Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 1st, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We'll call our meeting to order.

I want to welcome all of you here today as we begin our second leg of our journey across the country to study three very important matters.

We are the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. We have been mandated to hold hearings on three issues, as I said a moment ago: undocumented workers, Iraqi refugees, and immigration consultants. We're going to be meeting in almost every province between Vancouver and St. John's. We have approximately 52 panels to hear from on these topics. Of course, at the conclusion of our meetings, we will compile a report, with the assistance of our capable officials and analysts, and have that report presented to the House of Commons and to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.

We begin our meetings today here in Edmonton. We have on our first panel the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers. We want to welcome Mr. Jim Gurnett. And we have Yessy Byl and Bill Diachuk.

I think you're very well aware of how the committee operates. You will have an opening statement of roughly seven minutes, and then we'll interact and ask questions or what have you.

So I'll leave it to you.

[Jim Gurnett, Director, Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers]

I want to welcome you to Edmonton.

There's been a dramatic change in Alberta over the past two years. When I drive up to Peace River country in the northwest to visit my grandchildren these days, whether I stop for coffee in Valleyview, for gas at Fox Creek, for lunch at Whitecourt, or at the mall in Grande Prairie to buy some gifts before heading on to their house, the probability is that the service people I'll encounter all along that route will be temporary workers. Last year in Alberta, more temporary workers came here than immigrants.

So I want to begin by presenting some suggestions to address the many difficulties that arise for temporary workers, especially those in the low and unskilled occupation categories. I'm not going to take the time in these very few minutes to provide any samples of the horror stories that the staff of our community organization receive, because I suspect you're familiar with a lot of those. So I want to touch on some possible ideas to resolve some of these concerns. There is quite a bit more detail in the full presentation, the full written paper, that we've provided to you, but I will just highlight some ideas.

The first thing is that I think we need to reconsider the whole idea of this list of expedited occupations, where the labour market opinion process has been abbreviated. In fact, we believe it would be useful to enact more careful and more cautious assessments of whether there is an actual need for temporary workers in any situation.

Second, I think we need to ensure that better and more first language information on all aspects of working and living in Canada is available to temporary workers in these categories.

Third, we need to improve the processes for workers with work visas to move to new employment quickly when an employment situation breaks down.

Fourth, we need to require employers to provide temporary workers with settlement services that are equivalent to those funded by government for immigrants and not believe that they know how to do this work and that we don't have to ensure equality in it.

Next we need to improve the ability to protect workers in the workplace and to reduce the unmonitored self-reporting by employers.

We need to require that the brokers and the agents involved in the recruitment of temporary workers meet clear standards and are registered.

Finally, we recommend making sure that all temporary workers, before coming to Canada, get thorough information about issues of immigration so that we can break the myths that are being perpetuated, especially by brokers, about how being a temporary worker is a quick route into immigration and permanent status in Canada.

However, these are only measures to patch up a program, a program that our organization believes is not good for Canada or the foreign workers involved. So I also want to take a couple of minutes to touch on some larger recommendations about how better public policy and practices regarding immigration could make most of what's happening with temporary workers unnecessary.

First of all, and not surprisingly, I think the immigrant-serving sector needs to be more fully involved in consultation on matters related to immigration. There's a national body now for immigrant-serving organizations, which I happen to chair. That sector now has the ability to provide input much more effectively than it has in the past.

Secondly, I think there should be reconsideration of the recently proposed amendments to IRPA as a way of dealing with the difficulties of the immigration process. We should instead back up and take a look at approaches, such as better staffing of the department and revisions to the criteria for becoming an independent immigrant, to address some of these things, rather than putting more power in the minister's office.

Third, we recommend that making improvements to the economic outcomes of new immigrants be made a top priority, through measures such as more appropriate and available language programs and effective use of prior learning, to achieve better employment incomes. Until we address the economic underachievement of immigrants, it's hard to resist the temptation for temporary workers.

We need to clearly distinguish public discussion about immigration from matters involving temporary workers. These things have increasingly been blurred together by governments and others over the last couple of years.

