Human Resources Committee on Sept. 28th, 2017

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

I would like to turn now to the real situation of temporary foreign workers, that is, how they are treated when they come to work in Canada for a period of time, whether in the fields, in factories, or in some service area.

Their situation is often precarious. We have heard horror stories in this regard in the past. We know that these people have been exploited to some extent and that their living conditions were quite terrible. You said earlier that there were few inspections of their real situation. From a human point of view, I am concerned about their situation.

Are we able to determine whether they are well treated?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Answer very briefly, please.

[Michael Ferguson]

Quickly, what we found was that the department in their inspections didn't talk to the temporary foreign workers to find out what their situation was. They didn't do enough on-site inspections, and in those on-site inspections they didn't do enough interviews with the temporary foreign workers themselves to find out what that situation was.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Robillard, you have six minutes, sir. Go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Hello, Mr. Ferguson.

Thank you for your work as Auditor General of Canada and welcome to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

One of the recommendations in your report is as follows:

Employment and Social Development Canada should work with provinces and territories to develop and finalize information-sharing agreements and use the information obtained to inform its enforcement activities.

Our government has accepted your recommendation. These agreements are pivotal to the overall administration of the temporary foreign worker program and the protection of vulnerable temporary foreign workers.

I would like to hear about your analysis of the sharing of information regarding the protection of vulnerable temporary foreign workers, specifically the information sharing with respect to Quebec, or with other provinces, the federal government or even the workers. I would like to know, more specifically, whether the sharing of information was more difficult in certain cases owing to a language barrier between program officers or even with the workers. I am asking this because the last thing we want is for a problem case to drag on for those reasons.

[Michael Ferguson]

Thank you for the question.

Paragraph 5.74 states that:

We found that the Department had an up-to-date agreement with only one province [...]

In other words, only one province had an agreement at that time.

On the other hand, in the department's action plan—I have it only in English in front of me—in response to our recommendation in paragraph 5.76, they say that they agree with the recommendation, which was about putting the agreements in place, and they say:

Agreements with provincial and territorial partners are pivotal to the overall administration of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and the protection of vulnerable temporary foreign workers. ...the Department will continue to engage these partners in information-sharing discussions with the intent to finalize information-sharing agreements as soon as possible.

Their expected completion date for that is December 2017. I guess what they actually say is that they're going to have ongoing engagement with provinces and territories, and besides that they call it an expected completion date of December 2017. Those two things are a little hard to put together, but nevertheless the important part of this is that the department agrees they need to have these agreements, and they agree it is pivotal to have them. Now the reason they were not in place was not something that we looked at. We just simply noted that they only had one in place at the time we had done the audit.

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

You may recall that the changes the previous Conservative government made to the program in 2014 established an across-the-board approach. Looking at the country as a whole with its great diversity, there is good reason to doubt that such an approach was suited to the various industry sectors and their varied needs in the provinces, which each have their own realities.

What does your audit show about the impact of the program's former approach, specifically on employers and workers at that time?

[Michael Ferguson]

The audit sought to determine how the department implemented the program and its procedures. We identified weaknesses in various aspects of the program.

The important point for us was that the department had established certain policies and practices that were needed for the smooth operation of the program, but we identified weaknesses. The problem was simply that the department did not meet all the program requirements.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You have 30 seconds.

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

I'll leave it, then. We can come back later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Yes.

MP Long, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our presenter Mr. Ferguson.

I want to touch on my home and where I'm from. I'm from New Brunswick, southern New Brunswick, and Saint John—Rothesay is my riding. Just south of me, in New Brunswick southwest, is aquaculture industry and certainly lots of fishing industry.

Obviously, the temporary foreign worker program is complex. We know that. There have certainly been lots of changes to it over the last several years.

With respect to your audit in particular, I'd like you to talk about decisions that have been made over the last 10 years that have impacted the delivery of the program and different things that you would look back on in your audit and maybe say, “If you had done this, or you should have done this....” Can you give us a few minutes on that?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, in this role, we don't question government policy. It's up to the government to establish policy. Whatever that policy is, we go in and we audit to see how that policy was implemented.

The one thing that we do say in the report is that, after the reforms that came in in 2014, it does appear that those reforms helped to reduce the number of temporary foreign workers. That seemed to have been its objective, and it appears to have helped do that.

Our concern was that there were certain requirements established as part of that to implement that policy, and the department did not follow all of those procedures, even though they were their own procedures for how they needed to implement the program, for example, again, making sure that there really was a workforce shortage in certain positions. There were indications that they didn't do enough work to verify that before they approved the hiring of the temporary foreign workers.

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

I'll jump in, if you don't mind. I know you mentioned that 65% of employers didn't make enough effort.

[Michael Ferguson]

That was related to, I guess, trying to find Canadians from under-represented groups, primarily first nations and that type of thing. I think it was 65% of a sample that we had taken. There was no indication that the employer had, in fact, tried to go to those under-represented groups to see if they could hire from them. Again, even in the case of some fish plants that were located close to some first nations, there was no indication that the employers had tried to recruit on those first nations.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to switch over a bit to the four-in, four-out part of the temporary foreign worker program. We dropped that. Obviously, that was welcomed by many sectors, including agriculture employees, farm groups. The four-in and four-out, in my opinion, was an unnecessary burden on applicants and employers.

