For the past six years, Cooper Institute has also been working on issues of migrant workers in Prince Edward Island. We are engaged in this issue on a national level as well, through work with the Canadian Council for Refugees, the National Farmers Union, and the Coalition for Migrant Worker Rights Canada.
Migrant workers contribute enormously to Canada's industries, particularly those related to food production as it occurs in rural and isolated areas. Over the past 50 years, industrial agricultural operations have grown to depend on this flexible workforce to operate in a context of dwindling rural populations. Canada's temporary foreign worker programs have been variously lauded and demonized with the changing tides of industry demands and media scandals. Further changes are expected following the recent release of the HUMA committee's report.
The policies of Canada's temporary foreign worker programs create systemic vulnerability for workers. One of the core constraints on workers is that their temporary work permits, which are tied to only one employer, effectively restrict their human rights. The deepening difficulty and expense of hiring foreign workers has the effect of driving employers towards the often unregulated international recruitment industry, which is known to traffic and extort workers.
Migrant workers pay into EI and CPP programs but are usually disqualified from claiming benefits from these programs. They pay Canadian taxes, but many of them are denied access to Canadian health care, and all of them are denied access to federally funded services offered to other kinds of immigrants. Canada's food system is now largely dependent on workers who have little or no access to rights and, in many cases, workers are routinely repatriated in the case of injury or illness. Some of them have been working and paying taxes in Canada for eight months each year for over a decade, but they are still denied basic rights and are not eligible to settle in Canada.
Migrant workers in Canada are propping up our economy. They are living and working in our rural communities, communities that are starved for new residents, young families, children in the local schools, volunteers for local fire departments, and workers in the local plants. These people and their families are needed and wanted, but they are ineligible for current immigration programs that prioritize affluent immigrants. The federal government should take immediate steps to make all migrant workers eligible for permanent residency status. This step would ensure that these workers' rights are respected, as befits Canadian workers, and would ensure that an industry does not profit from violating human rights.
It is worth questioning the economic ideology that promotes migration. Industry has demanded a flexible workforce, and this flexibility has been facilitated by federal policy through both the temporary foreign worker program and the changes to employment insurance. But whether we're talking about domestic or foreign workers, a flexible workforce is created out of desperate people willing to go anywhere and do almost anything for a paycheque. Flexible workers are, by definition, disposable. Desperate and disposable workers are more profitable for industry, and industry has the luxury of externalizing the real social and economic costs borne by Canadian and international societies when families are fractured and the social fabric is torn.
Migration is not a tool for development. Migration is more often a tactic of survival when other livable choices have been taken away. I urge this committee to reconsider the kinds of economic growth that are valued and what the true cost of those is.
In the maritime provinces, we can see very clearly the economic forces at play behind forced migration, and we've also seen what disposability looks like when the jobs dry up. We urge the finance committee to end the race to the bottom for workers, to grant status to transnational migrant workers, and to bring an end to forced economic migration within Canada.