Finally, Canada should sign the international convention on the protection of the rights of migrant workers as a public and symbolic way to show that we're concerned about this issue.

Bringing temporary workers to Canada should be seen as a last resort. We should make a renewed effort to have a healthy and effective body of immigration policies and practices that ensure we are bringing a rich variety of great new people to establish themselves in Canada, people who are committing to be part of our communities.

The current enthusiasm for temporary workers is shortsighted and has many dangers, both for the temporary workers and for the larger Canadian society.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Gurnett.

Next we have the Alberta Federation of Labour. Welcome.

[Yessy Byl, Temporary Foreign Worker Advocate, Alberta Federation of Labour]

I'd echo Jim's welcome to Edmonton.

I have been working with temporary foreign workers on a regular basis for the last two years, both as a volunteer lawyer for the Edmonton Community Legal Centre and, for the last year, as a temporary foreign worker advisor paid for by the Alberta Federation of Labour. My work is with the people who are coming here as temporary foreign workers; they are not the agriculture workers or the domestic live-in care workers.

There are three comments I would like to make right off the bat.

The first is that my conclusion is that the temporary foreign worker program is inherently exploitative. We are saying to people, “We just want your work; you are disposable. As soon as we don't want your work, you leave. Your rights and liberties in this country are tied only to that.”

That's not the way I think Canadians see their society as working. I think the very inherently exploitative nature of this program has to be examined.

The second thing I want to comment on is that of the hundreds and hundreds of temporary foreign workers I have dealt with over the last two years, almost all have come here not to work temporarily but to immigrate to this country. Because our immigration system is so dysfunctional, the only way we can bring people into this country and the only way they can come here is as temporary foreign workers.

It becomes even more tragic. Treating these people as disposable workers means we are treating our future immigrants badly. If you don't think our reputation as a country is suffering back in their countries of India, eastern Europe, and Latin America, and all those countries, I can assure you our reputation has suffered a great deal over the last two years, directly as a result of this temporary foreign worker program.

My third comment is that I'm completely appalled at the growing problem of undocumented--I'll call them--illegal workers. The whole temporary foreign worker program is so bureaucratized that in effect it forces people to go underground. Either they come here to find there are no jobs for them or they find themselves in untenable situations, and their only choice to stay alive is to work underground. That has created a huge social problem.

I don't think we have a clue as to how great this problem is. I think there are thousands and thousands of undocumented workers in Alberta alone. There's no system by which we can try to legitimize their presence here, to try to enforce.... The biggest problem I have is that I've got undocumented workers who want to have legitimate status here. We need them--we need them desperately--and there's no way of addressing that.

I go to Immigration, and they say, “Sorry, maybe we'll let them stay, but maybe we're going to deport them.” The workers have no choice then, or they feel as though they don't have a choice. In the meantime, the brokers who brought them here and the employers who are exploiting them are running around unchecked, because those workers can't deal with the problem in an upfront manner.

Those three are I think critical issues.

The problems with the program don't extend just to the low-skilled workers; they extend to the skilled workers. I can't begin to tell you how many welders I have helped out who have been dumped by their companies, companies you may hear from. They're laid off; the companies claim they're just not competent to work as welders in Alberta, yet subsequent employers I have found have said these guys are great, they're wonderful, they work well. We have no protections for those people. These are welders we desperately need, yet there's very little protection for them.

The exploitation that I have come across takes many forms. Housing is one. I have had many workers living in houses of anywhere from 10 to 14 people, being charged anywhere from $300 to $500 each. There are brokers and employers making huge sums of money in renting out housing to their foreign workers. Isn't that nice?

Wages are another big problem. Let me give you an example. A worker at a fast-food restaurant phoned me up and said, “My employer says I don't get overtime because I'm a temporary foreign worker.” That is, again, unfortunately not uncommon. There are people—welders and machinists—getting paid $15 an hour, usually because they are not legally working. There is a huge exploitation there.

