Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 7th, 2008

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

I'm going to call the hearings back into session.

I notice in the audience that Dr. Ken McLaughlin, one of our local historians, is here. And just for his historical perspective, this is the second time we have a standing committee of Parliament visiting Waterloo region.

On the hearings, when we get to a point where the Bloc Québécois is asking questions, just to let everybody know, you'll need your translation devices. You put it on to channel 1, and that way you will be able to hear the questions and the commentary from them.

We're going to be starting off with presentations. This afternoon we're talking about temporary foreign workers and undocumented workers in Canada. We will be carrying that through most of the afternoon.

We start off doing five- to seven-minute presentations. After the presentations are heard, committee members will ask questions. It starts with the Liberals, with Mr. Karygiannis, then we'll go to the Bloc, with Mr. St-Cyr and Mr. Carrier, and then we go to the Conservatives, on this side, Mr. Komarnicki and Nina Grewal.

This is Nina Grewal's second trip to Waterloo, which kind of tells you how much the membership on the committee has changed over the years. Out of the twelve members on the committee, two of us go back to three years ago.

Starting off, I would like to call on Mr. Patrick Dillon, business manager and secretary-treasurer, Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council.

[Patrick J. Dillon, Business Manager and Secretary-Treasurer, Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario]

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to share our views with the committee.

As stated, my name is Patrick Dillon. I'm a business manager and the secretary-treasurer of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario, which is an umbrella organization representing the building trades, the individual trade unions here in the province that speak for the construction workers in this province.

The first thing we would do in talking about our industry is to talk a little about the characteristics of the industry in that it's cyclical in nature. There are booms and busts from time to time, depending on the economy. Those booms and busts sometimes are province-wide and sometimes they're wider, broader than that on a national basis.

There are also times, particularly in a province like Ontario, where the boom and bust era is in a regional area, not necessarily in the whole province. In fact, as we speak, we are experiencing that in the province of Ontario; the areas of Toronto and Ottawa are quite busy. You have areas like Hamilton, some here in the Kitchener area, where the manufacturing sector has been coming down. That impacts dramatically on construction. We also have Thunder Bay as a soft area for employment in this province. Windsor is another area where there is unemployment. It just talks to the issue of the boom and bust.

The other issues that come up that describe our industry are that the employers and the workers are mobile. We move around not only from province to province, but we also move around from region to region, and within a region we move from job site to job site. The nature of the construction workplace is that the workplace itself is temporary in nature. We are probably the only workers in society that the harder we work the sooner we're out of work. That is what our industry is all about, and we accept that and work with that.

Getting into speaking about the temporary foreign worker issue, I would state up front that the building trades in general are pro-immigration. We do not oppose immigration; we do not oppose automation. We try to be fairly progressive, but we do have concerns around immigration, temporary foreign workers, and undocumented workers, and we'll address that.

On the temporary foreign worker issue, we think that Canadians, the Canadian government, and provincial governments need to have more of a focus on ensuring that Canadians, Canadian youth, and Canadian underemployed youth have an opportunity to be trained. Well, I'm talking about in this province, but I think in the province and in the country. I believe that, particularly for our industry, if youth are given the opportunity for the training, they will come forward and take the training.

Just as an example, I'll use my own trade. I'm an electrician by trade. They were opening up to hire 75 apprentices in the Hamilton area, which, as I said, is an area where there's fairly severe unemployment. When they put their advertisement out to hire the apprentices, to advertise the positions for the apprentices, they had 75 positions and they had 1,800 applicants with the one day of advertising, and it wasn't a really broad advertising that they did.

So it tells me that there are youth available, and youth will take those opportunities if they're given. We have to make sure, and there has to be insurance in place, that the unemployed and youth coming out of universities, colleges, and high schools are given an opportunity to work in the trades.

