Human Resources Committee on Oct. 27th, 2006

[Chris Ramsaroop]

Within the European Union there has been some move toward providing some uniformity around rights and standards for workers. However, there also seems to be a merging of a two-tier system in Europe as well between people from the south as well as people who live in Europe. So there seems to be differentiation of standards there.

What we're seeing also, with employment insurance and providing workers employment insurance, is they go home. Canada should sign a reciprocal agreement. In the late 1940s we did the same to work in the United States. If you've already set the precedent for it here, and if the Americans and Canada could do this, why can't we do this with other countries? We have reciprocal agreements and CPP and many other forms of social insurance, so surely if we could do that with these schemes we could do this with employment insurance.

Secondly, because of Consuelo Rubio, who works here in Toronto for the Centre for Spanish Speaking People, many workers started getting parental benefits. Up until three or four years ago, nobody knew about it. The fact that these workers are getting these benefits in their home countries is making a world of difference. It's providing the basic security they did not have before.

So I'm asking the committee to look at this. First, there has to be a way for workers to stand up to ensure an appeal mechanism. Second, look at a process of regularization and extending employment insurance to the home countries. And over that framework, make sure there is transparency.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Okay, thank you.

Speaking of employment insurance, we know that in the city of Toronto about 80% of working people don't get any benefits, in spite of the fact they pay into EI.

Ms. Go, I'd like to ask you something you didn't raise, or maybe I missed it, which was about temporary workers. I know that's been a big concern, that these workers seem to fall under the basic level of rights we all assume everyone has access to. Is this an issue with your clientele?

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

Yes, and I did raise it in my written submission; I simply didn't raise it in my seven minutes.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Here's an opportunity.

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

In fact, I think it's the norm rather than the exception now. People find work through temporary agencies. It's not that by working through temporary agencies they are not entitled to all these things, but it makes it harder for them. Temporary agencies are the employers. They are supposed to make deductions and they are supposed to respect the rights under the employment standards, but because they are temporary agencies, a lot of times they violate those rights or they make it difficult for workers to apply for EI. They may delay giving them their record of employment or they may say they will find another job for you, but it could be a very, very lousy job. People are then stuck between the idea of continuing with the lousy job or not do it and risk not getting EI.

There are all these kinds of situations created as a result of temporary agencies not respecting workers' rights. I think that issue needs to be looked into.

I will link here to another cut the government made, which is the cut to the Law Commission of Canada. Right before its cut, one of the papers that the commission was looking at was the changing work situation. They did a discussion paper on that issue, including looking at the temporary nature of employment, the changing employment contracts between an employer and an employee. All these are issues that need a lot of discussion and a hard look at; unfortunately, we now have fewer resources to look at those issues.

Agencies that are devoted full time to look at these difficult and complex policy issues are being cut. I think it is an area the committee should look at also.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

I want to ask a question of Ms. Go or Mr. Ramsaroop. We talk about, once again, the undocumented workers, the temporary workers, all the workers who have a hard time getting access to becoming Canadian citizens or even going through the process. Even through the nanny program, I believe that after three years they can apply for status. Is that correct?

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

They have to fulfill 24 months out of the 36. If they work two years, then they--

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

But there is at least a process in place, whereas the temporary workers don't have anything.

My question goes back to what Ms. Brown raised. We are talking about employability issues. Immigration is certainly one of them. I believe the committee believes it's going to be one of the things that helps address those things. Right now there is no mechanism in place for the temporary foreign workers, certainly undocumented workers anywhere. Whether it's in the U.S. or Canada, there's no status.

Would there be some concerns...? I take Ms. Brown's points very seriously. There are probably between governments--which involves the people who are doing the negotiation, not us here on the ground so much--some very serious reasons why those agreements are struck the way they are. My question is, do you feel there would be some reluctance if all of a sudden we started saying we're going to waive those things and, by the way, you're going to have access? Do you think there would be a concern from some of those countries to say “Wait a second, I don't think we want to lose some of our people”?

I realize it will be your opinion, but is that a possible concern?

