Human Resources Committee on May 21st, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that.

We'll move now to Mr. Roberts. Go ahead.

[Chris Roberts, Senior Researcher, Social and Economic Policy Department, Canadian Labour Congress]

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.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you very much for that presentation.

We'll start with Ms. Charlton.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much to all three of the witnesses for your testimony.

I imagine, Ms. Turtle and Mr. Roberts, that you don't often find yourselves on the same page as Mark Carney, but in this case indeed you are, specifically with respect to the temporary foreign worker program and low-skilled labour shortages.

Mr. Roberts, you made the point, and you're quite right, that unfortunately the HUMA committee isn't empowered to make the kinds of far-reaching recommendations that we might want to see to actually permanently fix the temporary foreign worker program. As much as I regret that, I do hope that through your testimony and through the work we're doing here we'll continue to raise awareness, and perhaps that more comprehensive study will happen as a result of your testimonies. I want to thank you very much for being here and making your presentations.

It seems to me that although on the surface it might not seem like the three of you agreed in your presentations, you did all say that impediments for Canadians to accept some of the jobs, whether they be temporary, seasonal, or otherwise, include wages, labour mobility, and skills training. I think all three of those probably deserve further study in the context of the temporary foreign worker program as well.

I want to ask each of you to reflect for a moment. We've had this massive announcement that the temporary foreign worker program will get at least a temporary fix now. It seems to me the government was shifting some of the responsibility on to employers as if employers were the ones who had mismanaged the program somehow and therefore were to blame for some of the stories we've been seeing in the papers, whether they be about HD Mining or iGate, and it doesn't matter which, as there's been a myriad of them. I would suggest that perhaps it was the government's mismanagement because at the end of the day it's not the employers who are issuing LMOs or ALMOs, it's the government that needs to be reviewing that process and granting those permits. I wonder if you could comment on whether in your experience the problem is employers, or are employers taking advantage of a program that the government has just poorly designed?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Please go ahead.

[Paula Turtle]

Sure. I'm happy to respond first.

Thank you for the question.

As I think I indicated in my presentation, one of the concerns of the Steelworkers and others in the labour movement is that the temporary foreign worker policy as it currently stands operates as a disincentive or a deterrent against employers investing in and properly considering training and apprenticeships for the future. What we have is a very easy way for employers to bring in temporary foreign workers. They sign up for their permit. They get their permit. They don't have to worry about training.

In our view, one of the reasons that employers are coming forward and saying that we have a labour shortage—one of the reasons, not the explanation in its entirety—is that they haven't anticipated their labour needs and there hasn't been investment in training and apprenticeships. As a result, the easy way out is to get an LMO.

I'd like to comment in that context on one of the observations that Mr. Sinclair made when he said that in his view, Blue Mountain is not able to operate, and I think he used these words, that they can't make the business work if they pay workers at a wage that would attract Canadians. Well, again, as Ms. Charlton said, we find ourselves in the same place as Mark Carney on that issue.

Mr. Carney said a couple of weeks ago that if you're having difficulty attracting workers, the market can deal with that, and the market can deal with that by ensuring that wages and working conditions are such that you do attract Canadians, because the alternative to bringing in temporary foreign workers is paying members of the domestic labour market wages that attract domestic workers. If we don't do that.... And it's not just Mr. Carney who has said this. Canadian Public Policy, in a publication issued last year, said that the effect of continued reliance on temporary foreign workers is to continue to depress wages and maintain unemployment.

If the option is that we pay domestic workers a wage that attracts them, or we continue to rely on temporary foreign workers, as the policy now stands, we have the effect of depressing wages and maintaining unemployment. In our submission, the downside to continuing to use temporary foreign workers to meet those labour market demands is far, far outweighed by the upside.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that. Your time is up.

There are probably a few comments.

Go ahead, Mr. Sinclair.

[David Sinclair]

You were asking if the government has been at fault or employers have been at fault, or what have you.... I can only speculate, unfortunately, and—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

You don't need to speculate if you don't wish to.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[David Sinclair]

I think we're all aware of the principle that it's a minority of a few who tend to mess things up for the majority who play by the rules. I suspect it's the minority few employers who are not following the program as it's intended. Unfortunately, the majority might suffer as a result.

