Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to clarify my remarks. Maybe I was not clear in the connection I was making between the unscrupulous immigration consultants and the temporary foreign worker program.
We know of and hear of examples of these immigration consultants advertising overseas, and in some cases in Mexico, on this continent, that for a fee they can get people into Canada as temporary foreign workers. These people pay quite a large fee up front to the labour broker, but then they are disappointed when they arrive and find that either no such jobs exists or that the terms and conditions are far less than promised. That is the problem I was trying to illustrate.
In that context, I raised another issue, which is that these labour brokers in the construction industry—not at Tim Hortons but in the construction industry—are undermining and debasing the industry. They are bringing teams of these temporary foreign workers, who are being paid peanuts, and are displacing crews of Canadian construction workers.
The charge-out rate for these guys is about $25 an hour total, all included. The charge-out rate for a unionized tradesperson can be as high as $40 to $45 per hour. So there is a 25% or 50% advantage for using temporary foreign workers instead of legitimate Canadian tradespeople on these jobs.