Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
And thank you to the witnesses, also, for being before our committee.
This is a very important issue for the economy of our country, of course, addressing all the issues around immigration and labour shortage in the country and what the best policy is.
I always feel that both our labour strategy and our immigration strategy are almost 10 years behind, and by the time we straighten this one out, we'll be another 10 years behind. I'm not necessarily faulting the present government, because I think this has been an ongoing issue for a very long time.
Some of you might be aware that I've been on the issue of undocumented workers for a long time.
We talk about the knowledge economy, which is really great. And we've certainly given a lot of points in our immigration system to a lot of engineers, for example, to come into Canada. I hear the number might be about 20,000 people every year.
The reality is how we're defining what a skilled worker is. In markets like Toronto, Vancouver, and even in Calgary, bring me a hundred terrazzo makers, a hundred pipefitters, a hundred carpenters. They will get jobs more easily than a hundred engineers will, even if they've graduated from the University of Toronto's engineering department. There is just such a huge demand for those types of skills, but they're not qualified in our point system, which hasn't given any value...which is really unfortunate. But there are not enough terrazzo makers. They're a dying breed in Toronto. We don't have enough carpenters anymore, or bricklayers. The average age of a construction worker in Toronto is 55 years old. That's the same average age of truck drivers as well.
People don't realize that these issues are not going to go away unless we somehow tackle them as well.
To the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, you have to also articulate, because I'm sure it's affecting your members as well. It's affecting their businesses, their ability to purchase homes and make investments. This is all trickling down to us, and we're not really catching on.
I realize there is a need to qualify the people who are here, and I feel a great sympathy for a lot of them because of our federal system and how one is able to get their profession accredited in Canada. But there is really a big piece of the pie in the labour market that is not being addressed by anybody.
We are still, on a daily basis, deporting people to their countries, people who are fully integrated in this country, who have jobs, who have homes, who have cars, who have children born in this country. It makes absolutely no sense that we're spending millions of dollars to deport people who are fully integrated, with good jobs.
And a construction job in Toronto is not like a construction job in Mexico. You're not getting $20 a week; you're making about $100,000 a year. It's incredible how highly paid they are. It's a very good job. More of these jobs are training people on their different sites and providing courses as well, so it's becoming a sophisticated type of position. I think that also has to be given some credit.
I would also ask that you, Corinne and Lucie, encourage the government to move in that direction, to recognize these people also as skilled people. They don't have to have an initial after their name, but these people do provide very valuable resources for our economy.