What can the government do perhaps to help? One of my frustrations has been making our case based on lack of detail on the unemployment or employment rate in our particular region, the area that people would tend to commute from. Geographically, we are in Grey County. Economically, we're probably more closely associated with Simcoe County. My best understanding—and I say best understanding because I'm not sure—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Please bring it to a conclusion.

[David Sinclair]

—is that we are probably three points lower than the provincial average in unemployment, suggesting a labour shortage. If the government could help us quantify that and make a firm case around that, it would be very helpful, but the data is not that finite.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

A very short comment, please, Mr. Roberts.

[Chris Roberts]

Very quickly, I want to endorse what Paula said. I think this is a public policy issue that can be addressed through government reforms. I think there has been a wholesale shift toward an employer-driven immigration and migrant worker strategy, whereby employers have been given the ability and the authority, really, to determine the future economic and labour market makeup of this country.

I think that employers are doing certainly what they're invited to do under the various changes we've seen to the temporary foreign worker program. We've seen the results in an explosion of entries under the program, so—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you. We'll have to cut you off there.

Go ahead, Mr. McColeman.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, witnesses.

Ms. Turtle and Mr. Roberts, I believe you agreed on this point. I want a yes or no answer. Are you both advocating, in your three points, that we completely exclude low-skilled workers from being able to apply for temporary foreign worker status? Am I correct? I believe it was your third point, and I believe it was Ms. Turtle's first point.

Is that correct, yes or no?

[Chris Roberts]

To clarify, wind down the temporary foreign worker program for those classifications, yes.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Then it is yes.

Yes?

[Paula Turtle]

A phase-out of the temporary foreign worker program as it applies to those classifications—

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Okay, thank you.

We had testimony earlier today from a small-business owner from Saskatchewan, a province which has 3.8% unemployment. Statistically, it doesn't exist at that point. He is the owner of this business with around 50 or 60 employees. We went across the country, to Vancouver, Whitehorse, Estevan and such, talking to businesses, employers, workers and unions about what the labour shortage issues were in their regions, and we got the same story. In fact, I recall one owner of a hardware business in Estevan saying that he couldn't stay in business because he couldn't get the workers he needs.

Ms. Turtle, when you talk about agreeing with the free market of Mark Carney's suggestions, is it free market or is it bankruptcy?

[Paula Turtle]

Anecdotal stories about labour shortages are not supported by the evidence about unemployment and the use of temporary foreign workers. Between 2008 and 2012, the largest growth in the number of temporary foreign workers has taken place in those parts of the country having the highest unemployment. In fact, although we all hear from time to time of employers claiming a labour shortage and the need to bring in temporary foreign workers, the empirical evidence shows quite clearly that temporary foreign workers are increasing in parts of the country where unemployment is highest. As a labour union representing workers, our experience is that if you treat workers fairly, they will come.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Let me follow up on that with you. You're reversing, in fact, earlier testimony today from the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association. The head of their association talked about a 2.8% take-up needed for temporary foreign workers, primarily in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, which represented 90% of the TFWs out there. I think you'd need to reconcile that with other associations, not just your own numbers.

I’ll move on to talk about what you would say in my area of the country, southwestern Ontario. It is largely agricultural and traditionally, going back decades, has relied on low-skilled labourers because Canadians will not take the jobs in the harvest. They will not take the jobs in the tobacco harvest or the other food harvests that occur in my part of the country. There has always been this need. In fact, it goes back generations. There are generations of families, typically from the Caribbean, who come for the harvest.

What do you say to the farmers in my part of the country when you say, “You'll face, one day, not being able to have that low-skilled labour arrive”?

[Paula Turtle]

Thank you. I will respond to your last question, but I would first like to respond to your suggestion that I was somehow contradicting—I think that was the word you used—the CRFA's testimony. I don't think I was here for that. All I can say is that the empirical data I am relying on, the unemployment statistics, come from Statistics Canada. That's what I prefer to rely on rather than on anecdotal evidence from individuals.

In response to your second—

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Just a moment. Your time is up, but we'll let you conclude with a short response.