The use of temporary foreign workers to fill long-range needs in training I think would be a travesty for the construction industry, for the whole economy in Canada. If you think about temporary foreign workers, they are, just as it states, temporary. They will come in, and the work we need them for—if that's part of your long-range strategy in using temporary foreign workers—will probably outlast the length of time the temporary foreign worker wants to stay. So if you haven't hired the apprentices and you've brought in temporary foreign workers to take the jobs, and those temporary foreign workers leave and the people never had an opportunity to get into an apprenticeship, you create a major void.

I would make reference to Professor David Foot, from the University of Toronto. I heard him speak at the Alberta Building Trades Council Convention in Alberta, in the last year. That's exactly the message he was giving the large industrial players in the province of Alberta, that if you're using temporary foreign workers to meet a peak demand, that's fine, but for the long-range plan of training, you need to give Canadian youth and Canadian underemployed youth the opportunity; then go to the long-range plan on immigration, and then the temporary foreign worker.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you very much.

You've gone over seven minutes.

[Patrick J. Dillon]

Did you want comments on the undocumented workers?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

When we get to questions and answers, that will come up.

Mr. Lolua.

[Alex Lolua, Director, Government Relations, Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario]

I'll be deferring my time to Mr. Dillon so he can finish—if that's okay with the committee.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

In that case, Mr. Dillon, keep going.

[Patrick J. Dillon]

Thank you.

On the undocumented worker side, we have some real issues.

The federal government a few years ago started up the CREWS program in Toronto. It gave input to labour and management in the construction industry to work with that program. I think it had some reasonable success. There were opponents to it, but the people who were opponents to the CREWS program were primarily people who work in the underground economy. They don't like rules and regulations that people have to comply with.

We have some real concerns about the workers themselves. If they are illegally in the country or illegally at work, they are very, very much exposed to exploitation. There's no doubt that it exists. We've watched that take place in Toronto. We even had an ad in the paper a few months back where one of the unions that was trying to help the undocumented workers was promising them that if they came forward to get help around their training and health and safety issues and to help them get their documents, the union wouldn't turn them in. I thought that was pretty fascinating, but it should be a message that sinks in for our representatives in the federal government that the exploitation is alive and well.

On the undocumented worker issue, if contractors in our industry, in construction, are allowed to carry on with that type of behaviour, it creates an unlevel playing field for legitimate contractors and legitimate workers to work in the province of Ontario. There's evidence, lots of evidence, around of how these people avoid paying their GST, CPP, EI, income tax, all of it.

We have people coming to union meetings and saying, “Why am I at a union meeting? Why do I belong to the union? I make $10 an hour more than some undocumented worker”--that they're aware of--“yet that person takes home $300 or $400 a week more than I do.”

It's a very serious problem. At this point in time, the unions and the legitimate employers work together to try to compete, but it can't last forever before we have to start doing shady things, if the government is going to let the undocumented worker problem stand as it is.

I think those would be my comments on the undocumented worker.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you very much. Now I guess we'll go to Mr. Sean Strickland.

[Sean Strickland, Waterloo Wellington Dufferin Grey Building and Construction Trades Council, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Sean Strickland. I'm a representative of the Waterloo Wellington Dufferin Grey Building and Construction Trades Council. We like to say yourlocaltrades.ca for short. We're an affiliation of 15 trade unions throughout Waterloo, Wellington, Dufferin, and Grey who represent approximately 8,000 construction workers in that geographical area.

The comments I'd like to share with you today are from a local perspective. You heard from Mr. Dillon about some of the issues facing the province. While the issues are different from those, we do have some particular experiences I'd like to share with the committee today.

First of all, I did submit to the clerk a copy of a resolution on temporary foreign workers that we recently passed at our annual meeting, and just to paraphrase that resolution, because it is quite lengthy, I'd like to say that the resolution points out the fact that our council recognizes that foreign workers can be an essential part of a company's business strategy. We recognize that foreign workers are part of the Canadian economy. We recognize that foreign workers can fill labour shortages in Canada and bring new skills and knowledge to help the country's economy grow. But we do have some concerns.

