Human Resources Committee on May 16th, 2016

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

To what extent does the labour market impact assessment policy impede your access to the talent pool?

What is the average time required for a labour market impact assessment in your sector?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

A 30-second response, please.

[Jayson Hilchie]

It can be up to four or five months to get a labour market impact assessment. Oftentimes the Service Canada officers will decline the application based on a misunderstanding of what the job actually is, because the occupation code that they're applying to the job is not actually what the job is because an occupation code for that job simply doesn't exist.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Mr. Warawa, please.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. It's very interesting testimony.

Mr. Sidhu, you are located in beautiful Langley, British Columbia, and thank you for being with us today. You said in your testimony that you had temporary foreign workers in 2007 and 2008 when you used the program, but you have not been able to use the program since.

What are the hurdles? We just heard from Mr. Hilchie that it can take up to four months. Could you share with us as an employer.... I've seen your facility and it's definitely not the 18th century type, it's up-to-date and appears to be a very good working environment. You shared what you do to engage with your employees, but what are the hurdles to find workers? If you cannot find Canadians first to do the job, then what are the hurdles to get the foreign workers who are needed for manufacturing in your company?

[Jatinder Sidhu]

The number one hurdle is the inefficient element around the labour market opinion process. Many of the jobs under the NOC categories don't even exist. Many times when you apply, the application simply gets tossed out, and the person who is assessing the application doesn't understand what it takes to be at the level to hire that worker. Once that issue is there to begin with, we can't move forward.

The number two hurdle is the prevailing wage rate. As I explained earlier, if I am paying the worker a base wage in Canada, plus the benefits, the final wage is $18 to $20 an hour. When they're asking us to pay the prevailing wage rates, one has to take into account what it costs to bring the worker here, what it costs to provide the worker with the health and extended benefits program, what it costs to pay the recruiter, and what it costs to retain the worker.

In many cases, when you bring the fully loaded costs to manage the temporary foreign worker program, based on our calculations, it runs 30% to 35% higher than what you will pay to a Canadian worker. How are you going to get an ROI on that?

The third hurdle, as I explained earlier, is the application assessment fee has all of a sudden been doubled. If you file an application, and they don't see eye-to-eye with you, they don't agree with your assessment, and they don't agree with your application, then that application gets rejected. If you have put in 50 applications, $50,000 goes into their coffers and now you have nothing.

The temporary foreign worker program doesn't have to be a cash cow for the federal government. It has to be there for the ease of running a manufacturing policy for Canadian companies, and in our experience, that has not been the case.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

With the foreign workers you're looking for assistance from, are we talking about skilled or unskilled workers?

[Jatinder Sidhu]

We're talking about unskilled workers, but there are other jobs for skilled workers as well.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

If it's unskilled, is there a time frame where you have to train them and get them up to speed, so they can be productive in your manufacturing facility?

[Jatinder Sidhu]

That is correct. There's a time frame to train them and to bring them up to speed. On-board orientation is anywhere between two to eight weeks.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Are there just not enough Canadians willing to do that type of work, or what are the hurdles to get Canadians to work there first?

[Jatinder Sidhu]

With all due respect to the local work force available, they simply do not want to come to work in a manufacturing facility to earn a living. We have tried day after day, week after week. For example, I shared the last five years of our attrition and retention data, and we lost 70% of our hires. We hire 10 people, and six or seven will leave after five to seven days, and we're back to square one.

There's a cost, if you hire, train, and retain these people, and now you're spending $500 to $600 over and above that. Every five to six days you're spending the same amount of money in a moving cycle, and you're losing $60,000 to $80,000 within months to hire more people.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Chair, have I time for one more question? It's related to the $1,000 fee. It used to be $275. I believe Mr. Hilchie made a comment that he hoped the $1,000 fee would speed up the process.

I think you said you wanted the fee waived. How would the program be funded then if there were no fee?

[Jatinder Sidhu]

We understand there's a cost to administer this program, and we're okay with that. The problem occurs when you double the cost in less than five years, and there's no return to taxpaying, hard-working Canadian companies that are bringing millions and millions of dollars in tax income to the government and employing hundreds and hundreds of people.

