Thank you. I'm here on behalf of Ken Neumann, the Canadian national director of the United Steelworkers. I'd like to thank this committee for inviting us to appear here today.
As you may know, the Steelworkers is Canada's largest private sector trade union. We have about 225,000 members in virtually every geographic and economic sector of Canada's economy. We have a long history of negotiating and enforcing collective agreements on behalf of workers and of participating in many aspects of Canada's democratic process.
We represent workplaces in which temporary foreign workers are employed. We have organized workplaces where temporary foreign workers are employed. We were one of the first unions and we have continued to be one of the unions that have spoken up about our concerns with the application of the temporary foreign worker policy.
We're particularly concerned about changes to the temporary foreign worker policy over recent years, especially those changes that have seen a huge increase in the number of low-skilled workers who come to this country under the program. When the temporary foreign worker program was initiated many years ago, its purpose was to ensure that specific and narrow labour shortages would be addressed by bringing in workers for short-term employment. It was developed to target specific groups of workers whose skills did not exist in Canada.
Since 2002, it's been expanded hugely to cover workers, particularly those in national occupation classifications, NOCs, C and D, generally those jobs requiring secondary school and on-the-job training. Since then hundreds of thousands of workers have come to Canada to work in doughnut shops, hotels, retail stores, restaurants, and banks, typically in short-term, low-wage jobs. Most of those temporary foreign workers have come in under that aspect of the program and have little or no chance of staying in Canada. These current policies are essentially creating a permanent underclass of low-wage workers.
In short, this policy creates a pool of vulnerable workers and labour for employers who are not prepared to hire from Canada's 1.4 million unemployed.
We submit, and we have been submitting publicly for some time, that the temporary foreign worker program must be changed. Essentially there are three areas where we say the program must be changed in order for it to operate efficiently.
First, low-skilled work, that work I referred to a few minutes ago, covered by NOCs C and D should be excluded completely from the scope of the temporary foreign worker program and should be phased out.
Second, we say for the remaining temporary foreign worker categories, employers must be required to prove on the basis of rigorous tests that there exists a genuine labour shortage before an LMO can be issued. Hand in hand with this reform we say that the government should and must develop policies that will encourage employers to develop, implement, and maintain job training and apprenticeship programs that enable Canada to have a skilled and well-trained workforce.
As it stands, the temporary foreign worker program operates as a disincentive to employers to develop those kinds of training programs that we would like to see put in place.
Finally, our third concern with the temporary foreign worker program as it is currently in place is that temporary foreign workers under the existing policy are vulnerable to exploitation. The policy must be changed to ensure that workers who come to Canada are not in a situation in which they are systemically vulnerable and in a position of feeling they can't speak out against abuses. The situation in which temporary foreign workers are vulnerable and exploited harms not just temporary foreign workers but all members of Canada's domestic labour market. In other words, if temporary foreign workers are treated badly and among other things permitted to be paid up to 15% less than workers in the domestic labour market, that exerts downward pressure on the wages of all workers. That's wrong.
We say that the better solution to meeting Canada's labour needs is to have a fair system of immigration that ensures people can come to Canada, can work here, can contribute to Canada's social and economic fabric, and stay in Canada and become citizens, and continue to participate in our country's economic future.
That is the kind of long-term solution Canada needs, and we urge that the program be reformed. The current system, which gives rise to exploitation and vulnerability, can and should be changed to ensure that workers who come to Canada come as citizens, not as temporary migrant workers who we invite in for a short period of time and who we then tell, at the end of that period of time, “Here's the door. You can go home”.
In addition, for current workers who are here and for any temporary foreign workers who come in under a revised system in the future, a quicker and more reliable path to citizenship would go a long way to reducing the potential for exploitation and vulnerability.
Thank you.