[Chris Ramsaroop]

I think that's a twofold question. First, there might be concerns from some of the people too, but you have to not only look at the home country but look at our own legacy, our own immigration system. Who's been put in and, as Avvy asked, who's been put out?

There is a book by Vic Satzewich, chair of the McMaster sociology department. It's called Racism and the Incorporation of Foreign Labour. I also want to contextualize why farm workers were put in this permanent temporary position.

While the government at the time, in the sixties, said they were very concerned about agricultural workers, particularly black men coming to Canada, what are the reasons they gave? Number one, they didn't want black men sleeping with white women. Number two, they didn't think that black men could acclimate themselves to the climate. Number three, they were worried about the civil rights struggle happening here in Canada. These were the reasons the government gave at that time to make sure that migrant workers would not be set up here with permanent status.

Before talking about and looking at other countries, we first have to look at our history to make sure we are not repeating the same mistakes as in the past. We have thousands of workers here in this country who need status, both under temporary programs and non-status people. If we want to ensure that their productivity is met, we have to deal with our own immigration issues first.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I don't disagree with that.

Ms. Go, I'll get to your comments in a second.

I think my concern is that if we look at opening up.... As Ms. Brown said, if we don't look at opening up, even trying to provide a door or an opening for migrant workers, who I believe have come here and demonstrated that they are productive, who pay and do all the things.... I think they'd be great citizens.

My concern and my question is, will other governments tend to say, “Wait a second, we allowed them to go to Canada knowing they would return with dollars”, etc.? Maybe it's why nothing has been done; I don't know. Any assumptions date back to the sixties. Likewise, we talk about older workers, mandatory retirement at 65, which we all agree is totally discriminatory and shouldn't happen. But I think the reason it was done at the time, although I may disagree now, were reasons to which none of us would agree now. Times do change. But we haven't changed, and I think we need to.

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

I guess there are many reasons why I think we need to have regularization. But I'll just respond to your concern, and I'll use the live-in caregivers again as an example.

Certainly the Philippines as a country relies on remittances from Filipinos abroad. I can't remember how it's ranked as a country; it could be number one. I think it is number one. Part of that is the live-in caregiver program. In a way, I think the Philippine government cares about the money that is sent home instead of about the people returning home. So having live-in caregivers allows people to come here and have a chance to regularize....

There are many problems with the live-in caregivers program, mind you. But they have no problem with the fact that these women, as nurses, leave the country and come here to work as nannies in order to send money home, and eventually stay in Canada. I don't think they will have a problem with anybody else as long as they send the money home. These immigrants are here, working as nannies, in part to support the family back home. They will continue to do that, regardless of their status in Canada. So I don't think we need to worry about that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

The only reason I would differ is that I would think if we were to open it up, certainly we would open it up to their families, and their families might end up immigrating as well. So they might lose that source of revenue altogether.

I think Ms. Brown raised a great point of discussion: are there other reasons that we may be missing as to why there are these programs, which, quite frankly, may affect governments at higher levels? Don't get me wrong; I totally agree with the premise that we need to do a better job in how we treat these individuals. There's no question about that.

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Brown for the last five minutes.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Allison.

My last question was about training and education for migrant workers. I'm going to move more to Ms. Spindel's area. Obviously with the labour shortages, one thing we could look at is trying to integrate more people with disabilities into the labour force. The higher the level of education, obviously, the more successful that integration is.

What are your impressions of the government's success in attempts at integration and in taking down barriers to post-secondary education? And what improvements can be made upon that?

[Andrea Spindel]

People with disabilities, in my view, are probably the greatest untapped resource we have, because they have the highest unemployment levels in Canada. There has been movement, and there has been an awareness, particularly in Ontario with the AODA. The universities and colleges have all been challenged to become accessible. March of Dimes did an assessment about a year and a half ago of every college. We ranked them, and we rated them on their own accessibility plan. They have to become accessible. They're not all now, but they will become accessible by mandate. I think that's a good thing. I think we need to look at that across the country.