Concerning occupational health and safety, one of the workers I worked with almost lost his eye because the employer handed him a chainsaw and said, “You pull this cord and you go and use it.” Thirty-six stitches later, one half inch from his eye...that kind of story is, again, not uncommon.

Finally, in regard to deductions from wages, employers are charging employees for recruitment costs: “Well, it cost us money to find you in El Salvador, so you owe us $4,000.” What is far more common is the huge number of brokers in Alberta who are having a field day.

I call them brokers; they're employment agencies or recruiters. There are some legitimate people who are doing a good job. There are many more, unfortunately, who are exploiting workers. They're charging workers to come here.

For example, Fijian cooks working in the hotel industry are being told, “Hey, you can come to Canada and make $12 an hour.” For them, that's a huge amount of money, because they're making $2 an hour in Fiji. So when the broker says to them, “We'll just charge you $6,000,” they're thinking they're going to be rich, so that's okay. They come here only to find themselves on the wrong side of the poverty line and to find that the agent is legally not entitled to charge them.

I talked to an employer one day who went to a government seminar on temporary foreign workers, and they explained that charging recruitment fees is illegal in Alberta. The broker said, “Hey, I can get you cooks for nothing.” The employer said, “Haven't you just heard? It's illegal.” “Well,” the broker said, “they'll never find me. Are you kidding? They'll never catch up with me.”

Most of the provinces in Canada don't make it illegal to charge foreign workers recruitment fees. The bureaucracy is completely out of control for temporary foreign workers. It's taking eight months to get a labour market opinion in Alberta.

Quite frankly, I'm not terribly sympathetic to most employers, but for the employees who I'm trying to help get a new job, what are they supposed to do? I'm supposed to try to find an employer with a labour market opinion, and it takes eight months to get one? I don't think so.

The problem is that if you have a temporary foreign worker with a problem, there is no legitimized way in which we can help those people out. I have to call in favours, I have to beg, that kind of thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Could you wrap up? Generally, it's seven minutes, but we're into nine.

[Yessy Byl]

Sorry. I could talk forever on this.

I would like to say one last thing. There are no controls and no protections placed for employees in terms of granting labour market opinions to employers. There is no guarantee that there will be continued employment. There is no charge if somebody is let go. That needs to be fixed.

Overall, I really hope your committee can help Canada restore its reputation as a welcoming country, not one that exploits its temporary foreign workers.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

That's our intention, and thank you very much.

From Ukrainian Canadian Social Services, we have Bill Diachuk.

Welcome, Bill.

[Bill Diachuk, President, Edmonton, Ukrainian Canadian Social Services]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

At the outset I want to share with you that Jim Gurnett and I used to be both in the legislature together. We were of different political stripes, but we worked very collaboratively together, and I welcome Jim's comments, particularly because the Mennonite Centre is a well-respected centre and does a lot of good work.

We do not try to reinvent the wheel at Ukrainian Canadian Social Services. We particularly focus on workers from eastern Europe. Back in 2005 I made a presentation to the then-standing committee that the immigration of people from eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine, has been very slow and difficult. One of the highest rejection rates by our country is in the Canadian embassy in Kiev. We keep finding out that it takes almost a year to get a visa.

Particularly when Canada is looking at immigration—and I am going to lead into the temporary foreign workers, and I commend the federal government for the temporary foreign worker program, because I'm from the business side of our community, but I do want to say that it has neglected many of the other things—it needs to make sure that the recruiters have somebody, some agency in Alberta, to look after needs other than the employment needs. Recently there was a conference at Catholic Social Services, and a gentleman representing the Spanish community from Central America echoed the same thing I did, that the workers need more.

One of the problems we've had, ladies and gentlemen, is that many of the temporary foreign workers are not coming here with their families. It was a welcome picture in the Edmonton Journal several weeks ago to see a family from Mexico—husband, wife, and three children—here in the local community of Thorsby, working and all together.

The biggest tragedy is, and I've shared this with the federal justice minister when he was here in Sherwood Park last fall, that we shouldn't break up families. I don't care what country they come from; this is wrong. But, ladies and gentlemen, even within the last week we had a temporary foreign worker who wanted his wife to join him in Grande Prairie, and she was rejected because she didn't give the visa officer assurance that she will return to Ukraine.

