Human Resources Committee on May 16th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Welcome.

[Francisco Mootoo]

My name is Francisco Mootoo. I am originally from the island of Mauritius. I came to Canada in 2012 as part of the circular migration program as a day labourer for Olymel, at a slaughterhouse in Saint-Esprit, which is about 45 minutes from Montreal.

After one year of experience as a unionized worker, I was able, thanks to my seniority, to apply for an industrial butcher position in the company.

In 2014, the company and I thought I would be able file an application for permanent residence through the Programme de l'expérience québécoise, given that the four-year period set out in the law was drawing to a close for me and that I would no longer be able to continue working.

We were wrong. In 2015, 34 of my colleagues and I were rejected because our national occupation code was no longer valid for applying to the Programme de l'expérience québécoise.

Here, we are still in a good situation. We have been working and living in Quebec for four years. Some of us have even been here for seven years. We have become well integrated, and we are determined to help build a strong society, especially in the regions, which is where we work. In Mauritius, we face a future of unemployment. Indeed, as we have been here for more than four years, we have all lost the jobs we had over there before coming to Quebec. Our permits expire after four years here, so we are then forced to leave Canada.

Many of us have invested in transportation to get us to and from work, given that we are in the regions and that the bus schedules did not meet our needs. We have therefore invested in housing and transportation. Some of us have even started families and had children in Quebec. Despite all of this, they had to leave the country at the end of their contract.

We have contributed a great deal to Canadian society and to our community, and we continue to do so. We settled in the regions and still live there, because we have become well integrated in the place we live.

The company will be expanding, and perhaps by 2017, over 200 jobs will be created. Also, I can say with some pride that is it partly because of us that the company will continue to grow and prosper, because there is a real shortage of workers in the regions.

If there is a labour shortage, I, for one, believe that granting permanent residence upon arrival would help stabilize the system, for business and workers.

That's about all I have to say. I will let my colleague Lucio tell you more about permits.

[Lucio Castracani, Community Organizer and Member, Temporary Foreign Workers Association]

Good evening everyone.

My name is Lucio Castracani. I will be giving you a brief description of our association and addressing a number of issues we have encountered in the course of our work.

L'Association des travailleuses et travailleurs étrangers temporaires was founded in November 2013 to deal with the increase in this type of recruitment, but also to respond to requests for help we were receiving from temporary foreign workers.

According to statistics on labour market impact assessments in 2014, in Quebec, there were about 16,000 applications, of which 10,000 were from the agricultural sector.

Our association includes members who work not only in the agricultural sector, but also in slaughterhouses, industrial laundry facilities, and landscaping. These workers come from many different countries.

Our experience with members of the association has taught us that there are a good number of problems with the program. Take the case of Francisco, for example, for whom access to permanent residency is difficult. These workers face other problems, such as closed work permits and difficulty accessing health care, in spite of the fact that they pay taxes in Canada.

We also have Guatemalan workers hired as chicken catchers who were forced to continue working by their employers after a workplace accident, despite a doctor's advice to the contrary, which jeopardized their health. Furthermore, when these workers took steps to obtain medical care in Quebec thanks to our support, the employer threatened to deport them.

More recently, we had a case where a Guatemalan worker was deported and kicked out of the program because his employer had decided to grow magic mushrooms. He found himself back in his home country and also in debt, because he had borrowed money to pay the agency in order to come to Canada, when he simply could have changed employers and kept working legally in Canada.

In conclusion, I would say that these stories are not bad apples. They are an expression of structural problems with the program. We think that to resolve these issues, all of the workers need to be given open work permits and permanent residence.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, both of you.

I would like to now open it up for questions from anyone on our panel.

Starting us off is Mr. Zimmer.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for coming today.

I would like to start off with my first question for you, Chris, and I might just stick with you the whole time. I'll see where the time goes.

I'm looking at a CBC article dated March 2016, I believe. It talks about fish plant issues with temporary foreign workers, and I'll quote it as follows:

“We've heard from groups across Canada that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program needs to change, including from businesses. A small number of businesses in certain sectors tell us they need more flexibility...”.

...Atlantic seafood processors were lobbying government to allow them to hire more foreign workers. Dennis King, executive director of the P.E.I. Seafood Processors Association, said a deal was reached at the end of last month after the Maritime Seafood Coalition met with officials in Ottawa.

The article talks about how the TFW program has been changed and how now there's no further limit on how many TFWs you can hire. That's what the article states.

I'd like to use a comparison. In looking at StatsCan and seeing what the actual unemployment rate is in P.E.I., certainly, as a person from British Columbia, I would say that rates as high as that would be alarming. I believe that the unemployment rate in P.E.I. is 12.1%, and that the other regions in the east are around 8.5%, 9.5%, and 10% in their unemployment rates.

Again, in my riding, it would be alarming that we would even consider hiring temporary foreign workers with an unemployment rate that high. I guess I would just ask you this. Canadians will ask this question. There seem to be enough Canadians to fill those jobs in the east. Why are they not filling these jobs?

[Chris LeClair]

I'm going to let Jerry answer the first part about the changes that were announced to the program, and then I could speak to the Prince Edward Island experience after that if that's okay.

