Human Resources committee  Absolutely. We took a turn to temporariness in Canada's immigration program decades ago, and we are seeing that it's led to dire exploitation of workers. If you look at the seasonal agricultural program, you see that folks who have been coming here have been coming for decades.

Human Resources committee  Absolutely. If the pandemic has shown us one thing, it is who our essential workers are. They are the ones our immigration program should be targeting as well. Yes, we need, as I said, those who are highly skilled, and yes, we need folks with post-graduate degrees, but on the ground, for our day-to-day living, we need the people who keep our communities going.

Human Resources committee  I think we need to be very careful that we don't demonize and stigmatize folks who needed to access the CERB program, especially those who are immigrants, refugees or other migrants, and especially those who are racialized. Bill C-17 sounds very punitive. Our concern is that it will end up punishing those who may have in very good faith thought they were eligible, applied, got the funds, realized they weren't eligible, and never went back.

Human Resources committee  No, I haven't had a chance to look at the report in any detail, though I think I'm familiar with some of the issues that may have been raised in there.

Human Resources committee  Absolutely. It is one of our policy priorities. We believe that workers should be landed on arrival. We need to look at two things. We need to provide a system to land those who are already here and to then open up. That's why I talked about looking at our economic selection process as a way of addressing some of that.

Human Resources committee  We were very pleased when CERB was announced, especially with how flexible and easy it was for those who qualified. We were also glad that the government listened and then brought more and more international students into it. The concern that we have is that there are a significant numbers of folks—we were talking about folks with precarious immigration status and those who are undocumented—who have not been able to access CERB.

Human Resources committee  With the onset of COVID, we saw sharp increases. Not that anti-Asian racism didn't always exist, but we remember the nipper-tipping nonsense, and hatred that was happening here in Ontario not too long ago. We saw a significant increase in anti-Asian racism, whether people were being physically attacked or called names.

Human Resources committee  What we've heard from our colleagues who are working more closely and more directly with migrant workers is that there's been very little monitoring of that situation. Even in those workplaces where folks were able to quarantine safely, relatively speaking, they then often went back into congregated living arrangements, and hence the rapid rise in number of infections in southern Ontario, as an example.

Human Resources committee  No, I'm fine, thank you.

Human Resources committee  Mr. Chair, my sense is that temporary foreign workers do not mind paying payroll taxes. What they want is access to those benefits when they need them. If they get sick or there's a shortage of jobs, they want to be able to access the benefits, including if they have to return to their country and there will be some time before they are able to become gainfully employed.

Human Resources committee  I'm sorry. During the pandemic, during the whole COVID situation, our agencies have been the places that newcomers have been turning to for support, for information about income supports, for support in filing income taxes, for interpretation and translation of information about income supports.

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the committee for the opportunity to appear before you today. I am joining you from Toronto, the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The 14- to 18-year-olds are enrolled in our school system. If they came in at that age as new immigrants without either of our official languages, they are often enrolled in English as a second language. But for us, the majority of these kids actually have been in the school system for a number of years and do have English.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We are very much in support of evidence-based policy-making.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  OCASI is the umbrella policy, advocacy, and research body, but my member agencies across the country, particularly in large urban centres, work with I would say hundreds of live-in caregivers per year.