We have on one hand a great campaign for immigration, and on the other hand, we have staff—and I still haven't been able to sort out who is responsible for and directs these visa officers.... Somebody has to say we have to be parallel with our immigration, because if we had, as was mentioned, a good immigration success story, we wouldn't need the temporary foreign workers.

I want to share with you, ladies and gentlemen, that the biggest challenge is for employers. Our agency doesn't get involved in it—we just do settlement work—but we are almost every day dealing, as my friend from the Alberta Federation of Labour said, with problems that workers have encountered. Many employers are actually counselled by their recruiter—and some of these recruiters are outside of Alberta and some are outside of Canada, settling workers in Alberta—that they don't have to pay workers the full wage but may judge what workers are capable of doing.

Thank God the former minister of immigration for Alberta, Iris Evans—a very good friend of mine and my own MLA—appointed a couple of investigators, one lady in Calgary and one in Edmonton, and they are doing a very successful job. But as today's news item said, “Foreign workers file 800 complaints”. Both of these ladies are just saddled with problems.

This is possibly overdue. Maybe it should have been happening earlier, that the provincial people should have been involved in the labour standards, in some of these issues that really don't fall under the federal government. Somehow it didn't happen, and I'm encouraging this committee to make sure that this is more efficiently carried out with the provincial government, particularly now that we have a minister of immigration.

Last but not least, I want to encourage more temporary foreign workers, because I hear that said, and even the Iraqi refugees.

Ladies and gentlemen, back in 1993, as a former politician in Alberta and a former minister, I spent five days in a refugee camp in Austria; I had special permission. I have always committed myself to helping refugees come to this country, because we welcome them. But there is no better way than to bring them in as temporary foreign workers.

I believe, not knowing them but meeting a few of the people from the area of Asia Minor, which would include Iraq and other countries, that most could handle practically any of these temporary foreign worker jobs that much need to be filled here in this province. There is no better way to introduce them to Alberta. They would, then, not only be refugees but working people in this country.

With that, I encourage the committee to expedite some of these much-needed.... We don't need these headlines. Two former speakers very eloquently covered some of the problems; we have many of them.

We as agencies, both the Mennonite Centre, myself, and others, will continue to cooperate with any government. I can assure you that our agency isn't funded at all by either provincial or federal government. It's only funded by the community; therefore, I'm a sort of poor cousin here.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Diachuk. Those were very interesting comments.

We will go now to our committee members, who obviously have some questions, and first of all to Mr. Karygiannis.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the panel for coming today and enlightening us and sharing with us some of the difficulties they have.

Mr. Diachuk, you were talking about timelines and the waiting game that is happening in Kiev. I have recently requested through access to information the timelines in different ports or posts, and Kiev certainly is one of those posts where it takes a great length of time for people to apply to come to Canada. Since 2005, timelines have gone up by about 20%, while the inventory of people who are applying has gone down by about 2%.

There are some horror stories. You talked about Kiev. There are horror stories in China, where in the last two years the increase in timelines has gone up by about 48%, while the application inventory has gone down by 41%. But that's a different story.

Certainly, this is why this minister is bringing in new legislation, thinking they can fix things, as we did in 2000. It's only because of the backbench MPs of the Liberal Party screaming and yelling and the lawyers taking Immigration to court that they have seen the light. The same thing is going to happen this time around.

However, you talked about undocumented workers and people who have been taking advantage and people who are made to do things that everyday Canadian citizens and/or landed immigrants wouldn't do. You shared some of those stories. We have in this country, depending on whom you talk to, anywhere from 25,000 to a quarter of a million to half a million undocumented workers.

It has been the push by a lot of members around this table, as well as other individuals, that somehow we should either come up with an amnesty or come up with some form of regularizing them. We always hear minister after minister say we can't do it, that there are security issues, that CBSA will not cooperate with Immigration Canada. The immigration minister is out, and the provinces certainly don't want to talk to the federal immigration minister. The police have problems, and even yesterday we heard “We don't track these people once they come to Canada, so we don't know where they are or where they go”, and about exit controls and all that stuff.

