Thank you, and thank you to all our witnesses for being here today for this important study.
Based on the testimony we have heard over the last few weeks, it is clear that what we are talking about here is the concept of immigration to our country. As the daughter of immigrants—both my parents immigrated to Canada—I know, through my family, what it means to come here for a better future for their children. Unfortunately, that is not something afforded to temporary foreign workers, certainly not those who will never have access to permanent residency. It has been made known to us that since 2006, Canada has accepted more temporary foreign workers than immigrants, and that is a problem.
I am heartened to hear—and we have heard it over the last few weeks—a constant reference to access to citizenship. I think we have to be clear as to how that is central to the solution, but there is a lot more here that we need to be dealing with.
I want to direct my questions to UFCW, and particularly to a number of points you alluded to.
First, I want to acknowledge—and it was touched on by HyLife as well—that in Manitoba workers do have access to PNP, the provincial nominee program. I would acknowledge that this has everything to do with the kind of leadership we saw at the provincial government level from the NDP government and that it is not available in other provinces to the extent that it is in our province. I think that needs to be acknowledged. There must be political will so that workers can have access to citizenship. Just talking about it in theory is not going to cut it.
I want to bring it back to how the lack of access to status is connected to the potential abuse that workers might face. We just heard from the cousin of Sheldon McKenzie, a man from Jamaica who was picking vegetables in Leamington who was hurt on the job and eventually died from his head injuries. He was at threat of being deported on a regular basis. It was his cousin, who is a Canadian citizen, who was able to stop him from being deported. She talked about the ability to stay here and what it means to have access to citizenship. Could you talk to us a bit about what is at risk when people don't have access to citizenship?