I will say this. I think it's already been brought up in our committee, and the minister has been asked those questions by the party opposite, so I will give the minister the floor to continue.

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB

Let me bring it back by saying three things: I've never been a lobbyist. I have never wanted to be a lobbyist, and suggestions in the story and around the table that I am are false. Finally, I've never used my position as a minister to help a lobbyist, and any suggestion like that is wrong.

Let's talk about where we are with the labour force, Mr. Long, because you asked about where we are with unemployment. We are at 6.1% as of the last data, which is up from 5.8% in the last period. However, in the five years since 2017 the average was 6.3%, so we are still at historical lows for our unemployment level. I did hear that people were interested in how we calculate our unemployment rate vis-à-vis how the United States does. We calculate our unemployment rate by scoping in 15- to 64-year-olds. We also take into account the people who are going to be employed in the next two weeks, whereas the United States calculates it for 16- to 64-year-olds and doesn't include that two-week calculation period. In fact, if you looked at our unemployment rate using the U.S. model, we would probably be a full point lower, so, there's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison that happens when you cross the border.

What I can say, though, is that the economical fundamentals, as I said in my opening remarks, are strong. When we bring Stellantis, Dow, Volkswagen, Northvolt and all the others here, there will be thousands and thousands of well-paid jobs for Canadians, unionized jobs at prevailing wages or better, and that's very important for our economies and our regions.

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB

Thank you for that.

I want to switch gears to the temporary foreign worker program. You recently announced changes to it in response to what you said was a tightening labour market.

Minister, can you walk us through these changes and explain your motivation in making them?

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB

Absolutely. We went from 20% to 30% for people in the low-wage stream to have access of up to 30% temporary foreign workers on their payroll when we had a million vacancies. Now we're down to about 600,000 vacancies, so that's the tightening of the market that we're talking about. Colleagues in this room would agree that we want to make sure that Canadians take the jobs offered by Canadian firms. What I want to make sure is that the temporary foreign worker program is a last resort. I want youth, indigenous, persons with disabilities, newcomers and now including asylum-seekers to be considered before somebody decides to apply for a labour market impact assessment.

To respond to the tightening labour market, we reduced, in the low-wage stream, the percentage that people can have in their companies from 30% down to 20%...with the exception of construction and health care because those are two priority sectors where there's a high degree of need in those sectors. The agricultural stream is not part of this, and neither is the seasonal agricultural worker program.

Everything that I've just said does not apply to the agriculture stream. In working in close partnership with Minister Miller, we made sure that we scoped in asylum seekers.

What does that mean, colleagues? It means that if you have a newcomer centre or a centre in your area that is responsible for asylum seekers, they can be connected to employers and get those jobs using their skills profile that we now have from IRCC. We have it at ESDC, and those temporary residents should be able to get those jobs before those companies can apply for an LMIA.