Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 19th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We'll call our meeting to order as we continue our study of refugee issues, the top priority for the committee this fall.

I'm pleased to welcome representatives from KAIROS to speak to us about Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives. I think you were here in April of last year as well, so you're pretty familiar with the drill. You have an opening statement, and then we as a committee will engage in discussions on the topics that you bring up or that are of interest to our committee members.

We will start with Ms. Jennifer Devries.

[Jennifer Devries, Program Coordinator, Refugees and Migration, Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives (KAIROS)]

On behalf of the migrant justice steering committee, I would like to thank the standing committee for this opportunity to express our concerns regarding temporary and undocumented workers. These concerns are grounded in the day-to-day experience of working with migrant workers across the country. Specifically, we raise issues concerning seasonal agricultural workers, live-in caregivers, and undocumented workers.

The goals of my presentation will be to introduce KAIROS--the Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives--and the migrant justice steering committee, and to set the context.

KAIROS, a social organization of 11 Canadian churches and church agencies, works for human rights and economic justice in Canada and around the globe. The KAIROS refugee and migration program promotes the human rights of both refugees and migrants in the context of the human rights of all uprooted people. In our migrant justice, KAIROS focuses its education and advocacy work on three particularly vulnerable groups of migrants: live-in caregivers, seasonal agricultural workers, and non-status persons. The program seeks to expose a hidden workforce whose role is invaluable to Canada, but who are rendered invisible and excluded from the basic justice provided for Canadian citizens.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

May I interrupt you for a moment? I think the interpreters feel you might be going a bit too quickly, so slow it down; we have plenty of time. We're going to be here until 11 o'clock anyway, so a little more slowly would help the interpreters a lot. Thank you.

[Jennifer Devries]

Certainly.

For many migrants, and especially those you will be hearing about today, migration is not a choice but rather a necessity, a survival mechanism. They have been obliged to move by forces beyond their control, such as conflict and human rights abuses, environmental disasters, free trade policies that flood markets with cheap produce so that local farmers cannot make a living, a dam that has forced them from their land, etc.

Our government's attitude toward migrants appear contradictory. At the same time that national borders are being eliminated to allow for the free flow of goods, services, and capital, these same borders are being increasingly tightened to restrict the movement of people; that is, restricting their legal entrance into Canada as permanent residents. Instead, Canada, like so many other countries, is quietly expanding its guest worker programs.

Despite the significant role these workers play in our economy, their contribution goes largely unrecognized. Instead, migrants are vulnerable to a variety of forms of exploitation because of their lack of official status and dire economic need. This increasing exploitation is now being heard by church communities, advocates, labour organizations, and other members of civil society. With this growing attention, civil society groups are starting to unite to make their voices heard.

As a result of this growing concern, KAIROS played a lead role in pulling together the migrant justice steering committee, members of whom stand before you today, which planned and carried out the national migrant justice gathering at York University in June 2006. This gathering brought together over 100 migrants and migrant justice advocates from academia, faith groups, the labour movement, and the wider justice-seeking community to lay the foundations of a national migrant justice network in Canada.

In this two-day event, participants worked to build alliances across sectors and develop a united voice on shared concerns. Key to the conference was the participation of persons directly affected by these issues--that is, migrant and undocumented workers. We regret that we were not able to include their voices here today.

The two-day program enabled live-in caregivers, seasonal agricultural workers, and non-status immigrants to voice their concerns and enabled migrant organizations, faith groups, unions, community activists, and university researchers to share their advocacy experiences.

One of the immediate results of the gathering was a statement of unity expressing the collective concerns of participants in the gathering. The committee has been provided with both a copy of the statement and a report on the gathering. We invite the committee to review the statement in more detail later.

Before I continue, I would like to highlight a few key points from the statement of unity.

It is time that Canada take responsibility for the role it plays both as a receiving country and a perpetrator of underdevelopment around the world and the various forms of exploitation and rights abuses to which migrant workers and non-status people are extremely vulnerable. We demand that Canada ensure the full and effective protection of migrant worker rights in accordance with the international convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families.

We call on our governments to account for unjust policies that lead to displacement and contribute to the root causes of migration. We call for fair immigration policies that recognize the multiple causes of forced migration and reflect an understanding and appreciation of real societal and labour needs in Canada.

