometimes there are mistakes in terms of the deductions that come from temporary foreign worker paycheques, any number of a range of complaints, a lot of which are often unknown to the employer; it's an accounting mistake.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

In a lot of cases the temporary foreign workers are actually hesitant to complain or to lodge a complaint about the employer because they're afraid of repercussions.

I have another quick question. HRSDC is suffering from the largest job cuts of any federal government department. I think they're in the range of 3,800; some 3,800 notices have been delivered. How will those job losses impact your ability to investigate these complaints, the number which you're to get us soon?

[Alexis Conrad]

I have absolute confidence that we are correctly resourced to do the compliance reviews and compliance activities that we need to do to ensure that employers are actually complying with the program.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

How many layoffs were issued specifically to the people in your department who do those compliance reviews?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, how is this relevant? The gentleman was kind enough to answer the question. What is the relevance here?

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

We're talking about the temporary foreign worker program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

You're specifically asking questions about layoff notices with respect to persons who might have something to do with the existing practice relating to the subject matter we're talking about today, so in that sense it's somehow connected, but what we're dealing with today are the proposed changes to the program under the budget implementation bill.

I think it would be a stretch for department officials to start to rummage through their information to see which employees may or may not have received any notices relative to this program, given the general statement that there are the resources and staff to do what needs to be done. It would be stretching a long bow to the study of the particular sections of the IRPA that are being amended, and so I won't allow questions to go in that direction.

You won't have to provide that information is how I rule, but go ahead.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

That's it, Mr. Chairman. I was going down that line of speaking. I don't agree with your judgment, but good for you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

I can see you may disagree with that. That's how I rule.

Next is Ms. Leitch.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Great. Thank you very much.

I want to thank all of you for taking the time to spend with us today. I greatly appreciate it.

Obviously economic action plan 2013 is extremely important to the government, and I think to all Canadians, to make sure we're moving the economy forward.

As you are more than well aware, I think that the purpose of the temporary foreign worker program is to deal with those absolute and acute labour shortages that we see across the country when a company may be finding itself in a circumstance where it literally cannot find a single Canadian to fill a role, and therefore to maintain its productivity, it requires temporary foreign workers.

I know we have a robust program in place, and it's been in place for many years, but obviously there have been some concerns. I appreciate your input in making sure that changes are put forward that can alleviate some of those concerns we've had as a government, but also that Canadians across the country have had.

I have two sets of questions for you.

I come from a riding that is a significant rural riding in the country, Simcoe—Grey. We grow 10% of Canada's apples and 90% of Ontario's potatoes. We're the size of Prince Edward Island, and we grow almost as many potatoes as P.E.I. does.

Two items are mentioned within the suggested changes: one in economic action plan 2013, one that was made in the announcement on April 29, which you referenced, that agricultural workers and farmers in my riding are quite concerned about. I wonder if you could outline why the primary agricultural streams for temporary foreign workers differ and have been exempt from certain portions of what has been put forward. There obviously are concerns about that. I think it's important that everyone is clear that primary agricultural workers as well as the temporary foreign worker portion of the agricultural stream are exempt.

Could you go through what the differences are and how agricultural workers are being dealt with going forward so that, if nothing else, the minds of the farmers in my riding are put at ease?

[Frank Vermaeten]

Sure. Let me kick that off with a few words.

In the agricultural sector, I think we can separate the primary sector from the rest of the program. When it comes to agriculture, there's a well-established need by employers, a clear demand for people to do this very difficult and demanding farm work.

There's also a clear shortage. Not enough Canadians are either available in that specific geographic location—it is very specific and sporadic across the country—or not enough people want to do that work. There's a clear demand and a clear lack of supply. That's why we treat that very differently. The program is considered to be very important for ensuring the viability of these farms.

The way we've structured the changes recognizes that. They are exempted from most of the initiatives here because it is a distinct demand and a distinct group. For example, the changes that were proposed to stipulate the job requirement that English and French be the only languages, except in exceptional circumstances, doesn't apply here. Primary agriculture is exempt from that because you've got people here who come from a foreign country, Mexico, for example, but they go back after the season. We're not thinking about pathways to residency for these people. They're here on a temporary basis, so we don't need to have that type of demand.