From the website and from the procedures involved to allow a temporary foreign worker the permission to work in Canada, you're probably all aware about the procedures and the requirements of the job. The offer must be genuine; the wages and working conditions must be comparable to that of Canadians working in the same occupation; the employers must have conducted reasonable efforts to hire or train Canadians for the job. That's one area where we have some concern. Foreign workers filling a labour shortage is another area where we have some concern. And the employment of the foreign worker will directly create new job opportunities or help retain jobs for Canadians.

So there's just a paraphrase of some of the requirements before a temporary foreign worker is allowed to work in Canada. That approval is given by HRSDC based on a labour market opinion, and that labour market opinion from government staff will allow the applicant to work or not to work. Our question is how that labour market opinion is finally determined.

We've had examples over the past number of years where we've had unemployed tradespeople—millwrights and electricians come to mind, among others—and there are construction projects under way where temporary foreign workers are in the plant working, mostly in installing the process equipment. What happens in our experience is that the way construction projects are awarded is that a lot of the process equipment.... A lot of people think of a construction worker as building the building, but construction workers also put into place the conveyors, the automotive systems, and the automation systems within the plants. Often those tender packages are awarded in different phases.

Sometimes owners will like what they see for the first phase of that tender being awarded, but for the second phase they'll say, “Well, let's see if we can get the manufacturer of that piece of equipment to come in here and install it, because it's specialty work”. So they're able to apply to get a temporary foreign worker permit and bring in so-called specialty workers to install that piece of equipment. Oftentimes those temporary foreign workers will be working right alongside some Canadian workers in a plant. The motivation for the owner of that construction project probably varies, but it's due to costs, or it's due possibly to their ability to maybe exploit that temporary foreign worker.

Oftentimes in situations like that we hear from some of our trades people that these temporary foreign workers don't work within our Canadian labour standards: they work through their breaks, they work through their lunch hours. I think you'll hear more of this from Ms. McLaughlin later. They work 12 to 14 hours a day.

So there's a concern when the temporary foreign worker comes in, on one level, that there are Canadians, certified tradespeople, able to do that job, but for some reason there hasn't been any communication with those people who employ those tradespeople—i.e., building trades councils—about the availability of those workers. So that's an issue for us, and secondly, there's the issue that happens on site. Are these workers trained? Are they certified?

And this is not even to mention the communication. We've had examples of electricians—who well know how dangerous it is to work with electricity—working alongside temporary foreign workers from other countries and there is no English spoken. So how are you able to navigate the intricacies and the safety aspects of working with high-voltage electricity when you have those communication barriers to deal with? So the resolution from our council speaks specifically to communication.

I notice on your website that if you want to get a labour market opinion, you submit this to the temporary foreign workers' office in Saint John, New Brunswick. I would assume that the people in Saint John, New Brunswick, talk to the people from Service Canada in our area to make a determination on whether or not there's a labour shortage for that particular trade. I don't know for sure. But I do know for sure that years ago, when these temporary foreign workers were allowed to come into the country, there was communication with the local labour councils to determine if there was unemployment amongst their trades. That communication no longer occurs.

So our resolution says that we would like HRSDC to consult with local building trades councils to more accurately determine the availability of skilled tradespeople in the local marketplace, prior to granting permits to foreign workers. We think there's some improvement in communication that could be made.

Some of the other issues and concerns related to undocumented workers are anecdotal, I guess is the way you would describe them. But these stories and situations have been conveyed to me by our affiliates. For example, the painters and glaziers had an example of foreign workers actually living in a barn in a rural area, in deplorable living conditions by any kind of Canadian standard, working 12 or 14 hours a day painting houses. Now that's a concern.

We've also talked about the safety aspect on the job and the credentials. How certified are these temporary foreign workers when they come in? When that labour market opinion is granted and the worker comes in, how clear and how clearly defined is it that the tradesperson, that temporary foreign worker, actually has the skills to do the job?

I recognize that my time is up. I covered a broad swath of issues related to temporary foreign workers.

The message I would leave you with is that of communication. We'd like to see greater communication with building trades councils before those permits are granted.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you very much.

Ms. McLaughlin.

[Janet McLaughlin, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Good day and welcome to Waterloo.

