Thank you to the members of the committee. On behalf of the Canadian Labour Congress and President Ken Georgetti, I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you.
CLC represents 3.3 million workers across this country, as well as dozens of affiliate national and international trade unions. CLC has been an advocate and a vocal proponent of changes to the temporary foreign worker program for many years.
The Government of Canada committed in economic action plan 2013 to take action to reform Canada's TFWP to ensure that Canadians are given first chance at available jobs. The government is seeking to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to provide authorities with the means to revoke work permits issued by CIC and to suspend or revoke labour market opinions issued by HRSDC if an employer is found to be misusing the program.
In addition, the Government of Canada announced that it would introduce user fees for employers applying to hire temporary foreign workers through the LMO process. The government will use existing regulatory authority under IRPA to introduce a user fee for employers requesting an LMO, and will establish authority for a privilege fee in respect of work permits. This will ensure that taxpayers no longer subsidize the cost of processing these applications.
We have a number of key concerns with these proposals. With respect to revoking work permits, the proposal to authorize revocation of work permits will adversely affect the migrant worker, whose status in the country is dependent upon the permit. In all likelihood, revocation will take place after a worker is in the country. This is because there is currently inadequate investigation taking place at the front end of the system.
The government's decision last April to fast-track LMO applications in the high-skilled streams and their plan to extend that model to all streams of the TFWP as indicated in the backgrounder fails to provide adequate time to investigate LMO applications for integrity.
Punitive measures need to focus on the individual, employer, labour broker, or immigration consultant who has violated the TFW program rules. Work permit suspension penalizes the worker. At a minimum, a mechanism is needed that would allow the worker trapped in these circumstance to find another employer via an open work permit, which can be sector specific.
With respect to user fees, according to the background paper circulated at the February and March TFWP consultations earlier this year, the Canadian taxpayer has been subsidizing LMO application processing costs to the tune of $35.5 million a year.
Charging a processing fee is long overdue, in our opinion. The CLC has also long argued that employers seeking migrant workers drawn from other countries must also be subject to an additional levy for the benefit of training, skills, and abilities that other countries have provided to these workers prior to temporary work arrangements in Canada. We refer to this as a human replenishment cost.
We argue that in addition to user fees, which should be calculated at least to cover processing fee costs, privilege fees should address such costs as human replenishment costs that sending countries have incurred in the process of educating and training workers, and should fund enforcement and newcomer integration measures for migrant workers.
In addition, all user and privilege fees must be accompanied by effective measures that would prevent employers, brokers, or immigration consultants from downloading these costs onto migrant workers.
It's our understanding that the HUMA committee is unable to make amendments that in our opinion would offer genuine and much-needed reforms to the temporary foreign worker program and related pathways through which employers are able to access temporary work permits. This is a major shortcoming, in our view, and a missed opportunity to make the situation better for workers, no matter where they come from.
Nonetheless, the CLC recently held a meeting with nearly 40 affiliates and allies, and recommends comprehensive policy change in three key areas.
One, the entire temporary foreign worker program must be immediately scaled back in scope. There must be an end to employers' access to low-skilled occupation streams in NOCs C and D, excluding the live-in caregiver program and the seasonal agricultural worker program. Strong new eligibility requirements for employers seeking temporary work permits must be established, and accountability and punitive measures to address violations must be strengthened. A meaningful consultation process must be established that would lead to the implementation of needed and wide-ranging reforms.
Two, comprehensive investments are needed immediately in job training and apprenticeship programs.
Three, we need a return to a robust national policy of permanent immigration that contributes to nation building.
I have brought along a detailed articulation of these policy changes for the committee members, which I believe the clerk has circulated.
With that I finish, and I welcome your questions.