Perhaps I will make some general remarks about division 24, if that's okay, at the beginning here.
The Liberal Party generally supports the measures in division 24, except that Bill C-43, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 11, 2014 and other measures, includes some new fees to pay for this new compliance regime, and it exempts these fees from the accountability measures in the User Fees Act.
We don't think that exemption is justified. In fact, given the Conservative record, we need to strengthen accountability measures for user fees, not weaken them. Under the Conservative government, processing times for economic immigrants has gone up between 19% and 113% since 2007, depending on the different streams of federal skilled workers. We're concerned that the same thing could happen with processing times under the new temporary foreign worker regime. The government needs strong accountability measures to ensure that it provides timely service in exchange for charging the fee.
In the words of the Canadian Bar Association, “Exempting these fees from the User Fees Act invites the imposition of fees without accountability.”