Good afternoon, everyone. It's my pleasure to be here today.
I'm going to be focusing my comments on the temporary foreign worker program.
I'm here in my capacity as a researcher today. My comments are based on eight years of research done in collaboration with other university-based researchers and in cooperation with community organizations that give services to migrant workers.
Our research has focused on what we call precarious status migrant workers. These are people who come to Canada not as permanent residents but with a range of temporary statuses ranging from undocumented to trafficked to temporary foreign workers, and we actually see that often people who are permanent residents feel themselves to be precarious in terms of their permanent right to stay in Canada.
What I want to express very strongly is a concern about the temporary foreign worker program being used to expand the bringing to Canada of workers without giving them permanent status here. Our work on precarious status workers has clearly demonstrated that there is a problem with these workers' feeling that they have the full rights of Canadian workers. We see that in labour rights, health, education, family separation and reunification, sense of belonging, and unionization—in all of these areas—temporary foreign workers face major barriers. Sometimes the barriers are legal—they are excluded in policy from certain benefits—and sometimes it's the conditions of their work, or their fear of ultimate deportation or refusal of an eventual permanent status here in Canada.
What we are concerned about is that if a temporary foreign worker program, coupled with the Canadian experience class, is being seen as a way to make our immigration system more responsive to the labour market, we feel it has long-term implications. When people come as temporary foreign workers—and under the Canadian experience class it's being suggested that for two years they stay on this status before being able to become permanent residents—in those two years they are not eligible for settlement services. We see that this has a long-term impact on people.
It's also very difficult for people, especially in the low-skill categories, to be accompanied by their families on this status, and having a two-year or longer.... So far, for live-in caregivers, whose program has basically the same structure as the temporary foreign worker program, plus the CEC, we see that they often have four years or more of separation from their family.
I question the wisdom of using a temporary foreign worker program in a wider sense. I feel that it has human rights and social rights implications that are negative for Canada and for the people coming under this program. I would like to see that, rather than our using temporary foreign workers, people who are able to work in Canada and have job offers be offered permanent residency status.
We see that the Canadian permanent residency point system is very skewed towards high-skilled, highly educated migrants, when in fact in our economy we have high demand for lower-skilled migrants. Those who come in as permanent residents usually end up in the lower-skill types of jobs anyway, so we feel there's a disconnect between the exclusive evaluation of the permanent residency and the demand in the labour market.
To summarize, I hope people have questions, but basically in my research everything I've seen about the social rights implications for temporary foreign workers seems to indicate that the very temporary nature of their status creates barriers for their human and social rights. I feel that the objectives of Canada in immigration and social development can be met just as easily by giving these people permanent status from the get-go.
I think most provinces are interested in increasing immigration that is tied to employment and that this can be coupled with a policy to give permanent residency upon arrival to people who have job offers. And this would better respond to all the human rights and social rights concerns they have.
I've tried to make it brief, but that's the main point of what I would look at.