[Jerry Amirault]

The changes to the program were not as holistic as what Dennis quoted. The program is as it is, and the provision of the 120 days would change to 180 days. I know Chris is going to get into the EI. The biggest thing to understand is in the processing we're doing, there isn't a consistent supply of raw material. The standard practice when we do operate, which is from the first of May through to the end of November, is everybody opens a claim when they are working.

In all cases within the Maritimes we have a great number of workers with open claims. They may only get 20 hours or whatever. We all focus on those weeks that could go to 70 hours.

When you're doing the analysis of the EI rates because of the seasonal nature of construction, because of the entertainment or the hospitality trade and fisheries, we end up with a huge number who are working with open claims but show up as unemployed.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

I would ask you back because what we see in the west and across Canada, maybe even in the east because we get different comments about why we are hiring somebody from another country before we're hiring a Canadian for a particular job.... How would you fix that kind of data collection? That's almost an inaccurate comparison. We're setting ourselves up for this perceived unfairness to Canadians.

[Jerry Amirault]

One of the issues we're looking at now with Service Canada and others is to try to get access to the data.

I chaired the working group, which was federal and provincial labour, and the data wasn't able to be shared through whatever, but agreements have now been reached or nearly reached.

I think it's an educational process. There isn't anybody in any plant who isn't hiring all the time every Canadian who wants to work. We keep conveying that to people, from busing them....

If there's a culture that they don't want to take these jobs, we are international. Our competition is all over the world.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

We need to clean up the data, or we need to make EI different on how you qualify or whatever because we want to make sure Canadians are getting the jobs first.

[Jerry Amirault]

Yes. We need to be more transparent. I agree 100%.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you for your comments.

I want to talk about the caregivers, especially the way the live-in caregiver program was.

Many friends from my area have had live-in caregivers, and these certainly aren't rich people who are having their kids taken care of by somebody else. These are people with special needs children, or they are adult special needs children. These live-in caregivers are absolutely a godsend to Canadian families.

I've seen and talked to many of these people who absolutely need these caregivers, and credit to you, have been a service to our country in a great way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Please be very brief.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Yes. Sorry.

If you were to fix the program and make it different, because I see a difference between the two programs, there's a worker program versus a live-in caregiver program. Live-in caregiving is much more long term.

You talked a bit about it. What changes would you recommend to make this better?

[Ethel Tungohan]

For the record, I did hand out policy briefs, which I think will be translated into French. They outline in greater detail some of my recommendations.

Canada does have a care crisis. The boomers are getting older. We have an elder care crisis, and people in my generation are having a lot of children so we need to address that care crisis.

One of the main calls for action the caregiver advocates have is to give caregivers landed status upon arrival. The need for care is constant, and giving caregivers landed status upon arrival reduces a lot of the abuse that caregivers face.

This proposal to have regulated companies, in other words agencies, act as caregivers' employers will simply transfer the abusive relationship from families onto agencies. Another proposal the caregiver advocates and researchers such as I are making is this should not happen. This system of transferring employment relationships to regulated companies will exacerbate abuse.

Another proposal is to deal with the backlog. The fact is, and other people have articulated this, and certainly this is the case for Mr. De Leon, caregivers have come to Canada leaving behind their own children to care for Canadian families. The fact that we have a backlog of 49,000 people is absurd.

We all know that family separation is difficult. Caregivers and their children face a lot of anxiety, a lot of mental and emotional health difficulties. We think addressing this backlog and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

[Ethel Tungohan]

—putting more resources to processing these applications are important as well. I'm happy that this committee also looks at the rights of people with disabilities.

The fact that there are blanket assumptions being made—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I'm sorry, Doctor, please wrap up.

[Ethel Tungohan]

—when it comes to PR applications, that's absurd, and Ericson's story shows that as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you. I'm sorry, we do have to move onto the next question.

Mr. Long, please.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the presenters this afternoon.

I have to say the testimony, on both sides, the pros and cons, of the TFW program is very compelling. We want to make sure as a committee, certainly, that we get it right, and that we're open and have a transparent discussion.

I'm from Atlantic Canada. I'm from Saint John—Rothesay, and I spent 15 years in the aquaculture industry. Certainly, I know first-hand from living in St. Andrew's and working in St. George's that there were times when there were major labour shortages.

I'll ask one of you the question. How many temporary foreign workers do you think you're going to need, your processors and harvesters, to fill the labour shortage in your industry? What per cent would that be of the workforce, total?

[Jerry Amirault]

It's been running about 20% of the total workforce. It's becoming more prominent as people.... Since you're in New Brunswick, up in the Acadian Peninsula, they didn't have any issues. Even they are starting...as the people are aging. As you know in New Brunswick, more people die than are born. That's joined that party.

The actually number, I think, would be determined by the labour assessments that we're calling for. We don't think there should be one cap for the whole industry in all areas, but it should be taking some of the LMIA data and determining that this particular area requires.... Take Deer Island, which is near you.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Yes.

[Jerry Amirault]

They've been very successful in permanent residency. They've demonstrated there are not enough people on the island, but it's a very good place to put a plan.

I can't give you a general answer. I'm simply saying we have to change the process in which we determine that number.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Can we just maybe talk about, I guess, from my industry's or from the coalition's perspective, a retention strategy, a training strategy, so ability isn't a barrier? What are you doing to target local workers? Are there campaigns? I know there have been job fairs and stuff like that.

Can you talk a little about what you're doing to attract Canadian workers and retention?