Evidence of meeting #22 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was consultants.
10:50 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
We would much appreciate it.
How many temporary foreign workers do you have in Schneiders back in Kitchener?
10:50 a.m.
Vice-President, Human Resources, Commercial and Business Support, Maple Leaf Consumer Foods, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
None.
10:50 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
None.
I guess one of the concerns I have and the discomfort I have with temporary foreign workers is that there used to be a time when you could come here as a landed immigrant because you wanted to work, and we let you in, and you worked. What I'm worried about is having foreign workers undercutting other operations in the country—we've certainly seen that in the meat industry, where the competition has increased tremendously—and, I guess, the nature of the control one has.
The question I have is, how would the panel feel if we allowed immigrants with skills that the economy actually needs to get into the country? It seems to me that would solve a lot of problems, because there would be no process of checking up to make sure that these people aren't exploited, and they wouldn't have the problem of indenture, or what have you.
Let's just say you had an immigration system that would allow the kind of worker you want into the country. Wouldn't that be preferable to having temporary foreign workers?
Can we start with Mr. Doyle and go right across?
10:55 a.m.
Researcher, Manitoba Federation of Labour
In our view, the issue is a two-part issue. There are those isolated individual circumstances where you need skilled labour very quickly for a short period of time, and that's the kind of thing this program should be addressing. But in the context of training and skilling our population, this has to operate within a context that's much broader. We need to promote the use of skilled trades, the apprenticeship and training process, amongst workers who already live here, amongst our young people.
10:55 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Mr. Doyle, you're going to use up my time. How am I going to get everybody to answer?
My question is, if we can get an immigrant in to do lower-skilled labour, or with a kind of skill that immigration doesn't allow to come in under the present point system, would it be preferable to allow permanent immigration at that level, which we used to allow? We let in bricklayers, labourers, what have you—people who wanted to work in this country; we allowed them in. Would that be preferable, instead of going to temporaries?
I want a really quick yes or no, right across the board.
10:55 a.m.
Lawyer, Zaifman Immigration Lawyers, As an Individual
For a lawyer, I can give you a maybe answer, in the sense that we have a selection system that recruits immigrants for which there are no jobs.
10:55 a.m.
Lawyer, Zaifman Immigration Lawyers, As an Individual
The simple answer, if we had a selection system that addressed the reality of the labour market that we find ourselves in, then the need for temporary foreign workers would diminish. If they could be processed in a timely way and meet the selection criteria, then it would be preferable for them to come as permanent residents, and they would filter through to the various industries as immigrants have always done.
10:55 a.m.
Liberal
10:55 a.m.
Acting Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants
It would be inappropriate for us, as the regulator, to comment on a question of policy.
10:55 a.m.
Liberal
10:55 a.m.
Vice-President, Government and Industry Relations, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
I think you know our answer would be yes.
10:55 a.m.
Economic Development Officer, City of Brandon, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
My answer is yes, provided it was done in a timely fashion.
10:55 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
All right. Thank you very much. That's what I wanted to know.
Now, John, I go back to you. I take it you said yes as well?
10:55 a.m.
Acting Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants
I said maybe.
10:55 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
The point I want to make, and I have been making this point time and time again, is we have created an immigration act whereby the bureaucrats pulled a fast one on the minister and the committee members saw what was happening. If you care to go back into the debates, we said this was not going to work, but they put it through, because unfortunately the minister was about as knowledgeable about the issue as most ministers are in citizenship and immigration, which isn't very.
The bureaucrats run the department. Because they eliminated the ability of a lot of a people to get in that the economy needs, they created a whole underground undocumented workers class because that's the only way employers could hire them. If you got rid of the undocumented workers--I think there would be 200,000 to 500,000 in the country, those are the estimates--we probably would be in a much bigger mess than we are now and we'd probably quickly go into a recession in Ontario.
What I'm trying to get at is the response of the bureaucrats in regularizing the undocumented worker is that we can't allow people to get in here by cheating. The demand for workers drove the workers underground. It's the demand, and we have to confront that mindset.
Unfortunately, whenever you get ministers to the point where they start understanding things, as we did with the last one, Joe Volpe, we had legislation that was going to come forward that was going to regularize these people.... If you contribute and if you don't get into trouble and if you're of good character, we'll give you a permit for a number of years, at which point you can apply for permanent residence.
I want to thank you for that.
That's the problem. We have to have political oversight on what's happening in the department. It has a very bad mindset, not a very good record.
10:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
Good, thank you, Andrew.
Nina, do you have anything you want to add or a question you want to ask? Okay, go ahead.
10:55 a.m.
Conservative
Nina Grewal Conservative Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
First, I would like to thank all of you for coming here, for your time, and for your presentations.
All of us know there is a shortage of workers in almost every industry, whether it is construction, whether it's meat processing or trucking. I have a very simple and very short question for each one of you: what improvements would you recommend to the current temporary worker program? Could each of you answer that?
11 a.m.
Lawyer, Zaifman Immigration Lawyers, As an Individual
It's a very short question, and there's also a very long answer, but I'll give you the short answer. In essence, the temporary foreign worker movement is designed to select individuals who intend to come to Canada for a temporary purpose and who meet certain defined criteria that are set out by a separate department in a labour market opinion. The issue of how the process should go forward is whether one agency should be responsible for the labour market opinion approvals, for determining the prevailing wage, and for assessing the qualifications of the applicants when they're issued the work permit--and that might be an improvement.
We have diverse agencies involved. In some cases, we may even be prepared to off-load that responsibility in its entirety to responsible corporations, in the sense that if they're responsible for the selection, for the hiring, for the recruitment, for the process, it might then address the abuses on the fringe of the program. Because immigrants who come to Canada are no different from Canadians: they will gravitate to responsible employers if they can meet the requirements, and many of them can.
11 a.m.
Conservative
11 a.m.
Acting Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants
What we're observing is the laws are playing catch-up with what's happening in the marketplace. Certainly, from the foreign worker movement and the abuses we're seeing--and they're being reported to the society--many of the provincial governments are dealing with outdated legislation and they're having a hard time controlling some of the abuses to the workers.
Similarly, at the federal level--and I echo the concerns of Mr. Zaifman--there doesn't seem to be any coagulating force in terms of how you deal with unscrupulous agents, offshore agents who are taking advantage of unsophisticated individuals who are vulnerable to whatever they're dictating. I think the federal government at least needs to take the lead in this in terms of establishing a national policy on how they're going to regulate or how they're going to deal with unscrupulous agents in the human resource realm.