Maybe I could start.
I think it's important to understand that these legislative changes are part of a bigger framework to try to make the temporary foreign worker program more effective. We want to bring in those TFWs when they're needed, when Canadians are clearly not willing and able to do that kind of work. As you said, it does play a really important role. A large series of initiatives were announced on April 29, which make the program more effective at separating when there is a true need and when there is doubt, or when we have concerns about whether there's a true need for workers.
So the specific elements in the budget implementation bill give us some additional tools and help level the playing field. When I say additional tools, I'm referring particularly to the ability to revoke work permits and allow the government to suspend, revoke, and refuse processing a labour market opinion. This gives us a tool to correct the situation when we have an employer who has not provided the correct information, for example, or we find out later that the information isn't correct.
It also gives us that flexibility when new information becomes available. Even though questions were genuinely and honestly answered at time A, at time B conditions changed. For example, a large layoff occurs, and as a result, the labour market conditions have changed and now there may be a surplus of labour. That gives the government the ability to revoke or suspend LMO processing. That's a great tool. It has some of those abilities now, but this really strengthens that, and will help protect workers. It will help protect the Canadian economy.
Let me also talk about the exemption of the User Fees Act. Right now employers are not charged for the labour market opinions and that creates a couple of problems. One is there's not much incentive to economize. What I mean by that is if they think there's a chance they might need a temporary foreign worker, they'll ask for a labour market opinion, even though they're not sure whether they'll need it. We're spending resources to process labour market opinions that are never filled with temporary foreign workers. That's going to reduce that kind of speculative type of request for a labour market opinion.
It also levels the playing field in terms of this being a true cost to bring in temporary foreign workers. The employer should bear that cost to make sure that this is the total cost of bringing in a temporary foreign worker, relative to what it costs to use a domestic worker.
Finally, it brings fairness for the taxpayer. Right now, this is subsidized by the taxpayers and by those getting the work permits. This corrects that inequity and the user fee exemption allows us to quickly put a proper user fee in place.
I'll turn to my colleague at CIC.