Thank you very much for inviting me.
It actually says that in the first line. These notes have been made available. If you don't have them, I'm sure you can pick them up afterwards.
I would like today to report to you on my 15 to 20 years of scientific research on temporary foreign workers in Canada. My goal, not only in these seven minutes but in subsequent minutes, is to tell you about the pluses and minuses. What do I think are success stories and the reasons why, and what are reasons for caution in other stories?
As an economist, and I am an economist--you'll hear from other people who are sociologists--I only look at one feature when it comes to the temporary foreign worker program: does it create a net economic benefit to Canada, to Canadians who are here?
What does that mean? It means the people or agents who are involved in this process, which are the migrants, who we've just heard about; the public treasury, which represents the Canadian government; employers who would like to have these temporary foreign workers; and resident Canadian labourers. In sum, all of these benefit from the presence of a new, temporary foreign worker. This does not mean that any one individual in this calculus might not suffer a loss. But on average, is it a net benefit? This has been the rule that's been more or less in place for evaluating the temporary foreign worker program in Canada for at least 25 or 30 years.
I have two success stories. Martin has already alluded to them on economic grounds. First is the agricultural workers program. All you have to do is contrast our program with any other agricultural worker program, whether it's in Israel or Germany, with Polish workers, or Les États-Unis. They are failures. So why is ours a success?
The first reason is that it's small. If you keep it small, both the costs of administration and the ability to enforce the rules inherent in those regulations, such as adequate pay, access to health care, and payment of taxes, are all able to be monitored.
The second program, which has been very successful economically and is not unique to Canada--it's very large in Southeast Asia--is the so-called nanny program. You'll hear from other people in the program that there are problems with the nanny program, and I agree. Those are social problems. But based on my role as an economist, it's been a boon for middle-class, well-educated women living in this country. There is no doubt about it.
It was put in place also to create some benefits for, largely, Filipino nannies in the form of having rights of conversion--that is, from temporary to permanent--and rights of reconciliation.
Based on my rule of net economic gain to those people here, those are two successful programs. What are the lessons? They're small and they're focused, and part of those programs is a transition to some sort of permanent status if you contribute.
But those are small programs. The big programs for temporary foreign workers have not been mentioned. Those are the trade-related ones, the so-called TN visas, the NAFTA visas. We have agreements with Chile, Israel, and soon perhaps with South Korea, but certainly with the United States and Mexico, with mobility provisions built into trade agreements.
We really got snookered on that one; we really did. For every three Canadians who leave, one highly skilled American comes here. That has been an avenue of a large brain drain, especially prior to 2001. There's a lot of evidence on it, not just my own.
In addition, Canadians use that back door of a temporary visa to become permanent residents in the United States. Americans don't do that. When they're done working here, they go back to Cleveland, God bless them, or wherever they come from. But Canadians use that reciprocal program to remain in the United States, by either marrying or getting an E-visa.
The point about that program is that it was structured after the fact. It was a hang-on to trade, and many of our temporary foreign worker programs are like this--ad hoc. You can't change the content in that program. There are 67 occupations; you can't change them. Going in the direction of adding on temporary foreign worker programs to trade agreements, in my mind, is the wrong way to go, especially when you're doing it with an elephant living next door. They simply refuse to negotiate on it any more; they won't change the list or anything.
We have these success stories based on the “net economic gain” principle, and some very large, less-than-successful stories based on that principle too. So what are we going to do in the future? Roslyn has outlined conditions whereby we may need more temporary foreign workers; Martin has cautioned us that nonetheless, this is what we're looking at.
What would I do if I were queen for a day or immigration minister for a day on this? I would be sure that I took the lessons of the past and had a very well-focused temporary foreign workers program; not a list of 86, or whatever, but of ones that I'd know beforehand will present net economic benefit to Canada. Some of them are obvious, and you don't even have to talk about them: construction out here, more agricultural workers out here.
The second thing is, I would always provide a sunset clause. There would always be a sunset clause in any temporary foreign worker program. I'm not going to do this so that I penalize people and they go underground; I'm not stupid—I'm almost 66, but I'm not stupid. That would create a negative incentive. Everyone would become undocumented. They'd disappear, as they do in Toronto. What I would do is have a conversion path for them to become permanent residents in this country, so that if you continue to rely on temporary foreign workers to either prop up or maintain an industry, they have an avenue to permanent status, and you won't get the undocumented.
Finally, you keep the program small.
Thank you very much. I await your questions.