Can you comment on the four-in, four-out program, tell me what you found on that, and give me a few comments, please?

[Michael Ferguson]

It's actually not something that we addressed in the audit. I'm not quite familiar with that terminology.

Are you?

[Glenn Wheeler, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

If I could, Mr. Chair, to the extent we looked at reforms, we looked at the three of the key reforms: for low-wage workers, allowing them to stay only one year as opposed to two, which we speak to in paragraph 5.22; putting a cap on low-wage temporary foreign workers in individual companies; and then the move to not process applications in areas where the unemployment rate was lower than 6%.

Altogether, those factors had an impact in reducing the number of temporary foreign workers but, as we say in the report itself, it was not possible for us to determine to what extent any of the individual reform measures impacted on the reduction. We did not look at the four-in, four-out because that was something that was a little longer term in nature when it came to the reforms.

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

Okay.

When we were in opposition, obviously we had major concerns. I think your audit confirms a lot of those concerns. We've put forward recommendations. As a government, I think we've done nothing but try to improve the program of temporary foreign workers.

I would say, with respect, that the Conservative government did very few on-site inspections. We just talked about that.

I know Minister Hajdu announced that we're going to be moving towards more strategic compliance by increasing the number of on-site inspections to determine whether employers are in compliance with the program requirements, and by prioritizing efforts and sectors that rely on the most vulnerable workers, such as primary, agriculture, and caregivers.

Can you explain whether you think—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Mr. Long, I'm sorry. You're way over time already. I'm going to have to come back to you.

Monsieur Blaney, you're up.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I was very interested in the overview of the past 10 years that was presented. I think, however, that we have to look back to the economic crisis, which was not mentioned, and to the steps we took to create thousands of jobs in Canada.

In 2014, after we had recovered from the crisis, our first priority was to preserve Canadians' jobs.

I am glad you are here, Mr. Ferguson. You are the watchdog for taxpayers, and I say that with respect. This afternoon, you are saying that the measures the Conservative government instituted in 2014 were effective, that we reduced the number of foreign workers, and that the work continues. That is good news to be sure. In other words, we were successful in terms of the economy, and remarkably so. I say this without wanting to offend my colleagues opposite. We did this without increasing taxes on the middle class, without hitting corporate taxes, and while bringing down the deficit. That is not the purpose of the presentation today, however.

What I am really interested in this afternoon is continuity. This committee produced an excellent report including recommendations that were taken into consideration by the government. They are interesting measures. It will also be interesting to see whether they will be effective and whether the action plan will work.

You are raising problems today that you mentioned in 2014. Mr. Boulerice also mentioned them. First, were efforts made to give recruitment priority to Canadians before resorting to foreign workers? Next, do we have performance indicators showing the effects of the program on the labour market and on wages? You said that it had not been demonstrated that the program was used as a last resort.

I will reiterate the question from my colleague, Ms. Wong: what are the recommendations going forward? As to the Liberal action plan, you already said that they have missed some deadlines. What do you consider the most important elements that our committee should focus on to help the government ensure the program is effective?

[Michael Ferguson]

First of all, I want to be clear, having referred to the dates in the action plan, that the department staff have prepared an action plan for each of our recommendations. They said what they would do for each of our recommendations and assigned a date by which each would be done. Some of the dates have gone by, but I don't know whether they have done them because we haven't gone in to audit them. I don't want to leave the impression that I'm saying the department has not done those things. It has an action plan and has put in some dates, some of which are in the past and some of which are coming up. My point was that it would perhaps be something that this committee could consider exploring with the department—for example, what it has done, whether it is still on track, and whether it has met those deadlines.

Again, our role is to make the recommendations. We find the issues in the course of an audit and make the recommendations, and then the department will provide an action plan against that. The first thing we do is to get the departments to actually agree that they need to do something and need to put the recommendations in place. That's a good step. Some of our recommendations certainly are very consistent with what the committee has said.

However, we don't really know what effect those are going to have until we do another follow-up audit. We're not going to try to say how effective all those are going to be. What we know is that the department staff have laid out a plan. I think our audit can be used to sort of assess whether they are staying on track with that plan, and so they should be able to indicate whether there are actual improvements being made because of the steps they are taking. Their action plan would really be the focal point for understanding what they are doing, what they have to do, and whether it is being successful.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Following the report of this committee, many recommendations were endorsed by the government and led to this action plan. What you're saying now is that we need to see the result. There's a road map. It has been there for two years now. Are they following this action plan?

What are the most critical elements of this action plan, in your view, so that we ensure the temporary foreign worker program is efficient, working, and delivering for Canadians?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, we don't make a lot of recommendations in the course of an audit. We try to keep our recommendations few but important. The action plan they have prepared is what they're going to do for each of the things we have recommended. In our opinion, we try to only make recommendations we feel are important in the first place. Therefore, I would suggest that I can't really say what may be the most important in their action plan.

We feel the recommendations we made have been thought through clearly to ensure they were important in the first place. Therefore, the actions the department has to take to deal with those recommendations are equally important.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you.