The same can be said for the user fee. We don't need to apply user fees here because the processing works in a very different way. It works in groups. We work with the supply countries and we have special arrangements to reduce that administrative process and make it beneficial for the farmers and those foreign workers who want to come here.

One rule that does apply is the changes being proposed with respect to the ability to revoke work permits and to allow the government to suspend, revoke, and refuse labour market opinions. We've applied that to ensure that we can protect those workers when they come here. That ability applies across the sector. The other initiatives don't apply because we recognize the special circumstances of the agricultural sector.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to follow up on what you said regarding revoking work permits. Earlier, one of my colleagues had started to ask a number of questions with respect to this.

There has been an announcement about making sure there is increased compliance with regard to work permits, and that there is a revocation put in place. This is to ensure there's compliance by employers and to make sure certain standards are adhered to and maintained.

Could you give us some of the details with respect to that and what your expectations are of employers?

Canadian workers obviously are covered by provincial legislation when they are on the work site, with the exception of federally regulated workers, but what are the expectations with respect to employers when it comes to how they treat temporary foreign workers?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Does anyone have a response?

[David Manicom]

It's quite a broad question but I think the fundamental obligations of Canadian employers are to do everything they can first to find Canadian workers.

They are required to pay the prevailing wage in the particular district and particular occupation so that the program is not creating downward pressure on salaries. They are required to comply with the contract. They're required to employ the person in the way they said they would.

We don't want to see a situation, and would like to use revocation authorities and penalties that we could on employers where they got the labour market opinion by describing the temporary foreign worker as a very specialized engineer, but a follow-up compliance review showed that the person was working as a low-level technologist and was not being paid the salary that the employer said they were.

Also, in some of the categories exempted from a labour market opinion, we want to make sure that the jobs are being described correctly and that an employer isn't benefiting from an LMO exemption that they shouldn't be benefiting from. A good example, just to draw one at random, might be IT workers from India. If someone is coming in under an exemption as a highly specialized worker, we want to ensure that the worker is indeed highly specialized. We don't want to find out that once they get here, they are doing the work of a routine programmer who could be hired locally.

Those are some of the things I would highlight.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that exchange.

We're going a little past the time, and I know that Monsieur Lapointe wanted to make some comments.

I would say, just as a reminder, and I know that some latitude needs to be given, that the letter required us to consider the subject matter of clauses 161 to 166 of Bill C-60, and to provide recommendations with respect to those clauses and any associated amendments, which primarily deal with the revocation and suspension of opinions provided by the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development, and the authority to refuse to process generally in that area.

We're looking at the legislation and what we might want to do with it, whether to change it or not. It is not so much a study of the temporary foreign worker program or the policies that are currently in existence. That's what we're doing here, which is far narrower in scope than a general study might be. I just want members to keep that in mind.

Monsieur Lapointe.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to point something out for the record of the committee. I am referring to the tendency to use Canada's economic action plan and the budgets as steamrollers that do not allow committees to do a proper job. This trend is starting to be a real concern for the future of our country's democracy. I am pleased to have the floor, but we almost did not have a full round at this meeting with senior officials when we are studying the very important issue of temporary workers, given everything that has happened over the past several months.

As we say in my riding, it's a bit of a mess.

Let's look at the example of an engineer who wanted to come to Canada to work for three days. My office had to help him out. He was not getting his permit. This man had an expertise that no one else had in North America. He was applying for a three-day permit while our Mexican workers who work on farms come to work late.

Gentlemen, on the front lines, the current work situation

is a bit messy.

Suspending the accelerated process is a sort of admission of these challenges. However, suspension implies that the process will be reinstated. We are not looking for lip service. What approach will you take to ensure that the new powers granted under Bill C-60 will be used despite losing almost 40,000 members of your staff? What will be the approach to ensure that the program will be less messy if it is brought back?

[Alexis Conrad]

I would say the government did announce the suspension of the accelerated labour market opinion process, and the decision on that is obviously pending.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

What's the procedure when it's back?