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.