I'm Roslyn Kunin of the Canada West Foundation. I'm going to talk about temporary and undocumented workers, because my colleagues here can cover the other areas very thoroughly.
I want to paint a picture in the heads of the committee members of why we are having this issue of temporary workers and undocumented workers at a level that we have never had before in this country in living memory of anybody in this room. That is because, particularly in the west, we are facing a perfect storm of very, very high demand for workers. We have a very strong economy, which needs lots and lots of workers at every level, from entry-level workers to wash dishes, up through senior health professionals, and all the trades and technical workers in between. So on the one hand we have very strong demand, particularly in the west. When I say the west, I mean Manitoba through B.C., because all these areas are now really booming economically.
Second, along with this very strong economic demand for workers, we are facing the beginning of a demographic trend, which we all knew was coming, in that most of the people walking around in Canada now are baby boomers. They were born between 1945 and 1965. They are reaching retirement age, and they are leaving the labour force. So in addition to our need for workers to feed a booming economy, we desperately need workers to replace all those workers who are reaching retirement age and are retiring. So we have a very, very strong demand for workers.
It has reached a point...and as an economist, this is something I have never seen, and frankly, never expected to see. Businesses sometimes don't operate because they can't get money, and businesses sometimes don't operate because they can't get customers, and businesses sometimes don't operate because prices for their products aren't high enough for them to make a profit. But now, for the very first time, I am seeing businesses where all these conditions are met and they aren't operating because they can't get enough workers to do their particular business. So that is why we have unprecedented demand for temporary workers, that's why we're starting to have a problem with undocumented workers, and that's why we need to make a system as flexible as possible to meet the needs of the labour force.
One other change--before I run out of my seven minutes--that has occurred is the nature of work. The idea of work that most of us grew up with, that you grow up, you enter the labour force, you get a job, and you stay with that job for years, if not for your career, is long gone, and now in many of the most booming industries--construction, hospitality, technology, and many others--jobs are temporary. Not only do we need workers, but we need to give all workers, including temporary workers, foreign workers, and so on, the flexibility so we can say, “We need you because we need the work you can do; we don't need you just for one vacancy.” So if we do have temporary workers, we should say, “You can stay here as long as there's work for you in Canada, not just as long as the initial employer you came for needs you.” If he or she doesn't, there are an awful lot of other employers who do.
Those are the main points I wanted to make, Mr. Chair.