Mr. Speaker, today is April 1, and it is no joke that thousands of temporary foreign workers are packing up and getting ready to leave Canada. In Alberta alone, an estimated 8,000 workers will be affected. This is a loss not only for the Alberta employers who cannot find Canadian workers; it is a bigger loss for the hard-working, dedicated employees who come to Canada with the dream of making a better life for themselves.
The government owns this problem. For years it was told that there was nothing temporary about employee shortages in specific industries, but rather than allowing these valuable employees to permanently immigrate, it relied on four-year temporary foreign work permits, thus creating a revolving door of TFWs.
Some serious but isolated abuses of the program have ruined it for the thousands of workers who love Canada and for the many employers who would love to keep them.
It is time to take the “temporary” and the “foreign” out of TFWs. We owe hard workers prepared to take unskilled jobs that cannot otherwise be filled permanent residency and then citizenship. After four years in Canada, they deserve more than a deportation order.