So I was wondering, since you're the front-line workers, whether you would like to share with us your views on undocumented workers. Should we move into regularizing them? Should we move to say, “You've been in Canada for 10 years, and if you have a job, a union base, an employer, if you've been filling out your income tax, if you don't have problems with the police, then yes, it's time for you to land”?

Should we land people who have been here for five or ten years undocumented? What's the feeling in the community you're talking to? Is there some sort of wish to have an amnesty? Is there some sort of mechanism we can use that says, “You've been in Canada for five years and have been working, we haven't been able to kick you out, you've been paying taxes, your kids have been going to school, and you're a good citizen”?

Can you share some of your insights, please—any one of you?

I would like to share the remainder of my time with my colleague, Mr. Telegdi.

[Jim Gurnett]

Here is a quick response I would make. We're a community-serving organization that has more than 100 staff working with immigrants in the city, and I think a lot of our staff would agree that fear and isolation are two of the most dangerous issues in people's lives. They erode their own health and well-being and erode the well-being of the whole community. Undocumented people who are living in the community are amongst the most vulnerable, and their lives are controlled to a large extent by fear and isolation, by the very nature of being undocumented. So we think it makes sense.

I don't have a strategy and a set of actual steps to take, but to ignore the issue and continue to let it grow—and the whole thing happening with temporary workers is going to actually cause a spike in people who are in the community with this status—is foolish to our minds. We have to find a way that understands that these are human beings and to respond.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

What's the answer? Is it amnesty after five years, three years...?

[Jim Gurnett]

We've had discussions, and even amongst my staff there's a range of views. The main view is that you can't continue to ignore it and that we need a careful look at ways to regularize these people's status.

[Yessy Byl]

I think amnesty is essential to deal with this problem. I don't think it should be time-connected.

I will tell you that of the illegal workers I have been working with, there are two groups. I met with one last night. He was brought here by a recruiter, assured that the paperwork was in order or would be shortly, and he has been working illegally. Now he's with a partner who's expecting a child. That child will suffer as a result of having an illegal father. The social problems abound. That's one group.

The other group are people who come here with all the documentation in place only to find no jobs, or they're laid off within a month and are on the streets. They're in critical situations very quickly.

There has to be a program dealing with those people, because as time goes on, there are more and more of them.

The recruiters? There are more and more of those recruiters bringing people in from Central America who are working illegally—thousands of them in this province—and we have to stop that. The best way to stop it is to extend some kind of amnesty, so that people can report these recruiters and report the employers who are following this course of action.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You may as well keep on going for another 10 seconds. Your time is up. You shared it, but if you want to be a little bit flexible on time, it seems to me we have a good bit of time today.

Do you want a couple of minutes, Andrew? Go ahead.

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

Yes, I'd like a couple.

Mr. Diachuk, I too was a refugee and I spent time as a refugee in Austria. Yesterday we were told by SUCCESS, which represents Chinese Canadians helping Chinese people come into the country, that the system is broken.

I totally agree with that. The problem we are suffering from was created by the last Immigration Act, when we changed the point system to disallow the people the economy actually needs. The committee has heard me many a time.

I don't blame the ministers so much, because unfortunately they didn't know enough; I blame the bureaucracy, because they seem to get their way, and with this Bill C-50 we're going to have real problems as well.

[Bill Diachuk]

I want to add to my two colleagues here that I've been very unhappy with the recruiters we have. That is an area that the federal government has to take a good look at; it's not a provincial responsibility.

Some of them who are immigration consultants—and they take that tag themselves to whatever country they go to, and most of them go back to the homeland from which they originated—are so corrupt that they bring their own fellow countrymen to this country. This is a very frustrating part for me too.

With regard to the amnesty, I'm not sure that amnesty is the answer, if we could go back to make sure that applications for immigration to Canada....

