I'll give you an example of what's happened. Say a piece of machinery gets manufactured in South Korea. Through the free trade agreements, they're allowed to bring specialists for that equipment into Canada to install, maintain, commission and everything. I'll use NextStar as an example again. We were working right beside one line that the foreign workers were working on.
They're meshing the discrepancy between a skilled worker and a general trades labourer to get their workers here and not utilize Canadian workers. It's a loophole. They're using loopholes through free trade agreements to get here. Again, it's not the company's fault; they're doing what they are entitled to do. It's your job to close those loopholes.
As I said, if we can't supply the manpower needed in order to complete these jobs, then there should at least be the opportunity for us, if these pathways are open and foreign workers come, that if it is a job that is a union job, it allows building trades or organizations like mine to make sure that, when they come over, they're not being exploited. A big issue with foreign workers right now is exploitation, both long-term and seasonal. We would make sure that they're paid right and that safety standards are up to speed with what our standards are. Right now, it's almost like, if you bring them in, the standards get lower.
The main thing is, when it talks about a return on investments, we spend the money here. We're the ones going to local shops. We're the ones buying vehicles here. We're the ones buying homes.
We're talking about billions of dollars that have been invested in some of these infrastructure projects. Again, I'll reiterate that the stance needs to be that we have the capabilities to do it. Canada is a great country. We develop our people properly. We give them hope that one day they will retire with dignity. When you have big infrastructure projects like these come and then we kind of get, “Well, you guys can get what they can't supply,” as in the skilled workers or their so-called skilled workers, it's just closing that gap where, again, we do it first and then enable pathways for those foreign workers to come in if we can't accommodate. To just bypass us completely and then go into these agreements to bring in foreigners is not right. It really isn't. I think it's morally wrong.
One, I get free trade. I understand it as a millwright, I should say. I'm not an expert on it, but I do understand it. I also understand that we're in a different situation right now, where we all question what free trade means when we have our biggest support partner to the south of us doing what it's doing and affecting us.
I think this is where we can all come together. It doesn't matter if we're part of the affiliation or not, but we can all come together and agree that Canadians should be first. We're in unprecedented times. Now should be the time that we maybe reassess some of these policies and make sure that the people who are devoting their life to a skill in Canada are utilized for that work.
That was really extended. I'm sorry, but I had a lot to digest on that one.