Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to make a presentation.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  To be honest, I just presented it in Halifax to CIC and HRSDC officials last week, so I've the whole thing in English. I might as well present it in English, actually, I don't know, but the majority here are French.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  All the research in this field and all the documentation are in English. All the concepts have been defined in English. It will be very difficult for me to translate into French as we go along. Since most of the parliamentarians are francophone, I'll make an effort. I didn't know

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure, or I could just close.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I simply want to add that there is a convention. One of the most important things in the convention is that migrant workers, temporary workers, must not be authorized in sectors where it is illegal to unionize. In Ontario and Quebec, it is illegal to unionize in agriculture. So w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, no, what I'm saying--maybe it was a weird way of saying it. What I was trying to say in these parentheses is that whatever the number of years, these women will never be entitled to ask for permanent status. This is contrary to the LCP worker, to the live-in caregiver program

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I do, actually. In the document I will leave with you there are many more statistics. One thing we can see is that indeed there have been many more temporary foreign workers than foreign workers admitted as immigrants during the last 10 years. What is striking is how the te

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I totally agree. In the appendix that I brought, which I'm going to leave with you, there's a list of recommendations that came out this year from community groups and human rights NGOs from Quebec. One of the main recommendations in terms of this temporary foreign worker progr

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Exactly. According to the Charter, rights and freedoms cannot be restricted in Canada. The government may limit rights and freedoms, but that must be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. In this case—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Exactly. Furthermore, one of our main recommendations, which I'm going to leave with you, concerns the work permit that is currently linked to a single employer. It would be enough simply to limit it to an employment sector for everything to become constitutional and legal.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It has never been challenged yet.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's an excellent question. It must be understood that we invest millions of dollars to integrate refugees and immigrants in Canada. Hundreds of NGOs and community groups are paid to support and assist these persons. There's nothing for the temporary foreign workers we're tal

Citizenship and Immigration committee  These workers are involved in employment sectors that cannot be unionized. The unions have never been in those sectors. They've only started to enter them in the past few years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In fact, I think that's a promising proposal. However, if an employer systematically abuses his employees and the employees leave him... You have to plan for mechanisms so that employers can't simply bring in someone else. However, I think it could be a good idea to restrict emp

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely.