Evidence of meeting #31 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 quebec.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier  Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual
Marc-André Dowd  Vice-President, Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission
Yvon Boudreau  Representative, Consultant, Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec
Carole Fiset  Human Rights Educator, Education and Cooperation Department, Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission
Mireille Gauthier  Chief Executive Officer, Montreal, Canadian Society of Immigration Practitioners
Prashant Ajmera  As an Individual

1:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle

Order, please.

As we continue our cross-country meetings, I want to welcome here today Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier, a research associate of the Canada Research Chair on the International Law of Migration, University of Montreal.

As you're aware, we're the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration of the House of Commons. We've been mandated to hold hearings on three very important items--temporary and foreign workers, immigration consultants, and Iraqi refugees. We will be meeting, hopefully, in all the provinces. We started in British Columbia and we're working our way east. Today it's here, and tomorrow Fredericton and Halifax, and on to St. John's, Newfoundland.

We're going to hear, by the time we're through, about 50 panels of witnesses who want to present their views on any of these items that we have been mandated to hear. Our committee, as you're aware, is made up of representatives from all parties in the House of Commons.

We want to welcome you and thank you for coming here today to make your views known. Generally when we have a panel, we will allow about seven minutes for individuals to present, and then we'll go to committee members who might want to make comments or ask questions. In your case today, of course, it's only one, so I don't think we're going to hold you to seven minutes.

You have a presentation to make, and we'd be very pleased and happy to hear your presentation. At the end of it all, we're going to write a report for the House of Commons, for the minister, with the help of our officials. We will be making recommendations to the minister on these three items that we've been mandated to hear. I would imagine these recommendations will be based upon what we've been hearing as we go.

So it's all yours. Take it away.

Thank you.

1:05 p.m.

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual

Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to make a presentation.

1:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle

If you want to, you can listen to French, by the way, on your little translator.

I'm sorry about the interruption. You go right ahead.

1:05 p.m.

Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier

To be honest, I just presented it in Halifax to CIC and HRSDC officials last week, so I've the whole thing in English. I might as well present it in English, actually, I don't know, but the majority here are French.

1:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle

It doesn't make any difference. You go ahead and do it in the language you feel most comfortable.

1:05 p.m.

Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier

All the research in this field and all the documentation are in English. All the concepts have been defined in English. It will be very difficult for me to translate into French as we go along. Since most of the parliamentarians are francophone, I'll make an effort. I didn't know there was interpretation. I've brought some copies which, in fact, contain a lot more statistics and details on all the Canadian programs. I'll nevertheless file the copies in French and English for those who want to delve into the issue by reading the article I sent you.

My presentation will consist of three parts. There is the normative framework, the international conventions, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada's statutes, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. In fact, three-quarters of my presentation and most of the things contained in this article concern administrative directives. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is touched upon, but very little in fact. I'm mainly concerned with the directives of Citizenship and Immigration Canada and Human Resources and Social Development Canada.

Canada signed the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery in 1957. I don't know whether you've had time to read some of the article, but this convention concerns four types of practices similar to slavery: debt bondage, serfdom, abusive marriage and abusive adoption. The convention defines them very clearly. It states that, if someone cannot change status and is, under the law or an agreement, required to reside with and work for a specific person, that person has servile status. These are individuals whose situation is humanly similar to that of slaves, under the UN convention.

As you'll see in the report I'm going to leave with you at the end, there are approximately 60 programs for temporary foreign workers in Canada. This is very complex and very heterogeneous.

I'm concerned more particularly with five of those 60 or so programs. My research shows that there are approximately nine programs in Canada for what are called unskilled jobs. Of those nine programs, five violate the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. Everyone is very familiar with three of them: the Live-in Caregiver Program, or LCP, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, or SAWP, and the third, which is very much in fashion, the Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training.

In addition, two other programs violate the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. They are two programs established by Citizenship and Immigration Canada for foreign workers in unskilled jobs. They are authorized to work without work permits. There are two classes. The first concerns those that are called domestic workers who work for non-Canadians. That means that their employer is a foreign national in Canada, but these women are not subject to the Live-in Caregiver Program. However, they cannot change employers: they are required to live at the home of their employer in Canada. They are not free to change their status. They also have servile status.

The other type of program is for all temporary foreign workers in unskilled jobs who work for a foreign employer. For example, that could be a firm in China that pays them. Foreign workers whose employer is not Canadian can legally work in Canada without a permit. Those who have an unskilled job are not entitled to change status. They are required to work for that employer and, potentially, by contract, they may be required to reside at the home of an employer.

All these factors mean that there may be persons with servile status in Canada.

In Canadian terms, that means that the rights defined in section 2—which concerns the right of association—and section 7—which concerns the right to freedom and security of the person—of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are vastly limited in the case of these persons in Canada.

