It's a little more involved than that.
What we're recommending is that we build a dedicated stream for tourism and hospitality through the temporary foreign worker program. What that means is we will have the predictability that we can get workers in to meet the summer demand. Because we have year-round jobs, we have recommendations on the permanent economic immigration stream, but we will still have temporary need in the sector, and that's where that program comes into play.
Right now, when you apply, you have no idea when you're going to be getting.... It's cumbersome. It's expensive.
It's more the predictability piece that we're asking for. We are unique in the sense that we have one high season. It comes every summer. This is not a surprise. We're hoping that we can get a dedicated stream, at least temporarily, so that we can at least get to the summer period and capitalize on what will be intense demand for Canada.
We liken it to a human body that was healthy, that went into a two-year induced coma and then came out and is missing limbs—because we no longer have a work force—but is being asked to run a marathon because demand for Canada is at an all-time high.
We want to get to that demand, but we are looking for the lowest-hanging fruit to help us get there. We have a sequence of recommendations in place.
The temporary foreign worker program is a part of it. We're asking for a dedicated stream, at least in the short term, to help us save the summer, and in the short term to help us deal with what is going to be a 360,000-person shortfall in our sector. That's two to three times higher than in any other sector, and it's not a problem that we can solve by ourselves.