Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Jamie Liew. I'm an immigration and refugee lawyer and a professor of law at the University of Ottawa. My presentation to you today will be shared with Pinky Paglingayen, a migrant worker, who can tell you about her experience directly.
I appreciate that this review is complex, and understanding this, I have included in my written submissions a copy of the Canadian Council for Refugees' written submissions. I want to endorse this submission, and in my presentation to you today, you will see that I share their concerns.
In my written submissions I offer six recommendations, but given our short time today, I will speak to only my four long-term recommendations. Just for your reference, my short-term recommendations include doing away with tied work permits and offering open work permits and giving migrant workers access to settlement services.
Looking at the visionary goals of how to reform this program, I would first recommend making the program a pathway to permanent residence. Many foreign workers do some of the most difficult work in our society, which allows our communities to function, including picking the fruit we eat, cleaning our toilets, and caring for our children, elderly, and dying. These tasks will always need to be done.
Addressing long-term labour needs via short-term disposable labour creates a two-tiered society with a growing population of workers who have access to fewer rights than others and who are not permitted to integrate and further contribute to Canadian society. As this committee heard two weeks ago, this program already provides an important source of permanent residence for Canadians.
My second recommendation is to eliminate the four-in, four-out rule. Limiting migrant workers in Canada to working for four years and prohibiting these people from working in Canada for four years afterwards reinforces the temporary nature of the program. However, much of the labour demand is not temporary and rips from our society contributing members who have been trained and integrated into communities.
I have one client who gave four years of her life to care for brain-injured and dying Canadians as a personal support worker. She eventually obtained her licence to work as a registered nurse, and she is now facing the prospect of leaving the life she built here in Canada despite the contributions she has made. She is trained, established, and yet disposable.
My third recommendation is to allow family reunification.
Temporary foreign workers are separated from their families for four years or more, and while many Canadians take for granted that we can go home from a day's work to our children, migrant workers suffer from stress, anxiety, and depression as a result of family separation. Preventing spouses and children from joining these workers causes significant hardship, particularly to women who have to negotiate and manage child care arrangements from long distances. They have to watch their children grow up from a distance.
Finally, I want to recommend that work permits be offered to sex workers. I want to highlight that some migrant workers in Canada do not have access to work permits and that this should be reconsidered. In particular the committee should consider how the lack of status can affect trafficked persons and particularly how exotic dancers or sex workers can be driven underground, increasing risks of abuse and exploitation.
Increased police raids and surveillance of strip clubs, massage parlours, and escort agencies have led migrant workers to go further underground or risk deportation. Afraid of deportation, these women are less likely to come forward to police when they are victims of violence and exploitation. While there may be efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking and criminal offences tied to sex work, these actions will not increase the safety of migrant sex workers in their working environment. Recognizing these women as foreign workers would help them obtain the protection they need.
I want to welcome Pinky Paglingayen to share her thoughts. Before I do, I just want to highlight the fact that I wanted to share my time with a migrant worker today and I canvassed many people, including some of my clients, many of whom were too afraid to come forward even with the promise of anonymity. So I want to thank Pinky for being courageous enough to come before this committee today to share her experience.