Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the panel.
I'd just like to give you a bit of context before we start. The Diocese of London has been involved in the work of temporary foreign workers through the seasonal agricultural workers program for at least 30 years, with parish-based programs that range anywhere from simple welcoming actions, to bringing these individuals into the life of the parish, to bicycle safety programs, to people working on basic rights issues with the workers. We formalized that outreach three years ago with a migrant workers ministry committee, and in September of last year we presented our written brief to this committee. Since that time, we've continued with the work, and I would say, concerning what we've written in the paper we have for you, we've seen some more severe cases since that time. So we are recommitted to the idea that the temporary low-skilled workers program is really deserving of the attention of our diocese in particular.
The temporary low-skilled workers program in particular is much more severe than anything we've seen previously in the 30 years of work with the seasonal agricultural workers program.
I'd also like to give as context the fact that our diocese covers some of the best agricultural land in Canada. It has one of the largest greenhouse industries in the country, so certainly, we'd see one of the highest concentrations of agricultural workers in the greenhouse industry within our boundaries and also in many field crops.
Since March 2007, we've become involved in supporting the work of Gerry and Lek VanKoeverden, who, I am pleased to say, were able to come here today. They are volunteers who give sacrificially of their time and resources to do outreach to Thai migrants in our area. They are both former directors of CUSO in Southeast Asia. We're very pleased to have people who have both linguistic skills and tremendous backgrounds to be able to speak directly with workers and who really, truly understand their concerns. We're also pleased to have Gerry and Lek on our committee because they are also farmers, so we know that we can bring a balanced approach to this. We don't see this as the church and workers against farmers or anything of that nature. We really see a need to bring a balanced, community approach to this problem, and as such, we see that within the temporary low-skilled workers program there are many problems for both farmer and worker.
I will turn it over to Gerry and Lek to tell you a few of the incidents they have been working on for the last two years in this area. They're the best people to speak to the rest of our presentation.