Evidence of meeting #24 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 work.
1:55 p.m.
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
First of all, many of them do not have access to support to apply for these plans, or do not even know about them. Second, many of them did not work long enough in Canada in order to attain these benefits.
1:55 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
How long do you have to work in Canada to get the Canada Pension Plan?
1:55 p.m.
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
The problem is because some of them only come up a few--
1:55 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
How long do you have to work in Canada to get the Canada Pension?
1:55 p.m.
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
It is something like seven seasons. I don't know the exact number.
1:55 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Even if you work for one year and you are entitled to get something, you can apply and you get a 25% reduction.
1:55 p.m.
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
These workers are not able to access those benefits for whatever reason; they are told they haven't worked long enough.
1:55 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
A lot of the people who do come, although they have difficulties, enjoy what they do. They love what they do. Yes, in Canada we must have some standards to look after them. To say--and I've heard this before--that we have draconian working conditions for them may be true in some cases, but I have heard it time and time again. It is like doom and gloom. It's like we get these people over here and we treat them like slaves. This is what I hear, and certainly to the NGOs that are saying this, I'm saying hold on a second. This is not the case. We do have a lot of good employers out there.
1:55 p.m.
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
That's the point I tried to make--that there's a huge variation. There are wonderful employers who treat their workers like family and there are horrible employers who treat their workers like slaves.
1:55 p.m.
Liberal
1:55 p.m.
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
We would need to do a statistical analysis, but there are too many involved.
1:55 p.m.
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
My research was qualitative not quantitative, so I did not.
1:55 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Really?
I would like to go back to Mr. Dillon and Mr. Strickland, if I could.
We do have undocumented workers in Canada. There were programs working through the unions in order to get them to the mainstream, which said that if they could find a union to act as their liaison with the Government of Canada.... There was a program that the Liberals, at the end of their regime, were trying to fit in. If there were an undocumented worker--let's say a woodworker or carpenter--and the carpenter's union said they would adopt them or take care of their paperwork, and once they became normalized they would have to continue and get their process and get their journeyman's...and all that stuff.... Would something like this with the unions bringing to their bosom the undocumented workers that you have in your industry--and you do have a lot of them, and a lot of people are working for $10, $12, $13 an hour--and if they were to come out from the underground, would you welcome that kind of a program?
2 p.m.
Business Manager and Secretary-Treasurer, Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario
I actually sit on the WSIB, so I could answer some questions on whether they are covered or not. Yes, we support that kind of program. We're part of that now.
The problem is that the undocumented workers in our industry aren't registered with anybody, so they're not paying CPP, they're not paying unemployment insurance, and they're not paying WSIB. They are undocumented. They don't exist except that the work is getting done. When they get hurt, they're taken out of the country, and they don't get money.
Any undocumented worker who comes in to work with one of our contractors in the unionized industry would pick up all those benefits immediately. We would work--and it was part of the advertisement I talked about earlier from one of the unions that was advertising to do just that--to help them come out of the underground economy.
The legitimate employers in this province are having difficulty competing in certain sectors because of this non-enforcement of our immigration policies.
2 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Andrew Telegdi
Thank you very much.
Now get ready with your headsets for Monsieur Carrier.
April 7th, 2008 / 2 p.m.
Bloc
Robert Carrier Bloc Alfred-Pellan, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My question is for Mr. Dillon and Mr. Strickland.
You stated that we would be better off providing some training to our workers before thinking about hiring temporary foreign workers, for the sake of maximizing the use of Canadian labour. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program was set up to address the labour shortage problem. However, the employer needs to show that a shortage exists in the first place.
As a rule, industry itself or the unions take steps to address a labour shortage. They set up a program to train their own workers. At least that is my understanding of the situation. Arranging to train your industry's workers is therefore not the responsibility of the Department of Immigration. It is, first and foremost, your industry's responsibility.
Would you agree with that statement?
2 p.m.
Business Manager and Secretary-Treasurer, Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario
We quite agree that our industry and all industries in this country should be training their own workers. However, there are many employers within our economy that do not train and are going to need, particularly, skilled trades workers right across the country. Their strategy seems to be moving towards importing them. We have an issue with that. We say, yes, let's import them if we can't train our own people.
It's kind of a catch-22 situation in the sense that we want Canadian youth and the unemployed and underemployed youth trained. We want immigrants trained. We, as a country, should be training them instead of taking them from some country that can't afford to lose them. So, yes, the more training, the more supportive we are.
2 p.m.
Waterloo Wellington Dufferin Grey Building and Construction Trades Council, As an Individual
Mr. Chairman, to add to that, I would concur with Pat and your sentiment as well, that industry needs to take responsibility for its training. But government institutions have a role to play in training as well. The training budget for HRDC has now been transferred to the provinces. Nonetheless, governments have been involved in training workers.
There are institutional barriers. When we're talking about skilled trades shortages, for example, it's very difficult in this community to have a comprehensive trades shop in our secondary school system. A lot of that infrastructure over a number of years has been taken away from our secondary school system. We don't have those training capabilities in our schools that we once had. I would consider that to be an institutional barrier. Government, the provincial government, in this case, with the signing of the labour training agreement, has a responsibility through our secondary systems and through the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities to address this. There is a role for government to play, for sure.
2 p.m.
Bloc
Robert Carrier Bloc Alfred-Pellan, QC
As I understand it, the province, not the federal government, has a responsibility to ensure proper training for workers. My understanding is that you will be lobbying provincial authorities to ensure that workers and young people in this country receive better training in order to be first in line for jobs.
Ms. McLaughlin, I am happy to see a study on seasonal agricultural workers. This is the first study we have seen on the subject since we began this round of hearings. Two members of the committee come from Quebec which has a large base of seasonal workers. Where was your study conducted? Does it apply only to Ontario, or does it include Quebec as well?
2:05 p.m.
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
I focused mainly in Ontario. Since I spent two full off-seasons in Mexico and Jamaica, I got to know workers who had been placed all over the country, but my focus was in Ontario.
2:05 p.m.
Bloc
Robert Carrier Bloc Alfred-Pellan, QC
You cannot confirm whether your findings apply to Quebec as well. Correct?
2:05 p.m.
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Overall, I would say, workers in all provinces face the same structural problems. Some provinces have done better than others in addressing some of those issues, but overall it's pretty similar across the board.
2:05 p.m.
Bloc
Robert Carrier Bloc Alfred-Pellan, QC
You are recommending that workers who return year after year be considered either as Canadian citizens or be eligible for permanent resident status. In spite of everything, my sense is that the majority of these workers, even thought they come to Canada in search of a better wage, want to go home after their work is done. In other words, they do not automatically want to become Canadian citizens just because they work in this country.
In your opinion, after how many years should these workers be allowed to apply for permanent resident status?
2:05 p.m.
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual
I'm an idealist; I would like to see them be able to apply right away. However, I recognize that this is probably not very realistic.
The live-in caregiver program has the model of after two years. Perhaps something like that could be considered for this program.