If you look at the bigger scheme of things, in Langley, we are bringing in millions and millions of dollars in business to the merchants outside of our Coast Spas group of companies. When you look at the bigger scheme of things, when you raise the application fee on one side, Mr. Warawa, and on the other side there is no return, then the system doesn't balance out. As a result, in my opinion, the temporary foreign program is a broken program. It doesn't work for our manufacturing sector, period.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sidhu.

Thank you to all of our panellists here today. We are out of time for this particular panel. We are going to break for a couple of minutes to switch over to the final panel.

I just want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank everybody who came here today. All of you are bringing very diverse perspectives on this issue. It's an incredibly diverse issue, and it's a really serious one that we do need to deal with.

Thank you all for taking the time to be here today.

We're going to break for no more than five minutes, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Welcome back, everybody.

For our third panel today, we are being visited by Ethel Tungohan, assistant professor, Department of Political Science, at York University. Also present is Ericson Santos De Leon; and from the Maritime Seafood Coalition, Chris LeClair, senior adviser; Jerry Amirault, president, Lobster Processors Association of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; and coming to us via teleconference, from the Temporary Foreign Workers Association, Francisco Mootoo, member, and Lucio Castracani, community organizer and member.

Thank you all very much for being here today. There are quite a few of you here, so we're going to ask that opening remarks be kept to about seven minutes.

We're going to start with Dr. Tungohan.

Go ahead, please.

[Ethel Tungohan, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, York University, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, good afternoon.

My name is Dr. Ethel Tungohan. I am an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at York University. With me today is Ericson De Leon, who is currently a caregiver.

I am here today to talk to you about how the recent changes to the temporary foreign worker program and the caregiver program make workers vulnerable. Thus far we haven't talked about the needs of caregivers, so I'd like the committee to pay attention to the needs of this very vulnerable group.

Over the last seven years, I have conducted interviews with 103 caregiver activists in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver; 55 focus groups of current and former caregivers in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal; and 25 focus groups with temporary foreign workers across Alberta. My research partners and I have also conducted surveys of over 600 former caregivers across the country. In these studies, I have found that, first, tying work permits to employers inherently makes workers vulnerable to abuse. This is because these arrangements magnify the power discrepancy between workers and employers. In many cases employers force workers into compliance by threatening to terminate their contracts, which means that workers risk not only losing their jobs but also losing the ability to stay in Canada.

Second, measures to curb abuse, such as workplace inspections and the creation of a temporary foreign worker tip line to report abuse have failed. You can have the biggest fines and the strictest enforcement, but if the end result is that workers are out of jobs and have to leave the country because their employers are banned from hiring foreign workers, workers are not likely to report abuse.

Third, the proposal to make regulated companies hire caregivers directly does not address the immense power discrepancy between workers and employers that I just highlighted. In this scenario workers are still tied to a single employer and work permit with the same power discrepancy. In fact, this proposal may even exacerbate the abuse facing caregivers because caregivers will have to navigate two power relationships: one with the family they are working for and one with their agents. Agents also have a profit motive and may not prioritize workers' well-being. Also, because most provinces do not have clear policies regulating agencies, caregivers are made vulnerable.

Fourth, in cases where there's a technical pathway to permanent residency, as in the case of the caregiver program, workers have found the process to be cumbersome, confusing, and inhumane. For example, immigration officials require caregivers to demonstrate that they will not stay in the country after they finish their contracts, but caregivers do have the right to apply for permanent residency and must at the same time demonstrate their ability to integrate into Canada. These demands are inconsistent and contradictory.

Our studies also reveal a pattern of officials using medical inadmissibility as a blanket reason to deny permanent residency applications. Immigration officers are denying applications without fully considering the specificities of each case. These barriers create undue stress and hardship on caregivers and their families due to family separation. Caregiver advocates indicate that there are 38,000 caregivers waiting to be reunited with their families. In 2016, processing time for peer applications for caregivers is 49 months. This backlog has to be addressed.