All migrants, regardless of their legal status, deserve just wages, fair treatment from their employers, and full and equitable entitlement and access to the health, social, educational, and legal services and supports that are available to all Canadians.

As well as the statement of unity located in the gathering's report, the committee has also been provided with other information, including but not limited to a KAIROS resource entitled “God's People: A People on the Move”, a resource kit that was designed especially for churches in solidarity with uprooted peoples, and a migrant justice steering committee submission to the human rights committee study on employability. We will forward the committee a translated version in the upcoming months.

Last but not least, I would like to draw the committee's attention to a copy of “Borderless”, a new video from KAIROS about migrants living and working without status in Canada. The video, which comes with a study guide, brings to life problems of labour exploitation and family separation caused by restrictive immigration policies. We hope the committee will find the provided information both informative and useful.

We are pleased to learn that temporary worker programs are high on the committee's priority list. It is imperative that Canada make its immigration process more humane.

While the individuals standing before you today will address issues and policy recommendations specific to their sectors of experience, we hope to show that abuse and exploitation of temporary and undocumented workers is not sector-specific. Rather, this is a larger systemic problem that must be addressed.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Jennifer.

Now we go to Avvy.

[Avvy Go, Executive Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives (KAIROS)]

Thanks.

My name is Avvy Go, and I am the current director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. We're a member of the STATUS Campaign, which is also part of the migrant justice workers conference.

The campaign itself is made up of individuals and community organizations concerned about the plight of non-status immigrants in Canada. For the past several years, we have been working with other concerned grassroots organizations to push for the regularization of non-status immigrants living in Canada.

There are an estimated 20,000 to 200,000 individuals living without status in Canada. They are our neighbours, co-workers, and classmates, the people who build our houses, clean our clothes, cook our food, and look after our children, but as persons without status, they are not entitled to receive any benefits that ordinary Canadians take for granted. Often children of non-status parents are denied the right to education, sometimes even the right to health care. As taxpayers, non-status individuals contribute to the funding of public services that they themselves do not enjoy.

People find themselves without status in Canada for a variety of reasons. Most of them relate to their status as oppressed people on the basis of their race, gender, social status, economic status, and so on. Among them are refugees who should have been granted protection but who have been refused status due to flaws in our determination system. They are survivors of trafficking. They are women who are under family sponsorship and who have left their spouses due to domestic violence. They are people who have worked for some time on temporary worker programs and are not granted permanent resident status.

Contrary to public perception, the vast majority of non-status immigrants are law-abiding individuals and do not pose any threat to our national security. Yet they are the easy targets for the media or for public backlash, since they do not have a voice in our political system.

The only avenue open right now to a person without status is to apply for permanent resident status under humanitarian and compassionate grounds, the H and C application. However, with such a low success rate, the H and C option is not a real one for the thousands of non-status immigrants in Canada who have established their homes in this country.

The end result of these and other systemic problems is the creation of the underclass of non-status immigrants in Canada. We believe these individuals exist because of the unfairness, inequities, and restrictiveness found within our refugee and immigration system. Therefore, we believe we have a collective responsibility to address the issues facing non-status immigrants. We also think this is the right time for the government to establish an inclusive regularization program that will grant non-status immigrants the permanent resident status they deserve to receive.

I want to note that throughout our history, the Canadian government has from time to time implemented policies to deal with people who are living here without status because of the recognition that our system has failed them. STATUS, along with the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, among other groups, has proposed a comprehensive plan for regularization. I would just highlight some of the elements of that proposal.

One element is something that this committee actually has unanimously adopted, and that is to immediately implement the refugee appeals division. Then there are other ideas--for instance, creating a regulatory class permitting survivors of trafficking to apply for permanent resident status; providing an opportunity for seasonal agricultural workers and other temporary workers to apply for permanent residency; and establishing a more relaxed humanitarian and compassionate application process. Above all, we suggest that the government should bring in an adjustment of status program, similar to the one the government introduced back in 1970, whereby anyone who was already in Canada by a certain date, for an amount of time, may apply for status.

I'm sure you will have questions about our proposals, but I just want to say in closing that the time to act is really now. The issue is very pressing. You will hear from Cecilia and Stan about some of the conditions that these workers and other individuals are living in. It's really our obligation to deal with their issues immediately.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Cecilia.

