Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank Mr. Ferguson for the presentation and the report. I agree with MP Wong that it's an excellent report and that it brings forward important issues. I'll take two minutes off the top to bring us to why we are where we are.
We know that the program functioned fairly well in the early 2000s. In 2007, Diane Finley was the minister, and she pretty much took the shackles off the program. The checks and balances on the program were taken off in 2007. She said they expanded the temporary foreign workers program very significantly and deliberately. We know that between 2007 and 2012, there was a 63% increase in the number of temporary foreign workers in Canada, resulting in almost half a million temporary foreign workers in this country.
We're all aware of the HD Mining situation, where a Chinese company was coming in and one of the requirements to get work at the company was that you had to speak Mandarin. Canadians started asking themselves what was taking place here. In 2012-13, Jason Kenney took over the reins of the department and he pretty much slammed it shut. He went from this end of the spectrum to that end of the spectrum. He pushed back the entire house just to tighten the clothesline, so it really didn't serve Canadian business well, and I question whether it served Canadian workers either.
We understood there was a problem with the program. The NDP understood there was a problem with the program. As a critic at the time, I tabled a motion in the House to have a committee study it. I know Mr. Boulerice voted in favour of that. I voted in favour of it. His colleague Jinny Sims tabled a motion in the House to have the Auditor General engaged in the motion. That was back in April 2013, when we had two motions in committee. John McCallum, my former colleague, wrote a letter to the Auditor General asking him to come in. We supported this knowing that problems existed with the temporary foreign worker program, so we are happy to see you here today and very happy that you undertook the study. As to the findings of the study, we want to thank you for your work.
As a government, we believe the guiding principles of the temporary foreign worker program should be, number one, that Canadians get first crack at jobs in this country. We also believe that Canadian wages cannot be suppressed by a temporary foreign worker program. We believe that the rights and safety of guest workers should be protected by this program, and we also believe that Canadian businesses, if they are going to be competitive globally, still need access to a quality labour force. That's the balancing act. It's a complex balancing act, but it's one that we believe this program has to deliver. Many of the recommendations that you've come forward with, and—I'm giving the committee a shout-out as well—some of the recommendations that came forward from the study undertaken by the committee worked toward this.
Let me get to my question. Wage suppression is central. We can't be keeping wages low as part of a business plan. It's important that temporary foreign workers are a last resort and that we're not having the impact of wage suppression. I want to ask you about the calculation for median wage. How can we improve the current system? Do you think there's room for improvement in the current system, or should there be a different system of calculating wages? Is there enough around that issue?