To illustrate the human impact of these issues, I would now like to invite my colleague, Ericson De Leon, to tell his story.

[Ericson Santos De Leon, As an Individual]

My name is Ericson Santos De Leon. I'm a member of Migrante, in Quebec, or immigrants in Canada. I have a nursing degree from the Philippines and came to Canada in 2009 under the live-in caregiver program. I was able to come here after a friend referred me to an agency in Montreal. The agency told me that they could help me find work as a caregiver if I paid them $4,300. The agency told me they were charging me a high placement fee because people don't like hiring male caregivers. I previously worked in Italy where I was employed by an agency, and I thought that what they said made sense.

When I arrived in Montreal I found myself without a job. My agency paid someone to pretend to be my employer for my papers. For three months I lived on my savings. After three months I was getting desperate. I went to the agency and told them I really needed to work. They found me a job with a family, but it was under the table.

After a year I told them I would report them to the authorities. I said that they had been abusing me, that I had a family to support. They got discouraged and finally fixed my papers. What they did was very wrong. They took advantage of me because they knew that I wanted to come to Canada. With many agents, you are tied to what they want you to do and where they want you to work.

In 2013 I applied for permanent residency, and in 2016 I received a letter saying my application was rejected because my son who has a mild case of Down's syndrome was medically inadmissible. I was surprised because I had already received my CSQ from the Quebec government. I had already saved money for my family's arrival and rented an apartment for us when I received this news.

Immigration officials wrongly assume that all people born with disabilities are a burden. They ignore what the doctors are saying, that my child is leading an independent life. Why is my child being treated differently from normal children? Their decision discriminates against people with disabilities and against caregivers like me who live apart from their families for many years, work hard, and sacrifice so much because of the promise of Canadian citizenship.

[Ethel Tungohan]

Thank you, Ericson.

I want to stress that these concerns are not just held by worker advocates. Many employers also see the benefits of improved conditions for workers coming into Canada. Employers need workers who can stay with them in the long term. It is difficult to have to rehire and retrain people. Having an immobile, precarious workforce is in nobody's interest. Hence, I am in full support of proposals to give all workers open permits that do not tie them to their employers. They should also be given pathways to permanent residency. In the history of Canada, people immigrated from different countries to build a nation. They worked in houses, shops, and factories, and on farms and railroads. If they were to come to Canada today, they would be temporary foreign workers. When considering policy changes I urge you, members of the committee, not to lose sight of this fact.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Now we're going to hear from the Maritime Seafood Coalition, and I believe Mr. LeClair.

[Chris LeClair, Senior Advisor, Maritime Seafood Coalition]

Thank you very much.

The Maritime Seafood Coalition was established in the summer of 2015. It's a coalition representing seafood processors, harvesters, and the aquaculture sector. It represents the following organizations: PEI Seafood Processors Association; Lobster Processors Association of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; Prince Edward Island Aquaculture Alliance; Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association; Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association; Maritime Fishermen's Union; Eastern Fishermen’s Federation; and Affiliation of Seafood Producers Association of Nova Scotia.

It's interesting, because it's a group of harvester and processor and aquaculture sectors. The coming together of these elements of the seafood sector indicate the importance of the temporary foreign worker program to the sector.

The coalition has worked with both bureaucratic and elected officials on trying to address some of the reforms that occurred in 2014. We appreciate the work of this committee as part of a broader review of the temporary foreign worker program.

First, I'd like to give you a very brief overview of our sector. Our sector is a highly export-oriented sector. Canadian seafood exports amounted to $5.9 billion in 2015. That accounted for 85% of the products landed and processed.

The Maritimes are a dominant player in that area. In 2015 the three Maritime provinces accounted for 58% of all seafood exports. In this context, the export performance remains strong and aided by the value of the Canadian dollar. As an employer, the seafood sector in Atlantic Canada and Canada is significant, with 80,000 Canadians earning a living from this sector. In the Maritimes, 45,000 do, and lobster is a major focus of that.