Thank you for coming here and for examining this important issue.

I am here today to present some reflections on my doctoral research, examining health, rights, and access to benefit issues among seasonal agricultural workers.

Mine is the kind of research that most Ph.D. students dream about. I was able to spend my summers in the vineyards of Niagara and my winters in Mexico and Jamaica. But before you get carried away with envious images of pina coladas and white sand beaches, alas, what I discovered was not the stuff of vacations and idyllic lives. Quite the contrary.

Following their time in Canada, many foreign workers return home in dire straits. I lived alongside these workers and their families for three years, and I interviewed their advocates, employers, and medical and government officials. Let me quote a worker, who succinctly described the problems associated with working within a society in which you are not a member:

There are some bosses that are good, but there are (others)...that are totally horrible, the well-being of their workers doesn't interest them.... I guess we're like disposable machines to them...they work us hard until we wear out. Then they replace us with others.

Indeed, the treatment of employers varies drastically, from quite good to totally horrible. But the workers are effectively tied to one employer and are not free to change. In many cases, workers are seen as and treated as machines, working long hours under stressful conditions, doing repetitive and precarious tasks. They are not only metaphorically disposable, but actually are so. Migrant workers can be fired and repatriated at any time and can easily be replaced. Thousands are waiting in line and ready to come whenever the previous worker is deemed no longer fit or willing or able to do the work.

Temporary foreign workers' sense of extreme vulnerability and disposability makes their rights very difficult to access, as any demand could compromise their positions in the program.

My brief expands on the difficulties workers face to get medical care and compensation. It explains that many workers can't even access their own health cards. They face a system that does not integrate them into communities or provide adequate information about their rights, and it places far too much emphasis on their employer-employee relationship. For them, rights on paper do not necessarily result in rights in practice.

The abuses in these programs are very well documented.

Today, I'd like to reflect on the human and social dimensions of transnational migration.

Since 1966, this program has brought workers into Canada annually. Many temporary workers have been in Canada for decades, with only four months with their families in-between. What are the repercussions of this?

In Vancouver, Erika Del Carmen Fuchs testified about specific cases of workers who had returned home to Mexico sick and injured. I can assure you that these are not merely anecdotes or stories. In any region that sends workers to Canada, I found many families afflicted in profound ways from their time in Canada. I met widows of workers who had been killed in Canada. The widows were not receiving any support and could barely feed their children. In desperation, some even left their children to work in Canada.

Children of these migrants deal with depression and alcoholism, as they are forced to grow up without parents at home. There are 12-year-olds raising themselves. Marriages are torn apart by these long, repeated absences. When women get pregnant in the program, many miscarry because they work under difficult conditions and are unable to access prenatal care. Others carry their pregnancies to term, only to return home, have their babies, and leave them again the following season.

Workers injured in Canada are unable to return here. Many are unable to work at home either. Others develop serious illnesses in Canada, like cancer and kidney failure. Normally workers in these situations are sent home. Some manage to run away and apply for refugee status before being deported. Going home is a death sentence. As they pay into benefit programs in Canada, they do not have insurance coverage at home for life-sustaining treatments.

Temporary foreign workers contribute to the Canadian economy, and all Canadians, indirectly, are beneficiaries. Growers face unrelenting pressures in the face of globalized competition—so much so that many say they could not survive without these superb workers. The workers, many of whom have become dependent on their Canadian jobs to support their families, do not want to lose the chance to work in Canada.

All of these are important considerations, so I'm not advocating that we simply abolish this program. But there are ways we can make the system work to be more humane and just. My brief offers a number of recommendations, such as an appeal mechanism for firings and repatriations, comprehensive health insurance, and the ability to freely change employers.

The only meaningful remedy for all these shortcomings, however, is ultimately to grant these workers citizenship. Even if not all workers wish to emigrate to Canada, those who do should be given the choice. Those who do not should still have the freedom to change employers and to come and go as necessary, as family needs and emergencies arise, without the fear that they will never be allowed back.

