Evidence of meeting #26 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was worker.
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
You have 40 seconds left, so go right ahead and answer the question.
3:45 p.m.
Consuelo Rubio
It is not very often than I'm asked for advice from opposition parties, but this is such a serious issue nationally and for Quebec that you shouldn't go along with it.
Having said that, I want to be totally non-partisan. I'm taking issue with something you said about Quebec labour standards being adhered to in the province of Quebec. Let me tell you that no matter where, in any province, farmer workers are treated like crap. I have to say it like that.
I refer you to a human rights case from your province where the legal case starts with one of your own human rights adjudicators saying “What I'm going to say, what I'm going to describe right now happened in the province of Quebec in 2005”, because it reads like something from the U.S. south. It is about what happened with workers, mostly workers of colour.
I'm not here to blame or assign blame, but I'm saying that nobody has clean hands when it comes to the issue of temporary workers.
3:50 p.m.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
Perhaps you could finish describing that, because I know you ran out of time.
Right now the minister seems to be saying that she would like to honour the agreements with the provinces and territories regarding the provincial nominee program, or temporary foreign worker. In the case of Quebec it's the Canada-Quebec accord. What that does is it actually allows the provinces to bring in whatever numbers they want. If the employers put in the applications, they are most likely going to get the numbers they want. There isn't really any upper target number.
In Alberta alone, as we've heard, already 100,000 people have applied for temporary foreign workers. According to the Alberta Federation of Labour, it's 100,000 so far, and maybe 50,000 of them have already arrived here, I don't know.
There is a massive expansion of the need for temporary foreign workers, partially because a lot of the workers we need are not able to come to Canada through the permanent resident program because of the point system. They just don't have enough points to come.
So first, yes, fix the point system, but with these agreements should there be an upper limit? Should they be contained so that we would no longer expand this temporary foreign workers program?
If not, what's happening is that with Bill C-50, they're going to leap up in front of the line. They're going to come in, in a massive number, as quickly as possible, because the minister is going to give priority--you can tell from what she's saying already--to all the temporary foreign workers because the workplace has said they need them. As they say, you ain't seen nothing yet: there will be huge numbers of cases of this kind and some of the tragedies that you are describing.
I would invite your comments.
3:50 p.m.
National Organizer, Justicia for Migrant Workers
I guess on a separate thing, from what I'm hearing there's some frustration in that a lot of us are focusing on the live-in caregiver and seasonal agricultural programs. That's kind of your litmus test, right? The history behind the experiences we're talking about hasn't been dealt with, and yet this government is talking about expanding these programs.
Our concern is that all of these injustices and abuses are happening throughout--the violation of the health care act by the provincial governments, the violation of labour standards by every provincial government--and yet people keep talking about expansion, expansion, without understanding what's currently happening.
So I think the first thing I would say to government and Parliament is that you have to clean up your act. You have to understand what is going on, and you have to address the human rights violations that we're currently talking about.
3:50 p.m.
Community Legal Worker, Industrial Accident Victims Group of Ontario
One thing we have to look at is why this program is expanding. My own workers come to do a job that no Canadian wants to do because of the harsh conditions, because of the poor pay. What happens is that we are creating this huge....
How can we have unemployment if there are these hundreds of thousands of applications for people do jobs? It doesn't make sense. There's something there that doesn't match. We shouldn't have any unemployment if there is so much work. But what happens is that nobody wants to work under those conditions except people for whom making $1 a day in their own country is a lot of money.
The other thing is with regard to the control that farmers have over, in this particular case, farm workers. What we have is a feudal situation. We've seen conditions where the workers are herded from the moment they arrive at the airport. They're brought to the farm in the middle of the province and they stay there. They can't do anything else but stay there and work.
What other place would you find a Canadian worker who would allow themselves to be treated like that, whether there is a union or not? As Consuelo said, these people are like ghosts. They are there, and they are there to stay, so employers can do whatever they want.
That's the reason why we have hundreds of thousands of applications. It's great to have this very submissive, unrepresented group of workers at one's disposal. I mean, that's the cruelty of the program, and that's the reason why it works. That's what we have to change.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
3:55 p.m.
Researcher, Community Social Planning Council of Toronto
I'd just like to add to that.
As Chris said, the temporary farm worker program and the live-in caregiver program are managed programs by the federal government. If we're seeing this level of abuse happening in these managed programs, then what is going to happen when we expand the temporary migrant worker program to the extent it is expanding and the rate it is expanding? We're not addressing the systemic and structural problems that exist. We're going to see much more of this kind of abuse happening. We're going to hear more of it.
What I think those of us who are in the field are asking for is to take some time out and just reflect and review the programs as they're happening now before we expand it. We're seeing coming out of StatsCan that their unemployment is going up. Well, that doesn't seem to gel if we have more temporary programs happening. Why is that happening? We have undocumented workers here who should be able to find jobs and they have to be working. They work under similar conditions as our temporary workers, and we need to address those issues.
We need to fix the system before we start to expand it, or else it's just going to spiral out of hand.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
I will be brief, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for presenting.
I think we've heard from a number of parties. If I were to summarize it on the undocumented workers, you want to see some legitimate tasks created for them, with the temporary foreign workers, the migrant workers. You'd like to see some basic benefits and rights that transcend even the provincial labour standards provisions. I hear that, and I gather you would like to see some monitoring to see that those are being adhered to. There certainly needs to be some advocacy for that group. We've heard that as well. You're saying we should look at the whole picture, have a bit of a reflection on where we've gone, to take all of those points into consideration. I think pretty much I've heard what you're saying on that, for sure, and thank you very much for the time you took to present.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
3:55 p.m.
National Organizer, Justicia for Migrant Workers
Once again, with the temporary workers, with the live-in caregivers, the meat packers, the agricultural workers, we're also seeing about status. Whether the workers choose to or not, if they desire, they should have a right to apply for status here in Canada. You have many of these workers coming for 30 or 40 years, for eight months a year, and they never, ever, ever, under the current system, have a chance to apply for status here in Canada. We think it's imperative that steps are taken to provide for citizenship for these workers, if they choose.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
That has been raised as well. There should be a path to permanent resident status.
3:55 p.m.
Consuelo Rubio
I just returned from Kelowna in British Columbia, where this year they're receiving 800 workers to pick cherries and apples. That work has traditionally been done by people from Quebec, all these years. Kelowna has a huge community centre for people who speak French. Yet the growers and the orchardists are moving to temporary workers because they consider the labour coming from Quebec unreliable. Unreliable means that if they're not treated properly, they move to another farm. I think that is the reason. This is not unreliable. People from Quebec have the choice, if the working conditions are oppressive, to go and work elsewhere, while farm workers from Mexico and the Caribbean don't have that luxury. They're tied to their employers; they're indentured labour, real indentured labour.
4 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
Thank you very much for your submissions today. As I mentioned at the outset, we will be making recommendations based upon what you've told us today and what we've heard throughout our meetings. So thank you, and good luck.
I want to say to our committee members that the clerk informs me that we are expected to be on the bus by 4:30, or as quickly as we can, because there is a schedule that has to be met, I believe, and we would like you to be with us when we leave.
The meeting is adjourned.