Like many industries, the seafood industry draws upon workers from rural communities. The seafood sector is facing increasing challenges with declining labour supply in these rural communities. Our processors routinely face turnover rates of 20% amongst employees. At the same time, and I'm sure this committee will hear this story again and again, our workforce is aging. The majority of employees in the seafood processing sector are over the age of 55. Declining birth rates and out-migration are demographic factors that we are challenged to address.

In response to these challenges, commencing about 2008 the industry began utilizing the temporary foreign worker program as a way to supplement its labour supply. On average, by 2014, 20% to 25% of the overall processing workforce in the case of the lobster industry was made up of temporary foreign workers, but in some plants in rural communities, where labour supply was shorter, that amounted to almost 50%.

The temporary foreign worker changes set in motion in 2014 have had a significant impact on labour supply in our industry, with a 30% overall cap on TFW employment, dropping to 20% in 2016 and ultimately 10% in 2017. According to research carried out for the industry and for the three Maritime provinces, the reduction in this workforce results in and translates into a $123-million reduction in the value of the product that can't be processed and sold because of a lack of labour supply if those lost temporary foreign workers cannot be replaced by local workers.

It needs to be emphasized that our plants go to great lengths to hire Canadians first. Plants have increased wages, expanded benefits, and adopted more flexible work schedules to allow for employees to manage child care and family responsibilities. Some plants provide transportation. In my home province of Prince Edward Island, the industry initiated a bursary program of $1,000 to convince university and college students to spend the summer working in a fish plant.

These reductions in temporary foreign workers that have been imposed on the seafood sector are especially challenging in light of the trade opportunities that exist for Canada, particularly over the last number of years. CETA and the TPP are two trade agreements that hold the promise of significant tariff reductions for Canadian seafood products. However, the industry's ability to grow, to service these export markets and capitalize on these opportunities, is directly impacted by the loss of temporary foreign workers.

In this context, our processors will do well to service existing markets rather than take the opportunity to explore new ones. Simply put, our immigration and labour market policies appear to be working at cross purposes with our trade policy, and in export-oriented sectors like the Maritimes seafood sector, it's our provincial economies that will lose out.

Equally of concern is the manner in which Canada's major competitors in the global seafood market are making it easier rather than more difficult to access migrant workers to expand production. Seafood-producing countries such as Scotland, Norway, and Sweden rely on migrant workers and don't face the kind of caps that were put in place in Canada in 2014. Closer to home, the Department of Homeland Security in the United States announced in December 2015 significant increases in visas for foreign workers in the seafood processing sector.

I will turn it over to Jerry Amirault to talk a little bit about policy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You have about a minute. I'm afraid he cut into your time there.

[Jerry Amirault, President, Lobster Processors Association of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Maritime Seafood Coalition]

I'll just skip over it. One of the things we were looking at, just so you understand, is that we are in the same communities that agriculture is in. We are rural based. We go through the same process as them of having to justify bringing in workers, but it's more acceptable for them than for us.

Perhaps I could just get into some of the recommendations we have made in the submission, given the brevity of time. On September 19, 2016, when the minister introduced the changes for the seasonal industries to use 180 days, that was well received, but it by no means got us back. In our sector, 1,200 foreign workers were used in 2014. This year it dropped to 700, that quickly. It has just taken the heart out of the industry.

The difficulty that we run into is that no one seems to understand that it's wild-card species, that it's weather dependent, and that it has to be processed alive. We cannot leave it around. We have the CFIA, Health Canada, and so forth. The recommendations that we've put forward are that, as we go forward, the committees that we're forming together with federal...Service Canada, and IRCC work to find these solutions, whether they be EI-based reforms or whatever. It's in our report to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Excellent. I'm sure you'll have some time to elaborate with questions.

Now we're going to move quickly to the Temporary Foreign Workers Association by teleconference with Francisco Mootoo. Are you speaking, sir?

[Francisco Mootoo, Member, Temporary Foreign Workers Association]

Yes.