[Cecilia Diocson, Executive Director, National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada, Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives (KAIROS)]

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Cecilia Diocson. I'm the executive director of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada. This alliance was formed in 2002 and we have 15 organizations across the country. Our work in the community is organizing education and advocacy to raise the voices, experiences, and struggles of Filipino women in Canada and to address the continuing economic, social, and political marginalization and inequality.

The NAPWC seeks to empower Filipino women in the community to understand the roots of the barriers they face as migrants, immigrants, women of colour, and marginalized workers, and to collectively assert their struggle for human rights, genuine equality, peace, and development.

As a community of migrant and immigrant women, a key part of our work concerns immigration policies. Aside from community-based research into the impact of Canada's immigration policies on Filipino women and the community, we also conduct education in the Filipino community towards empowerment and engagement in the public policy process. As well, we conduct advocacy and lobbying work for specific policy changes in the immigration field that aim to improve the collective situation of Filipino women and the community in Canada.

In the past we have presented our analysis and position through briefs to this committee, through the legislative review advisory group and elected government officials, and through our community-based and academic conferences and public fora. Through the efforts of KAIROS and its network, NAPWC is making its second presentation before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Since the late 1960s there has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of Filipinos in Canada. It is estimated that Filipinos in Canada now number over 400,000. The community has grown more than 31% since the 1996 census. Overall, Filipinos are now the fourth-largest visible minority population in Canada. The census statistics also showed that the Philippines is the third source country of immigrants arriving in Canada in the last ten years.

The studies show that the majority, approximately 65%, of the Filipino community in Canada is made up of women. Close to one-third of the Filipino community in Canada is made up of live-in caregivers who entered Canada under the immigration program called the live-in caregiver program, and its predecessor program, called the foreign domestic workers movement. In 2005, and according to statistics from the Canadian embassy in Manila, Filipino women made up 95.6% of live-in caregivers in Canada, even though they constitute only 2.2 % of all Filipino domestic workers working outside the Philippines.

This large disproportionality of Filipino women in the LCP shows how Canada benefits much from the labour export program of the Philippines and how effective Canada's live-in caregiver program is in providing cheap child care, care for the elderly and for people with disabilities, and other domestic work.

I provided you with the brief. I don't want to bring forward the history of the live-in caregiver program, as I'm sure all of you are quite familiar with this, but I'd like to actually give you some of the fundamental pillars of this program.

This program was institutionalized in 1992 after the FDM, and there are three pillars in this program. One is a mandatory live-in requirement that makes it illegal for a live-in caregiver to live outside the home of his or her employer during the course of the contract. Second is temporary immigration status for 24 months within a three-year period and making them vulnerable to immediate deportation on non-completion within this period. Third is the employer-specific work permit that ties them down to a single employer at any time, making them vulnerable to abuse and arbitrary demands by their employer.

There are several impacts of this program that we have actually experienced in our community after over 20 years of the program and also after doing some work in the community, and we categorized these as economic, political, social, and cultural.

Some of the economic impacts are:

1. De-skilling. Women lose their skills and their professional knowledge over time as they continue working as domestic workers.

2. Non-accreditation and recognition of education and training, despite the relatively high level of education and having practised their profession in the Philippines and other countries.

3. Downward economic mobility as they find difficulty in moving up to other good-paying jobs outside the LCP.

4. Being tied down to a single employer at minimum wage virtually legislates these women into poverty.

5. Even after they are done with the program, many of these women are continuously stuck in low-paying dead-end jobs, having been de-skilled and their past education and training not recognized.

6. Because of lack of economic opportunity and poverty, some of these women have become victims of prostitution and sex-trafficking.

Academics who had been doing research on Filipino domestic workers and the Filipino community have come out with the following results on the economic impacts of the LCP:

Professor Gerry Pratt, University of British Columbia, 2003: “These women suffer from long-term downward occupational mobility as they continue to do domestic work as housekeepers and home care workers.”

Professor Dan Hiebert, University of British Columbia, 1997: “Filipino women are more likely than others to be housekeepers and childcare workers.”

Filipino women have a higher degree of occupational segmentation than any other group of women. Filipino women make 52% of median income of women in Vancouver.

In terms of political impact the LCP undermines the general women's struggle for equality, democracy, and human rights. Because of their precarious and uncertain status as temporary workers, they cannot participate in the political affairs of society, thus further disempowering them and increasing social inequality. The program creates a pool of people--mostly women--whose rights could be easily violated both in the workplace and society at large, simply because of their temporary status despite relatively long years of stay in Canada. They are outside the Canadian citizenship circle with all attendant rights and privileges, even as they directly contribute to the Canadian economy.