But it goes beyond that in terms of accommodation. We participated in a provincial government commission—I forget the full title—that's become known as the Rae commission. It looked at higher education and what is required to help people with disabilities and others in an educational framework. What we saw was a range of accommodation. People with hearing and visual loss need materials and support in many different formats. Some professors are providing this on their own and really getting it and are putting out materials. Their lectures are inaccessible to a person who can't read them, or they're inaccessible to a person who can't hear them. Some of the individual professors are actually modifying what they do.

I met with two or three individuals. One was the only visually impaired gentleman in Canada who is getting a doctorate in engineering. It's amazing. He just showed us the technology he's using. It exists. There are now several Canadians with total hearing loss doing doctorates.

They used to go to the one university in North America that everybody probably knows about, Gallaudet. We don't have any one university, and we shouldn't. We should have integration. That was part of the debate: whether we should create a particular college or university in which we encourage and facilitate education for people with a disability. That is an open debate in our communities today simply because it would be less expensive, and you might have more people attend.

Our ultimate goal would be integration and the creation of an environment that would be accessible for all. There's a long way to go to making that happen. We do have the people with the intellect to achieve that, and we're not using them.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

What is the federal role there? What initiatives should the federal government take to achieve this?

[Andrea Spindel]

The major initiative, I think, would be to look at a national disabilities act, which would require publicly funded organizations, institutions, crown corporations, and so on to make accessibility a higher priority and provide some funding and some incentive, and employer and institutional training, particularly human resource systems, but whole levels of the organization getting education about what they can do about it.

I actually don't think people are unwilling. We've come a long way. People are not of the mindset that disabled people shouldn't be given a chance. I'm not suggesting that for a minute. I think we've opened up our minds to accept that they're part of society. What we haven't done is actually make it a living thing, that it is possible to be fully integrated. We still think it's somebody else's problem. Which level of government, which department, will do it? Nobody seems to own it. It's a collective issue.

There was a study done a couple of years ago at the national level--and I somehow think Andy Scott was associated with it, but I've forgotten. It changed the focus from saying that disability is a social problem to looking at the rights of people with disabilities as just part of citizenship in general. So not unlike my colleague speaking about workers rights for the marginalized, our view would be that if we really think about people with disabilities as being citizens of this country, they need to be able to access everything that you and I would. It's unavailable in formats they can access.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

In the minute I have left, I have one quick question for the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic.

With your experience in the Toronto Southeast Asian community, do you have any thoughts on foreign-trained doctors? One of the biggest shortages I have in my riding is at our hospital, which is short 27 doctors. I understand there are 1,000 foreign-trained doctors in the country who haven't been given residency spots. Is there talent or skilled workers within your community on that front?

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go]

I think there are skilled workers in many communities, including ours, of course, but there are many barriers to accreditation.

In the situation of the Chinese Canadian community, I think language is still a much greater barrier. It's not as much a case for other immigrant communities as South Asian communities, because English is their language of instruction. However, they still face a lot of barriers.

The provincial government in Ontario is now attempting to address that through Bill 124, which deals with accreditation of foreign-trained professionals, including health professions. But certainly I think it would be nice for the federal government to help with the training issue, the language-training issue, and all those immigrant settlement types of issues, to help some of these foreign-trained professionals get ready, when the legislation is in place, to make it easier for them to get accreditation. I think it's more a provincial issue than a federal issue at this point, but support from the federal government is going to help in terms of the training and language issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

I'll just take the time to thank all the witnesses once again for being here.

Ms. Go, I appreciate your passion for the group you represent. We may not agree on everything philosophically, but I certainly appreciate the passion that you bring to the table for those people you represent.

Ms. Spindel, regarding the great work that the March of Dimes does, I can assure you that where I come from in Niagara, I've seen the facilities and what they do, and I'm very impressed. I appreciate what you two ladies are doing as well. You're probably aware that our government is working on an act, and they're in consultation now within the government. Hopefully at some point we'll all get a chance to see what that looks like and be able to comment on that as well.

Mr. Ramsaroop, thank you again.

As I said, for each one of you, we could spend a whole afternoon just on your individual organizations, but for the sake of time we do appreciate you coming, and being brief and able to answer all our questions.

Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.