Mr. Karygiannis, you indicated that there isn't much interest in Kiev, and that's true. There are some seven million people working outside of the Ukraine in other European countries. There's very little immigration—

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

No. What I said is that the timelines in Kiev were such that it is taking a long time to forward applications to Canada. That was my comment.

[Bill Diachuk]

There's another reason, from what we've learned. They can travel by bus to Portugal, or they can travel to Russia, and instead of having to come with a big plane fare to Canada, they choose that route.

We've had some attempts made to try to help these temporary foreign workers. Many of them are working illegally in those countries. We've been trying to interest them in coming to Canada, but the access is so much easier there.

As a matter of fact, information we're getting is that the 2012 World Cup games in Ukraine are going to need some of these workers to come back from all the countries to help them rebuild their facilities there, and that's a serious situation. We too haven't seen any immigration from eastern Europe to Alberta recently, other than the temporary foreign workers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Diachuk.

Mr. St-Cyr.

(Due to a recording error, French-language interventions are not available; proceedings have been transcribed from simultaneous interpretation provided at the time of the meeting.)

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you to all of you.

I would like to follow up with the issue of amnesty for undocumented workers. That is a problematic issue, namely because there are many people who are here and who experience difficult conditions, given that they are undocumented workers. But there are also people who make claims through the legitimate system and who also face difficulties because they have yet to receive responses from the government.

Of course, we would like to expedite the process, and it would be nice to be able to deal with all the claims and be able to invest more money. But if we were to choose between giving a status to people who follow the regular legislative status, whether it's through a refugee process or immigrant status, or to give a status to someone who has not respected Canadian law, to whom do you think we should give priority?

[Jim Gurnett]

[Inaudible--Editor] ...have to be very careful about making it either/or, because the reality is that situations that people from other places find themselves in here in Canada are so diverse and have so many complexities and intricacies.

We're not doing a very good job with the speed and the skill with which we address refugee claimants, people inside the country who are seeking to have a claim considered; we've been ignoring the issue of undocumented people who are living, working, and continuing life in Canada; and we have far too long a waiting list of people outside waiting to come here. All of those things need to be part of a comprehensive, improved approach.

What troubles our organization is that instead of working on any of those issues, all of which need attention, we've created this enthusiasm for temporary workers, which is creating another strand of problems and challenges and even in the medium term is not going to make things better for anyone.

[Yessy Byl]

I think Jim made an excellent point. The whole temporary foreign worker program is just escalating this problem of undocumented workers. The very first priority should be to ensure that we put into place protection so as to avoid that problem, to put into place restrictions on employers and protections for employees.

When I talk about trying to offer amnesty, I don't mean necessarily to provide temporary foreign workers who end up working illegally with permanent residency status, but to allow them to at least apply for the proper temporary foreign worker work permit so that they can then, if they choose, follow through with the process. I think that's a little different.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

It's a bit different, but it's quite important to say. There's a difference between giving automatic permanent residency to someone who has been working legally for ten years and allowing them to file a claim in Canada, and then they find themselves on an equal footing with all those who've filed claims.

Ms. Byl, you also talked about the disastrous bureaucratic problems we are facing. There has been a lack of immigration commissioners for a number years, and that's a situation of concern. Waiting lists have increased. Do you not believe to some extent that is getting people to get around the system? Others have told us that among the refugee claimants there are many people who should make immigration claims, but since it takes so long, they try to get around the system by making refugee claims in order to expedite the process. Others simply work illegally and don't even go through the trouble of obtaining a status.

Do you believe the so-called anarchy that we might see within the immigration system is not a way to turn the system itself?

[Yessy Byl]

There are farm workers here in Alberta who are stranded. I'm not particularly concerned with employers trying to bring in people at the outset. Once they are here and in trouble--either they have no job or they're in a totally untenable work situation--the very fastest that I can get them out and into a new job is approximately three months, unless I've got a real emergency. Then people will go beyond the system. But if you follow the fastest bureaucratic process, it takes up to three months. In the meantime, what are they going to do?