There is delay or denial of immigrant or resident status, which could lead to deportation due to bureaucratic hurdles and neglect in the timely processing of their status. Because they cannot vote, advocacy on their behalf is hardly recognized or given enough attention in political debates. LCP hardly comes in on discussions on universal day care and health care when it is obvious that the LCP and the women under it are directly being used to address these two issues. These women lack the necessary legal aid and support when they encounter problems because of their temporary status as non-immigrants.

The social impacts of the LCP on these women are as follows:

1. Their non-immigrant status deepens their experience of systemic racism and discrimination because they are not considered part or a member of the imagined Canadian community and they are made to feel that way.

2. Their status under the LCP makes many of them uncomplaining in the face of violence against their person because they fear that to complain would negatively impact their future to open residency and eventual citizenship.

3. They continue to suffer long separation because they cannot bring in their families under the program. Our study shows that separation, on average, lasts between five and ten years, thus making these women virtual strangers from their families once they reunite, either in the Philippines or in Canada.

4. Many suffer immediate deportation even for minor non-compliances, such as failure to make the 24-month live-in within three years or living outside the home even with permission of the employer.

5. Their economic and social marginalization continues to undermine their successful integration and settlement in a multicultural society even after they have finished with the program.

The cultural impacts:

Even as they become residents and citizens, these women continue to be victims of systemic racism and discrimination. There is no recognition of their skills and educational training. Their marginalized position leads to growing social alienation, thus impeding smooth transition towards settlement and integration.

Individual and collective disempowerment abounds among these women as they continue to feel the impact of the program. The long separation, their economic difficulty, and marginalization cause alienation between children and parents and between individuals, families, and the larger society.

The program reduces if not denies active participation in civic and community affairs, which would make for ideal or good citizenship. If they do make social contributions, the women feel that these are tokenized, if not reduced to songs, dances, and food, in the name of multiculturalism. Hence, there is hardly any closure to that citizenship divide inherent in the program.

These are some of the conclusions and recommendations that we have for you:

Given the above impacts of the live-in caregiver program among these women in our community, NAPWC and its member organizations reiterate the call for the scrapping of the LCP and its fundamental pillars. We have made extensive lobbying efforts at local, national, and international levels by pointing out that the program is fatally flawed, as it violates the human rights of Filipino live-in caregivers, thereby creating the context for systemic abuse and vulnerability of these women, and further stalls their development, and increases inequality, including economic segregation.

We urge this committee to seriously look at these impacts and find ways to mitigate them by developing more progressive and positive public policies whereby these women and the community are consulted for their benefit and for the general well-being of Canada. In this regard, CIC should support community-based organizations that deliver services and community-empowering programs to these women, their families, and the community.

We promote full access to settlement and integration services such as housing and health for live-in caregivers. For instance, women under the LCP who have already applied for family reunification are not allowed to access affordable social housing prior to the arrival of their families. This practice discriminates against these women, who at this stage of their integration and settlement in Canada should already have the same rights and opportunities as any other immigrant.

We ask the standing committee to look positively at our recommendations. We reiterate that these are based on our community research and on the findings of scholars and other advocates. We hope that they are positively acted upon to ease the burden of these women and their families and to pave the way for faster and easier family reunification, integration, and settlement in Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Cecilia.

Stan, do you have any helpful comments?

[Stan Raper, National Coordinator for the Agricultural Workers Program of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives (KAIROS)]

My name is Stan Raper. I'm the national coordinator for the agricultural workers program of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

We have been active in lobbying and trying to organize and assist agricultural workers nationally across Canada and primarily in the two provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which have the majority of the population of seasonal agricultural workers, under the seasonal agricultural workers program administered by HRSDC.

I have a couple of comments that I want to make.

We have been actively trying to organize agricultural workers across Canada for a number of years. Before I was employed with the UFCWU, I was the Canadian coordinator for the United Farm Workers of America and was trained by Richard Chavez and Dolores Huerta, co-founders of the United Farm Workers of America.

I don't know if any of you were involved in the grape boycotts and the struggle to organize agricultural workers in California and other parts of the United States, but we watched with great interest the amnesty movement in the United States.

