We, in the Alberta labour movement, support both of those suggestions: open permits and a quicker path to citizenship. However, we're concerned that the program is being used as a replacement for real immigration. We humbly suggest that this government should reconsider the low-wage, low-skills stream, because we think it is being badly abused.
I would remind members of the committee that the temporary foreign worker program, as originally conceived 40 or 50 years ago now, was about high-skilled workers who were in a better position to defend their interests in the labour market. There was never a low-wage stream, and that's the problem.
Employers in the low-wage service sector have been abusing that stream. Even during the boom years, between 2004 and 2014, wages in that sector didn't go up despite wages going up everywhere else. We are convinced that was because the temporary foreign worker low-wage stream gave them an alternative to responding to market conditions by increasing wages.
The final thing I'll say is this: I just want to remind members of the committee that the labour market is a market and the government should not be in the business of intervening in that market to help employers defy the economic laws of gravity.