Evidence of meeting #21 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was seasonal.
A recording is available from Parliament.
2:35 p.m.
Bloc
Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Mr. Chair, I just wanted to let you know that there was no interpretation whatsoever when Mr. Hussan began speaking.
It's working now.
2:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
I'm sorry. I don't hear the translation anymore. I'm set at English.
Let me try.
Basically, yes, these are ongoing problems. This is why I brought to the committee its own decisions, its own recommendations from 2012 and 2016, and those of the Prime Minister.
I'm going beyond the last 10 years, but these are perennial problems, and they're not just happening on farms. They're happening with domestic workers, with international students, with undocumented people and with migrant sex workers. Wherever citizenship is being denied, people are struggling, and people are suffering.
We need to reverse the tide. That means we need to rethink immigration away from two-tier or multi-tier immigration to a single-tier immigration system, to give individuals the power to protect themselves.
This is not about charity. It's about autonomy. People are ready and willing to take care of themselves. The federal government is tipping the scale in favour of exploitation right now.
2:35 p.m.
Bloc
Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
The best way to solve a whole host of problems seems to be through permanent residency. Do I have that right?
Does that apply to all temporary foreign workers who come to Canada to work?
Take the agri-food sector, for example. Do the people working on farms want permanent residency as well?
2:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
We are the only national coalition of self-organized groups of migrants, undocumented people and international students. Over the last three months, we have written seven different letters to various cabinet members. I've done hundreds of interviews and reports. We started with minor policy adjustments: please extend CERB; make sure it gets to people without a SIN; change this health care law, and so on.
While we are talking, people are hungry and are dying. I've spent my time talking to people about how much lemon you need to put in a glass of water to kill your hunger properly because they have no income. I've spent my time talking to people about how they haven't left their house in three months because their children are sick and they're afraid of getting it, and there's no money or support for them.
We have spent our time talking to the families of those who have died. In each of these cases, no solution is quick enough, comprehensive enough and just enough other than permanent resident status for all, and it needs to happen immediately. Agri-food, domestic work, international students and undocumented people—we need a single-step solution or a way out of the crisis. This is an irreversible change that we've created in people's lives. There's no normalization—
2:35 p.m.
Bloc
Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Thank you.
I have one last question, Mr. Chair, if I may.
2:35 p.m.
Bloc
Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
We all know how important foreign workers are, especially in the agri-food sector. We know there have been delays. An agreement was just signed with Mexico because the provinces aren't able to overcome the labour shortage.
From the outset, we criticized the fact that the federal government was giving employers $1,500 for each worker while making them responsible for overseeing the process of getting workers set up on their arrival. I don't think that was adequate.
Mr. Falconer, do you think the federal government should step in to oversee the process and ensure workers are provided with proper conditions on their arrival?
2:35 p.m.
Research Associate, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Absolutely.
I'll go back to my previous point with regard to inspections. The CFIA, which you have acting right now, is on hand every day. With them it is not just the quarantine conditions but also physical distancing. I think that absolutely should be something we consider putting in place immediately on farms and within homes as well, to the extent that we may want to consider the option of housing temporary foreign workers outside of the farm if physical distancing cannot be accomplished in their quarters, even if that might need to be supported by the federal government.
2:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
Thank you, Mr. Falconer.
Thank you, Ms. Chabot.
Next we have Ms. Kwan, please, for six minutes.
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for their presentations.
Mr. Hussan, in the report “Unheeded Warnings”, a number of issues—glaring issues, if I may—were identified, including the lack of permanent resident status upon landing in Canada; fear of health, being related to the fear of lost income; wage theft; border closures and delays, resulting in lost income and workers being coerced to travel to Canada because no income supports were available; social distancing; adequate food and health information during quarantine; housing concerns and limitations on worker mobility; intimidation, surveillance, threats and racism; and intensification of work, including longer work hours and weeks without breaks. These are just some of the issues the report highlighted.
First, could you submit your full report to the clerk so that we have it on record, along with the recommendations from the report?
2:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
Yes, absolutely. I can do that immediately.
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you.
With respect to the recommendations contained in the report, which I want on the public record as well, are those all the recommendations that you're calling for the government to act on immediately?
2:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
Yes. We're calling for the government to implement every recommendation in this report vis-à-vis farm workers, including social distancing, health care access and immigration status for all.
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
You mentioned that you were in touch, or tried to be in touch, with the government, with the ministry, and you have had no response. Can you elaborate on that for our understanding? Who have you tried to reach and how many times? What is the status of that situation?
2:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
This is the first time I'm speaking to elected officials in government since March 15, which is when we started writing our letters. We wrote six letters, plus this report, and made multiple requests for meetings. Not a single.... We are the only organization that represents migrants directly. There are lots of lawyers and academics and experts who speak on behalf of people or who have opinions, but there can be nothing about us without us. Frankly, it's very clear that the government is not able in responding to what is a life-and-death situation.
I mean, these three men who are behind me, who I want you to look at and see and remember, are just one part of the series of injustices that are happening. We could tell you stories for weeks about the intense pain and suffering happening to migrants because they don't have CERB, they don't have health care and they don't have jobs. Lives and livelihoods are at stake.
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
The letters that you submitted to the ministries calling for action, could you also submit them to this committee for its record?
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
You have received no response to your letters from any of the ministers' offices.
2:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
No, and we cc'd the federal cabinet committee on all of them. We have received no response. We have requested meetings and have heard nothing back from any elected official in government.
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Since the issue has surfaced with respect to the deaths of migrant workers, has nobody from government reached out to your organization to talk to you about how it could work together with you to address these concerns?
2:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
No elected officials have. We did speak to people from ESDC right before our report and after. Both times we offered recommendations. We also offered to give them the names of the employers, and we asked for them to put in writing what they would do with the information. I sent them a reminder a week later, and we've heard nothing back. We were told that they would put our conversation in writing. I asked for a written log. Even that has not been produced.
Frankly, no one is paying attention to the fact that one in 23 people in this country are suffering. That's because there's this dehumanization. We keep talking about the food supply and the labour shortage as if.... These are friends, families, people with feelings. There needs to be an understanding of that, rather than the dehumanization that's happening.
I'm sorry. I'm emotional.
2:45 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much.
Prior to this time, your organization and others have called for action from the government...ongoing. Where you've highlighted violations and abuses with examples and the experiences of the temporary foreign workers, what follow-up has been done from the government's side with respect to these complaints?
2:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
I'm just going to give you one much more recent example. We talked about these deaths and released this report, and Minister Marco Mendicino went on air and said, with regard to the agri-food immigration pilot, that they've heard us and that in fact it was the Liberals' idea and that they've already done it. The minister knows that these men could not apply for the program, yet he chooses to lie.
The Prime Minister and ministers keep issuing media statements rather than actually talking to real people. Who has talked to a single migrant or undocumented person in the last three months? Over the last six years with this government, we have held multiple meetings. Immigration and employment officials invited politicians to come meet directly with migrants, who have always said the same thing. They smile, they nod, they go home and they create these partial programs without any talk.
The entire quarantine was designed to keep Canadians protected, not migrants. That's what happened. The $1,500 was given to protect Canadians; therefore, as you can see, that's who was protected, not migrants. Migrants are treated as the risk and the threat rather than as people who are at risk.
There is a central component of racism and dehumanization that's built into the entire temporary immigration system, and it appears at every turn.
2:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
Thank you, Mr. Hussan.
Thank you, Ms. Kwan.
Mr. Hussan, the parliamentarians on the committee are not allowed to use a word that you used in your response. I would ask you to be judicious in your choice of words, please.