People always come up to me to ask where Canada's amnesty program for invisible migrant workers is and why we aren't out on the streets. I think the answer falls under the mandate of this committee.

I say that because most of the agricultural workers in Ontario, for example, don't have the right to unionize. Farmers are in mandatory association affiliations. As to the balance for farmers and the balance for workers, there is no organization for agricultural workers in Ontario or across Canada for the most part.

What happened was this. We had a piece of legislation, we organized workers, and that bill was revoked by the Harris government in Ontario. Farmers were ordered into mandatory affiliations to three organizations in the province: the Ontario Federation of Agriculture; the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario; or the Canadian Farmworkers Union. It was mandatory, and they could opt out only by written submission to the minister.

Agricultural workers have no real right to collectively bargain in the province of Ontario. You see an invisible group of workers, in the hundreds of thousands, that basically has no organization to represent them or to speak on their behalf.

It gets worse, because on top of that, we also have seasonal agricultural workers from Jamaica, St. Kitts, Trinidad and Tobago, and Mexico. These workers have been coming into the country and come for eight months of the year. For the most part, 80% are in Ontario.

These workers have been coming for over 40 years, and have no right or no opportunity to apply for immigration status at all. They have temporary work permits. They come here to work anywhere between January 1 and December 15. They have to go home for 15 days, and then they can come back. There are between 15,000 and 16,000 agricultural workers under the SAW program in Ontario alone.

These workers are separated from their families for eight months of the year and work in fairly isolated situations in rural Ontario, rural Quebec, or rural B.C. They have language barrier problems, limited understanding of their rights, and very little orientation. Consulate officials, who are supposed to represent them, are basically maintaining their contract with the employer, the farmer. And they live on the farms, so if they have problems, they go to their employer. If they have a good employer, they're lucky; if they have a bad employer, they're in big trouble.

On top of that, we now have a new program, the foreign workers program, which is supplying workers to the agricultural sector as well.

I just want to give you one example before I start. The mushroom industry in Ontario has been trying for a long time to be covered under the seasonal agricultural workers program, but with no success. The federal government, to their credit, recognizes that the mushroom industry is the high end of the agricultural sector and has not allowed the mushroom industry to get seasonal agricultural workers. Most of the workers in the mushroom industry are new Canadians or Canadians who have come within the last 15 to 20 years—Cambodian, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Chinese, a lot of whom have language problems still—and who find themselves harvesting mushrooms at a piece rate in order to survive.

What is happening now is that the industry in Ontario is about 50% foreign workers under the low-skilled workers program. What employers are doing is forcing new Canadians out of their jobs—fairly decent-paying jobs that they could survive on—in order to get foreign workers under the low-skilled workers program at $9.10 an hour.

We wrote to the Minister of HRSDC, to the Minister of Agriculture in Ontario, to the Minister of Labour in Ontario, with no response—no response whatsoever, no investigation into how these migrant workers, who live in Canada, in Ontario, are being displaced by foreign workers coming in from Thailand and Jamaica.

I just heard last night that more workers are coming into the Belleville area. More workers are being displaced who live in Belleville, and there's still no response from either government. I'm ashamed, because some of these workers have been in the industry for 16 years.

We'll have testimonies of individuals coming forward in the next couple of weeks. Sixteen years: he came from Cambodia, got a job in the mushroom industry and has been in that industry ever since, and was displaced and replaced by a worker from Thailand who just came in and is working for $9.10 an hour. That goes against everything the immigration program under ARPA is about, and against why these programs were put in place.

I understand work shortages. I don't understand displacement of Ontario-resident agricultural workers in order to appease a cheap labour force from another country in order to exploit them, and that is what's happening.

I want to address, on page 16, repatriation under the seasonal agricultural workers program. When migrant workers raise issues or concerns to their employers they're at very real risk of being sent home under the SAWP repatriation provisions. They are removed from the country within a day or two and may not be allowed to participate in the program in future years.

This ability to repatriate workers, allowing them no opportunity to appeal, is a fundamental inequality of the SAWP that must be remedied. Until there is a fair and equitable process of appeal, the provisions of the SAWP contracts are meaningless for the workers. There is little supervision or enforcement of the contractual obligations, and a worker risks repatriation if he tries to ensure that the contract is honoured.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Do you think another minute or two might be long enough? We're 45 minutes into the meeting so far. You can address some of the other points in the questioning.

