I think that if the federal government is going to authorize and promote programs to admit temporary workers it should sign specific agreements with the occupational health and safety commissions in the provinces that are most affected by the admission of a large temporary workforce. Those agreements should deal with the enforcement of occupational health and safety standards in the workplace and monitoring the health of those workers, in terms of occupational injuries and illnesses.
At a conference I attended on March 12, representatives of some provinces said they wanted to see a majority of workers be temporary. We are talking about Alberta and Manitoba, for example. If those provinces take in 500,000 or 600,000 temporary workers, imagine the imbalance that may create in some industries. I think that from the public's perspective, there has to be some coordination between admitting these temporary workers and responsibility for occupational health and safety, which is under provincial jurisdiction.
There has to be coordination, to achieve some consistency between bringing in workers to make up for the scarcity of workers here and the aging of our workforce and making sure that we collectively uphold our occupational health and safety standards. The danger is that we will lower those standards, as has been done in some European countries.