The Canadian immigration system needs to recognize the value of these so-called low-skilled workers, and as Canadians we should never see people merely as economic units. We should also recognize the toll of living in a country where one is never recognized as a citizen and of separating from one's family year after year.

If workers become ill while working here, Canada also has a moral obligation to care for them. They are not just disposable workers, but also parents, siblings, spouses, and friends.

When this program began in the 1960s, fears of black Caribbean men settling in the Canadian rural landscape worried immigration officials, who devised a structure to ensure that such workers would never stay in Canada after the completion of their contracts. Nearly half a century later, this rationale is out of date and does not reflect Canada's values.

What is the rationale now for excluding these hard-working individuals from ever becoming citizens? If these workers are good enough to work here for 40 years and we say we treat them as we do all other Canadians, why can they not ever become Canadians? How many years of work does it take before it is realized that these job shortages are permanent, not temporary, especially in the agricultural industry?

A critical measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members. Let me repeat that: a critical measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members. These workers are among Canada's most vulnerable occupants. They are not even considered members of our society. In an age of international human rights, our treatment of these people in our midst very much reflects on the chasm between the kind of society we purport to be and the kind of society we are.

I truly hope we can work together to bring our actions in line with our principles.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to share these thoughts with you today. I truly appreciate it, and I look forward to any questions.

Merci.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to take the first round of questions for the Liberals.

I think you really touched on what I wanted to expand on. You mentioned that some people come here for 40 years. As a country, we really have to take a look at what kind of immigration we have and whether we go for the short-term fix or take the long view.

With the way the present point system is set up as it passed in 2002, tradespeople can't get in. They just can't get in. Unskilled workers cannot get in. To put it in another perspective, Frank Stronach from Magna International would not be able to be here today. Somebody closer to home, Frank Hasenfratz of Linamar, who is right next door in Guelph and who has something like 10,000 employees, would not be able to get into the country today. To really bring us as close to home as possible, Mike Lazaridis, of Research In Motion--BlackBerrys--would not be getting in today, because his father was an apprentice tradesperson.

Making that change in the point system drove up the numbers in the undocumented worker class. It actually grew the undocumented workers, with all the accompanying problems that were expressed by the building trades.

Then we have the situation of the temporary foreign workers: people are coming here alone, not with their families.

It's almost a reminder of the head tax for the Chinese. We needed them to come into the country to build the railway. Once they built the railway, we tried to get rid of them, and that resulted in all sorts of problems--the “paper sons” and what have you.

I want to ask all of you whether we should not, as Canadians, focus more on increasing the number of landed immigrants in this country, and recognize that immigration has been the lifeblood, is the lifeblood, and, given the demographics, will continue to be the lifeblood of this country. I would like to have a response from all of you on that question, because it is important to be supporting those all together.

Ms. McLaughlin, would you start off?

[Janet McLaughlin]

Thank you for phrasing my opinions exactly. We so often focus on the exploitation of these workers; it's true that they are ripe for our exploitation when they are either undocumented or when they're here under the temporary foreign worker programs, but what I tried to show today is that there are also all these other implications for their families and for their lives, and they are also very important to consider.

I just do not think it is within the Canadian system of values to bring in workers temporarily and separate them from their families and put them in these vulnerable positions. These are not temporary placements; they are permanent. When workers are coming for decades, they are here permanently. It is eight months out of the year; they spend more of their adult lives here than they do at home, and it is simply not morally justifiable to continue this situation. There must be a better solution.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you.

I'll go on to Mr. Strickland.

[Patrick J. Dillon]

I'd like to make a comment.

The first comment would be that government seems to apply the broad brush to whatever circumstance they're trying to deal with. There is no doubt in my mind that the issues around migrant workers in the country are somewhat different from the temporary foreign worker that we talk about for the construction industry.

To your question about expanding immigration, I would take you to the four points in our brief on how we think immigration should be looked at in the country, with temporary foreign workers being part of it for the peaks in our industry. But I don't think you can talk about what works in our industry and apply that to agriculture.