[Stan Raper]

I'll fast-track my other points.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay.

[Stan Raper]

The repatriation is definitely a concern to us. What we call the just-in-time workforce is the what HRSDC calls hiring of foreign workers in occupations that usually require a high school diploma or job-specific training. I address some of the concerns that we have in regard to this new program, which is supposed to be under review. We've asked the minister for an opportunity to address some of our concerns around the low-skilled workers program, and there is a movement within the labour movement calling for some changes or a better process to deal with complaints around this low-skilled workers program.

I want to move to our recommendations. First, I would like to say that the United Nations declaration for migrant workers and their families has not been signed by Canada. It was a unanimous decision at our migrant worker conference that Canada sign this accord, and that we respect migrant workers and their families and the rights that they should have when they're in Canada.

The second point I want to make is that when we talk to the federal government they say that labour standards fall under provincial jurisdiction, and the feds can't tell the provinces what to do. And I say something I won't say right now.

We suggested to the Minister of HRDC, Jane Stewart, when she was around umpteen years ago--and since then we have not been able to meet with the Minister of HRSDC--that one of the ways we could implement national standards for these programs, whether it's the seasonal agricultural worker program or the foreign worker program, is to put some restraints on the foreign worker program. So if a province like Ontario does not provide the freedom to associate and bargain collectively, if there are not appropriate employment standards provisions, if there are not appropriate health and safety provisions provincially under that jurisdiction, then they cannot get these workers. It's that simple, and that's the way it should be.

The federal government is in charge of temporary work visas and the immigration process. It's very simple for them to put in a couple of clauses in that program and dictate to the provinces that if they don't have these basic provisions for human rights, which have been declared in international conventions, ILO conventions, United Nations declarations, these workers will not be sent to those provinces. You watch how fast the provinces would implement legislation to protect these workers. It would be amazing, and not difficult to do.

I'll leave it at that. But I want to make one final point. We ask a lot of questions about the general provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, IRPA, and regulations require HRSDC to provide a full labour market opinion on the effects of bringing in temporary workers by considering the following factors: One, is the work likely to result in the direct creation or job retention of Canadian citizens or permanent residents? I seriously question that around the foreign worker program. Another question: Is the work likely to result in the creation of transfer of skills and knowledge for the benefit of Canadian citizens and permanent residents? Question: Is the work likely to fill a work shortage? Maybe. Then, will the wages and working conditions offered be sufficient to attract Canadian citizens or permanent residents to and retain them in that work? Has the employer made or agreed to make reasonable efforts to hire or train Canadian citizens or permanent residents? Will the employment of the foreign nationals be likely to adversely affect the settlement of any labour dispute in progress or the employment of any person involved in that dispute?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

These are questions that we might want to ask in the committee.

[Stan Raper]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I have to give the committee members some time to engage in discussion here. Thank you for the presentation; it was very interesting.

I'll go to Andrew, and maybe you can identify the individual you are directing your question to. Of course we generally go with seven-minute rounds, but maybe you can keep it a little bit below that so that we can ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to ask questions.

Go ahead, Andrew.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I certainly welcome all the presenters. Some of the concerns you expressed are concerns this committee has also expressed over time, such as in our recommendation to implement the refugee appeal division. The committee's on record as stating that we want to see it implemented. We really believe that it would not only make the system more fair, but it would also speed up the process, because it's a pretty poor process at the present time.

On the question of undocumented workers, as you probably are aware, we have 200,000 to 500,000 in the country. We don't know the precise number. But one thing we do know is that the sheer number of undocumented workers is an indictment of the policies that are being followed, because the question has to arise as to why people who are employed without any employment assistance from anybody, without any settlement, are finding places. Why can those places not be filled through regular immigration? Obviously, the problem goes back to having adjustment in the point system.

In its last meeting before the summer break, this committee made the recommendation to the minister that there be a moratorium put on undocumented workers, and that the resources being expended on going after undocumented workers be focused on the criminal element that should be gotten out of the country. The whole issue on undocumented workers was a priority for Mr. Volpe and for Minister Judy Sgro, but unfortunately it's not a priority for this government.

You will find a response to that recommendation dated October 5. Maybe, Mr. Clerk, you can provide the delegations with it--through you, Mr. Chair. I read through the reasoning, and it's the same bureaucratic claptrap that I've seen coming out of the bureaucracy since I joined this committee in 1998.

