Thank you.
I come from the world of immigration law. I started as an immigration lawyer when a poor, hapless client walked into my office 20 years ago needing help to stay in Canada. That led to experience that has now brought us to the point where immigration is on the forefront of many people's agendas.
The temporary foreign worker movement has been around for many years. It is now becoming more important to the economic viability of Canada, and I'll leave it to others to determine whether it is essential or not.
The process itself involves a number of different actors. In terms of the approval of a labour market opinion, we have Service Canada. In terms of the application for a work permit, we have Immigration Canada. In terms of the issuance of the work permit, we have the Canada Border Services Agency. In terms of renewing the work permit, we have the inland operation of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. In terms of compliance, where there is a breakdown in the working relationship or the job offer is not legal or there have been excessive fees, we have a variety of agencies. The Canada Border Services Agency is responsible for enforcement; the RCMP is responsible for criminality; and local provincial agencies are responsible for breaches of the employment standards legislation.
We have a lot of people in the foreign recruitment business, leaving aside lawyers, consultants, and others.
From my experience, if we want to make the temporary foreign worker movement work, we need a single window; we need one repository responsible. I find that if you don't have one person or one agency responsible, then you have in effect no responsibility that can be effectively administered.
At the end of the day, the issue of temporary foreign workers is a function of corporate responsibility. We can legislate all you want, but if there is no corporate responsibility in the foreign worker recruitment process, it will break down.
I notice you have Maple Leaf Foods here. There is a model of foreign recruitment that works in certain countries, where they actively went out, examined, recruited, tested, assisted applicants with their work permit applications, and dealt with integration into the workforce. There is a model that works.
The difficulty I find, and I think what's important for this committee to focus on, is not with those companies who take the responsibility to administer what I consider an effective and responsible temporary foreign worker movement; it's with those people who do not. The people who do not take responsibility really have to be regulated, charged, and taken out of the business entirely.
We have so many different parts to the process, as I said. You have a labour market opinion that sets out a prevailing wage. In some cases, workers are told that's not what they're going to be paid, even though that's what the paper said. We have some places where people apply for work permits and their qualifications are put together to meet the requirements of the labour market opinion. In other cases, once they come here, that job isn't available on the basis that was set out. For example, some people are laid off because of seasonal demand issues and are told they can't apply for unemployment insurance, because if they do, the company will not be eligible to sponsor other foreign workers or renew their work permit.
I think it's very important for us to come to grips with what the various players are. The temporary foreign worker movement does work: we are recruiting foreign workers; they are working. There are instances where there are breakdowns, and where there is a breakdown, that's where the system collapses, because the worker has no particular place to go to get assistance.
We routinely represent workers who are in situations where the employer is not fulfilling his or her responsibility, where the job is not as described, or where the worker isn't qualified to do the job. It's very important for this committee to come to grips with those particular issues.
If I can leave you with one thought on the temporary foreign worker movement, it's this. Temporary foreign workers have been around for many years. They will continue to be a part of the immigration process. In many cases, provincial programs have accepted temporary foreign workers as immigrants, so in some cases, the selection process for immigration to Canada is being offloaded to the provinces. We're bringing in temporary foreign workers. The provinces select them and they allow them to remain in Canada. Many people may argue that we should maybe give the entire skilled worker movement selection process over to the provinces.
The point I'm making is that without some governmental responsibility for who can assist workers when they come here, who is responsible for compliance issues and who can take an employer to task, not simply saying, “You can't recruit again”, but to meet their responsibilities? Without that multi-department, multi-jurisdictional federal-provincial mechanism--it's got a little bit of everything--in place, the temporary foreign worker movement will not progress to the level where I think it can to provide the types of workers the Canadian economy needs.