We believe that Canadian youth ought to be given the opportunity to train. We don't want to see a point system that doesn't apply some pressure to Canadian industry to not have to train Canadian youth. We believe that should be the priority. Canadian underemployed youth should be next, combined with a long-range strategy for immigration, and then the foreign-trained worker piece to fit the peaks in our industry.

To finish that off, the temporary permits for the foreign-trained worker should be done for a regional area of a province or by province. There's not much point in bringing in a ton of foreign-trained workers to meet the peak demand in Alberta and the workers end up working in Toronto in the underground economy.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you.

Mr. Strickland, proceed, very quickly.

[Sean Strickland]

Mr. Chairman, I think your characterization in terms of immigration and its positive rural impact on Canada is a widely held belief, and from the building trades' perspective, many of our members were immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants. We recognize that as being a strength to the Canadian economy.

We have particular issues with respect to temporary foreign workers, or undocumented workers. I think the key, from the building trades' perspective, would be, as Mr. Dillon mentioned, to not forget about our youth and apprenticeship program. We have opportunities within Canada to meet some of these labour shortages, particularly within the construction industry. We can't lose sight of that.

In terms of immigration itself, I think from the construction industry's perspective, we would refer to that as strategic immigration, in terms of where the shortages are.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll go to our panel. Get your headsets ready.

Monsieur St-Cyr, you're on channel 1.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you.

Good day everyone.

Ms. McLaughlin, you stated in your presentation that several cases of abuse were well known and well documented. We have heard a great deal about this in the course of our hearings.

Given that this abuse has been documented, I was wondering if any legal proceedings had been instituted. Have any unscrupulous employers been charged? Even though these workers do not have permanent resident status or Canadian citizenship, the same labour standards still apply to them.

[Janet McLaughlin]

Thank you.

I've only examined the seasonal agricultural workers, which is a specific program. In the vast majority of cases, these workers do not want to prosecute or lay charges because their main concern is staying in the program. Most of these workers come from very impoverished situations and they know that working here is the only way to support their families. Even in the face of widespread abuses--and this is the point I make in my brief and where I outline a lot of the other studies that outline these various abuses--to workers, no matter what the conditions or what the laws, it's all irrelevant, because they're too afraid to demand their rights. For that reason there have been very few actual instances of prosecution.

However, since the health and safety act came into effect in Ontario this past year, there have been some cases brought against employers, especially in the wake of employee deaths and serious injuries. We are starting to see those come to light.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I have no problem believing that the potential for abuse exists. It is obvious to me that in this instance, the employer wields considerable authority over the employee. Furthermore, a person in a foreign country may not necessarily be familiar with the various laws. That person may not be a position to fight back. With respect to the cases that have been documented, at some point we will need to have names and concrete examples to get a clear picture of the situation.

I can appreciate that these workers are in a difficult situation, what with changing employers and everything. This committee has discussed this issue at length since beginning its hearings. Initially, I questioned the need for this measure. I felt that the government must have had a reason for imposing this restriction. After a while, employers told us that they paid recruitment and travel costs for these individuals and that they wanted more or less to maximize the return on their investment.

At this time, I would like to make a suggestion which I will put out there for you and for the other people in attendance. I would like to come up with a system that would allow an employee with temporary worker status to change jobs while continuing to work in the same field. That worker could change jobs, provided the new employer compensated the former employer for any financial losses incurred.

Do you think this might be one interesting solution?

[Janet McLaughlin]

That would be a huge improvement over the situation we have now, and it is one of the recommendations I outline in my brief. Giving these workers citizenship is ultimately the only way to promote equality, but in the interim or if you're not willing to consider that option, I think giving them the freedom to change employers would certainly help.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

You have mentioned citizenship on two occasions and it seems that you went much further than anything we had heard previously. Some people have told us that we should consider granting permanent resident status to these persons so that one day that can obtain their citizenship.

Are you also suggesting quite simply that they do an end run around the process?

[Janet McLaughlin]

No, I mean they should be on a path where ultimately they become citizens. I recognize there are bureaucratic steps involved.