One of the things you have identified, and I think it should be a cause of concern for the committee and for Parliament, is the extent to which we, as a nation, start relying on temporary workers. We bring them in for a year, with the exception of two weeks when we ship them out. We're courting problems as a society. If we're finding that somebody's been coming here for 40 years and leaving for two weeks, to me it's not a heck of a lot different from the Chinese not being able to bring their families. We had that happen in our history and we have since regretted it. We're setting ourselves up for a real problem by making divisions in society the way they did in France, where there was the refusal to integrate folks. That was found in Germany as well. We're creating different classes of citizens.

I think at some point after an individual comes here for a certain number of years, they ought to be able to access the immigration system; otherwise, it's pure exploitation.

Could you expand on what happens to one of those workers when they come over here and they get sick, notwithstanding that they've been doing this same job for the last 20 years? What happens to them?

[Stan Raper]

That's a great question, and the answer is it varies, depending on the employer. We have known workers who continued to work while they were sick because they're impoverished people and they need the money and they will not even report to an employer that they're sick. We have employers who have refused hospitalization for sick workers. We have consulate officials who have repatriated sick individuals and replaced them with healthier ones.

We have got to the point--and in fact this was a well-documented case in Simcoe this year in the newspaper--where an individual was diagnosed with cancer. The farmer graciously took him to the clinics, etc. When the worker was in the hospital, the consulate officials went into the hospital and forced him to sign a waiver that he be expedited back to his home country before he received medical attention. We took him to a specialist with the assistance of Father Frank Murphy from the Catholic church in our centre in Simcoe. He was diagnosed with a severe internal problem, received surgery, refused the consulate's order to return to his home country, and is currently still going through therapy in London, Ontario, right now. So it varies.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Essentially we could have somebody who gets cancer after being exposed to certain chemicals for a long period of time--gets an industrial disease--and instead of having any responsibility for their employee, they ship him back to a country where he has no hope of getting any treatment, so they are essentially sending him back to die.

[Stan Raper]

That's correct. There are number of documented cases. In fact, we put out this report each year; we have five reports of documented statements from individual workers and the problems they have around the health care issues alone. The British Columbia government is not even providing provincial health care provisions for seasonal agricultural workers in that province. Enforcement of basic human rights provisions under these temporary worker programs is non-existent at best.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We have to cut it off there; that's over seven minutes.

Madame Faille is next, please.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I want to thank all the people who came to the committee today to discuss the issue of migrant workers, non-status persons and the temporary work programs that have been in existence for at least 40 years.

You are no doubt aware that the committee is starting this fall to study the specific issue of refugees. The question of temporary workers is of great concern to us.

To follow up on what Andrew said -- he usually considers all aspects of the issues we are interested in and I wouldn't want to repeat all that -- when you look at temporary workers and particularly the caregiver program, I note that you're not calling for the termination of these programs. On the contrary, you know that these workers add value.

Regarding the caregiver program, it's mainly the administrative rules of the program that are problematic. For example, there's the 24 months within a three-year period rule as well as to the live-in condition that have to be met by caregivers.

When you met the minister, were you successful in getting him to commit to an early review and amendment of this program? Later on, I would have other questions about agricultural workers.

[Cecilia Diocson]

I would like to share our experience with regard to the review that we have been requesting for many years of the live-in caregiver program. Last year we were finally brought here to Ottawa to talk about the issues concerning the program. That was January 2005. There have been some changes in the government, so we haven't heard anything when it comes to the changes, or even the result of the review of the program.

Meili, I know you're familiar with the case of Laila Elumbra in Quebec. She's a domestic worker who became unconscious for four months. She only needed two more months to complete her 24 months within a three-year period. Unfortunately, she got sick and became unconscious and was in a coma. She is still in Montreal. The community is helping in her recovery. She's able to walk a little bit and do some things. I think she may be able to go back to work, but because of this neurological problem it will not be very soon.

That's one of the things we have seen within this program. They're paying their own medicare, but they don't have any sick leave as live-in caregivers.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

As a follow-up on Andrew's question about your presentation, I understand the government doesn't seem to be considering any early changes to the temporary worker programs.

In regard to this issue, did you have any meetings with officials of the minister's office or of Citizenship and Immigration Canada?