Evidence of meeting #29 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was services.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
It can't be. The executive director just said “We can't do it, because we don't have the resources”. If you want to get the resources, you have to figure out what you need, how much it would cost, and nag about it.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ontario March of Dimes
You'd need to look at the full caseload. Within seven regions, it could be as many as thirty people—
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ontario March of Dimes
—in our own system.
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
I think you should put that into your next application for funding.
Mr. Ramsaroop, there are all kinds of things wrong with this system, and most of us saw it on The Passionate Eye, or one of those TV programs. Does it not all go back to the meetings happening this week? It's a dirty little secret. It's to the advantage of countries that send the workers that they not get too settled here. They want them to come home and bring the money, which adds to the economies of Jamaica and Mexico. Therefore, they agree to a certain set of conditions that make it impossible for these people to move ahead economically. These people have no one to complain to, do they? When they complain, they send the consul general or somebody like that from the home country to listen to them. That official doesn't want to rock the boat and stop the flow of money from, say, the tomato farmer into the hands of those workers, because that money is being sent home. So that's one of the problems.
Which ministry of the federal government signs those agreements? Is it immigration? Is it HRSDC?
National Organizer, Justicia for Migrant Workers - Ontario
HRSDC has been primarily responsible for this, but one thing I always caution about the farm worker program is that there's always a ping-pong game between HRSDC and Immigration. Some things fall here, some things fall there--and sometimes they say it's a provincial matter, not a federal matter.
National Organizer, Justicia for Migrant Workers - Ontario
Everybody is trying to.
Liberal
National Organizer, Justicia for Migrant Workers - Ontario
Yes, the agreements are where part of it is. You have separate agreements governing these workers--agricultural workers, domestic workers, construction workers--and they sometimes differentiate from the laws that other Canadians have. So there's no uniformity, no equity between workers--
Liberal
Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON
I know that, but it's all goes back to these agreements and the actual intent.
The Canadian government wants to help that tomato farmer get cheap labour so that the tomatoes don't rot in the field. No Canadians will do it for the price the farmer is paying. They bring in people who think, say, $7.50 an hour is great, and who live in those awful conditions. A lot of that money goes home, so the sponsoring country, the country that sends the workers, is really happy to have that injection of Canadian dollars into their economy.
Do you not think this committee should maybe investigate, or ask to see these agreements? I think that's where you'd find the root of the problem.
National Organizer, Justicia for Migrant Workers - Ontario
The agreements are available online. Anybody could look at the agreements. The problem is the decision-making process within these agreements, the fact that the workers, the advocates, the people who are actually experiencing the plight in these fields don't have access to negotiating, or don't provide any input toward the decision-making process. Remember, there's no transparency or accountability when you have private organizations running it.
Perhaps I could do a plug here. If you want to see a good documentary, watch El Contrato by Min Sook Lee. It's about the plight of agricultural workers here in Ontario.
Conservative
Bloc
France Bonsant Bloc Compton—Stanstead, QC
You spoke about poverty among women. Most of the time, women are the first to be affected because they earn only 70 per cent of what men earn.
What do you think about the agreement on child care centres or day care centres that we have in Quebec and the fact that the rest of Canada wants the same system? Don't you think that the current government listened?
I would not want you to think that I am engaging in politics. It is your opinion as the representative of an organization, as a woman, and probably as a mother, that I would like to hear what you have to say on this matter.
Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
That's one of the practical reasons why I'm not a mother--because you have to take care of the child care situation.
Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Certainly I can talk about my clients. For a lot of the immigrant women who are here, child care is a serious problem. There's simply no accessible subsidized child care available.
Do you know what happens in the end? Many of my clients end up sending their kids back to China. They tear the families apart because they can't make a living in Canada with their kids here. They send the kids home to be looked after by the grandparents so that they can work in order to support the kids.
It's all very ironic. They come here in order to have a better future, mostly for their kids. But now that they're here, they're stuck in low-wage jobs, making minimum wage, not making enough to support and pay for child care. There's simply no accessible subsidized child care, so they end up having to get rid of the kids in order to make a living here so that the kids will have a future in Canada. The whole thing is convoluted. It just does not make sense.
So I think making child care a priority is tremendously important for all communities, not just for women but for all families.
Bloc
France Bonsant Bloc Compton—Stanstead, QC
Yes, because that is a hot issue at the moment.
Here in Quebec, child care centres charge $7 per day. This helps people on social assistance and young women working for the minimum wage. These children, in a new setting, learn English or French, how to integrate, and even how to have fun and develop.
You're going to have to continue to make noise, because I have the impression that governments still do not understand the situation. I simply wanted to encourage you not to give up, because we are going to continue to help you in this area.
We love our system. As I know that you want a similar system, I encourage you to continue.
Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Okay, thank you.
Bloc
France Bonsant Bloc Compton—Stanstead, QC
I simply wanted to inform you of what I have to say about day care centres. No more than that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
I know no one wants to be political around the committee, so that's good.
We're going to move over to Ms. Nash. Five minutes, please.
NDP
Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Ramsaroop, if I understand your main concern with respect to agricultural workers, the so-called guest workers, it's that there is no mechanism for them to address their concerns and no appeal process for decisions that are taken about them, including the decision to send them back home. They have no formal way of even challenging that decision, and basic rights other working people have enshrined in legislation are denied them, because they have no way of enforcing those rights. How can Canada have a situation where we have one set of rights for everyone else and another set of rights for this group of workers? When you take this to other bodies, how is this justified?
National Organizer, Justicia for Migrant Workers - Ontario
A lot of the time people use economics. The myth and this notion of the small family farm has been this permeating argument. If anybody goes down to Leamington, if anybody goes to Simcoe and various other places, you see a huge agricultural industry. That's one of the ways people have got around this.
Second, the Canadian public has turned its attention away from this issue. It's a hidden dirty secret that nobody wants to address. A lot of the time we engage in NIMBYism, when we don't want to talk about what's going on in our own backyard. When you talk to workers, they come up to you and the first thing they say is that this is a form of slavery, a form of indentureship. Those are extremely harsh words people don't want to hear, and they don't take kindly to their own country doing it. That's part of it too, people are trying to ignore the situation that won't go away.
Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON
Other countries, European countries, have so-called guest worker programs. Do you know if workers there have access, for example, to insurance programs like EI that they pay into? One would expect if you're paying into an insurance program you would have access to the benefits and the coverage of that program. Do they have a mechanism for insuring their basic health and safety on the job?