Thank you.
The Auditor General's report a few years ago said that there was no evaluation of the temporary foreign worker program and that it may or may not be displacing existing Canadian jobs.
The department, in a memo a year ago, told the minister that some of the temporary foreign workers were, in fact, displacing Canadian workers. We're talking about 300,000-plus temporary foreign workers in Canada right now. I know your departments, both the CIC and Human Resources, do not do much enforcement because you see it as a provincial responsibility, that the Labour Code is really enforced by the province. That's why I don't believe you do any of the enforcement to make sure the working conditions or what's happening out in the field are what they say is happening, whether there's a plan or not. The acceleration, before this minor change, means you get to advertise for one day, and the next day you can get your LMO approved. Also, there are loopholes which I will describe shortly.
I have three questions. You can answer them together.
First, you knew a year ago that temporary foreign workers were displacing Canadians. Why didn't you act then? Why didn't the minister act at that time?
Second, if the acceleration means you can get the LMO very quickly, why aren't you cancelling it outright? Why are you suspending this practice? Why don't you just cancel the whole acceleration piece?
Third, given that both departments see this as a provincial responsibility, how do you plan to enforce this so-called plan that these employers would, in fact, be training Canadians?
Let me give you one concrete example.
Foreign pilots are, in fact, taking away a lot of jobs from Canadian pilots. Canadian pilots are saying that Sunwing, Air Transat, and Can Air are hiring temporary foreign workers, claiming that there aren't any pilots in Canada. They have a different type of plane and refuse to train Canadian pilots. As a result, a lot of Canadian pilots are now moving abroad in order to find jobs. That is causing great turmoil among the Canadian pilots. Because of this loophole, some of these airlines are able to hire foreign pilots as these foreign pilots already had the ability to fly those planes.
How do you plan to enforce the training? How do you plan to enforce that employers are, in fact, following employment guidelines and not paying the foreign workers lower wages and violating labour laws?