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?