I'll address them separately, Mr. Chair.
I'll speak to amendment NDP-16. This clause concerns the temporary foreign worker program. Bill C-60 introduces the ability of the minister of CIC to revoke a work permit and for the minister of HRSDC to “revoke”, “suspend”, or “refuse to process” an opinion, and that those ministers shall set out instructions in the justifications for such revocation.
We've raised this many times in the House, but generally our concern about the temporary foreign worker program is that it's bringing in foreign workers to work for less pay, rather than giving these jobs to Canadians. We know there are some labour shortages in certain parts of the country, and yet there are many other parts of the country, including right here in Ontario, where there is persistent high unemployment. As I described with the Electro-Motive situation, through a lockout and a plant closure after a foreign takeover that was encouraged by this government, people's standard of living went down dramatically.
The changes the government is making in this act are tinkering with the temporary foreign worker legislation. They don't go far enough. We need to include guarantees against further abuses to the temporary foreign worker program. We have to prevent it from being used as a substitute for hiring Canadians and paying them a decent wage at the prevailing rate. If the ministers had been doing their jobs correctly in the first place, they certainly would not have been granting temporary work visas and giving bad labour market opinions, which allowed these abuses to take place.
We have three amendments to this clause that will better protect Canadians from being displaced and ensure that temporary foreign workers are not paid at a lower rate.
I'll deal with amendment NDP-16 first. It would require that HRSDC refuse to process a labour market opinion where it is advertised at a salary below the prevailing wage. Canadians may ask how they would be doing that now, but we've certainly seen instances where that has happened, and this government recently made a change that allowed temporary foreign workers to be paid 15% less than the prevailing wage. That is a low-wage strategy; it depresses wages for all workers. Recently the government rolled back this program they had earlier introduced. We believe if the government would just read its talking points about long-term prosperity, they would include people who are being undermined by temporary foreign workers.
We think that depressing Canadian wages is the wrong way to go. We want to make sure that this downward pressure on Canadian wages stops, that Canadian workers always get first crack at the job, and that the wages offered in cases where temporary foreign workers are needed are at the prevailing wage or above, but certainly not below, because it's just too attractive to employers to bring in temporary foreign workers and pay them less than Canadians are being paid.
That's the basis for our amendment, Mr. Chair.