Thank you.
You know that last June, in 2007, the motion that I moved and that this committee supported went before the House of Commons. Three parties, at least, supported it in the past in the House of Commons. We're still waiting for the Conservative Party to implement it, make it real, get it done.
In the past we have said, or at least the NDP have said, that we need to stop treating people as economic units and see them as human beings—they have families, they have lives—and need to stop expanding the temporary foreign workers program. At the bare minimum, we should bring the workers in with a visa for their jobs, not an employer-specific visa. Better still, we should have them in as landed immigrants so that they're not subjected to abuse and a complete imbalance of power.
That being said, you've talked about Bill C-50, and unfortunately—I didn't raise this the entire day, Mr. Chair—yesterday our Liberal friends did not support my motion. At 3:30 there will be a vote in the House of Commons, and it will get to second reading passage. It will pass today at second reading. After that—I assume the Liberals will support it again, unfortunately—it will then go to committee. It will go to the finance committee. We will push for hearings at the finance committee, so that the finance committee can hear what you have to say.
At this committee, I believe the parliamentary secretary has a motion to study it. The motion is going to be in front of us April 28. Hopefully the finance committee won't have finished with it. You wouldn't want to have it finished and have passed the House of Commons when we study it; that wouldn't be fair. Hopefully we will be able to have a real dialogue about the fundamental changes that are in Bill C-50. In many ways, it prioritizes classes of immigrants and separates them: some are more important than others. I thought human beings were all important, but some seem to be more important than others.
All of you have made very good recommendations. My question is that knowing all that we do, how can we move forward and work together to make sure that the Conservatives, and it was the Liberals before them, hear what the communities want? Perhaps after the consultation, the Liberals will also say, “Well, maybe we don't like the changes in Bill C-50, and we'll vote against it.”