In fact, the 25 pages of references are really interesting. You'll have to take a look at that. These programs were started in 1995. At first, they only concerned women from the Caribbean. Subsequently, they only concerned agricultural workers from the Caribbean. Now they concern all economic sectors of all countries. The origin of this program framework for invited workers dates back to 1955, before the Canadian Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were passed. So it's a very old framework, and the courts have never been asked to consider the question whether these restrictions of rights and freedoms were justified in a free and democratic society within the meaning of section 1.

Lastly, I have studied this entire question. In the past 50 years, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and lawyers have studied the question and noted systematic violations of rights and systematic abuses, especially against domestic workers and agricultural workers. This is now happening in new sectors. There is little documentation, but the Alberta Federation of Labour has gathered data on the subject. The Canadian Labour Congress has also done some work, but this is starting in other sectors. It has been years since sociologists surveyed cases in the agricultural sector.

You must go and look at the references at the end. However, all the newspaper articles are missing. I didn't have the time to insert them, because there are an enormous number of them. The systematic abuses are always typical cases. These involve, for example, individuals confined to the farm for seven months, who must work seven days a week, who do not have 15-minute breaks, who are not entitled to water, and so on.

I know you've heard a lot of presentations on cases involving domestic workers. So I won't dwell on that; I'll move on to the other type of violation. People bring in individuals from so-called “white” countries, such as Australia, United States, New Zealand, Armenia, the Czech Republic, all the European countries and what is called the white Commonwealth. They bring in unskilled workers who work as domestic or agricultural workers, but they aren't given open or semi-open permits; there are administrative restrictions. However, if workers are unfortunate enough to come from a poor country, they are given highly restrictive permits, permits that will subject them to servile status in Canada.

There is also a violation of equality rights among unskilled workers themselves, that is to say the right not to be subjected to discrimination on the basis of country of origin. There may be Australians and Guatemaltecs in agricultural sectors in Alberta, but the Guatemaltecs will have permits reducing them to servile status, whereas the Australians will have open permits and will be able to change employers and employment sectors.

All that to say that there is discrimination based on country of origin. That is illegal under the Charter. Considering, obviously, the scope of the human rights violations, what I'm saying is that these aren't appropriate or even proportionate measures, regardless of the policy objective that might originally justify treating Guatemaltecs and Mexicans in one way and treating French, Australians and Romanians in another way. So there is a form of racialization.

The other thing, obviously, is another type of discrimination, again based on the right to equality, but which more concerns discrimination based on gender; that is to say that we in Canada have decided to give more human rights to individuals who have... In fact, this is a kind of devaluing of female qualifications in sectors such as the care of elderly persons, child care, domestic work and so on. There is a devaluing of these tasks. As a result, we give less, we recognize fewer human rights and we give less protection to the human rights of individuals in that class, who have these kinds of qualifications, and we value other types of qualifications such as, for example, engineering degrees and so on. The rights of those who have engineering degrees, those who come to support our country in that field, not only human rights, such as, for example, the right to be able to change employers, and so on, but also the right to bring in one's family and the right to immigrate upon arrival, that is to say the independent right to seek permanent status.

As regards other types of workers who are as much in demand in Canada, if not more so, such as caregivers and those who provide home care, home care workers, we don't even recognize their human rights, that is to say we don't even allow them to change employers, even in cases where employers often violate their rights every day. But these women obviously won't risk... What's happening is that they technically have the opportunity to leave a job. However, that means jeopardizing the opportunity to work in Canada, to have permanent status in Canada. It's these kinds of things that these women can't really consider as an option.

In the recognition of temporary family reunification rights, that is to say the right to bring in one's family during the worker's stay in Canada, and also with regard to recognition of the right to seek permanent status, we see that there is discrimination based on gender, on sex, and also on the basis of certain countries of origin. For example, Guatemaltecs are commonly labourers, and most Guatemaltecs in Canada are never entitled to immigrate permanently. So there's a correlation between the type of qualifications and the country and type of qualifications and gender, as a result of which, even if these are workers who are increasingly needed in Canada...

I work in demography. We know that the population is aging, that there will be shortages in various employment sectors. In agriculture, the matter isn't complicated. Since 1955, labour shortages have been increasing. The same is true of work in the home, since women now work outside the home. This is a completely new economic step that we're preparing to take, not to mention the aging of the population and the fact that there will now be more home care. This is a sector that will begin to expand.

Instead of granting the right to immigrate based on the needs of the Canadian economy, there is discrimination. So we can keep these workers in place for years. I know of the case of someone who has worked in the fields in Canada for 27 years, but has no rights, no recognition in terms of belonging to Canada.

That was a brief summary of the issue concerning the Canadian Charter, and to tell you in what way these five programs violate the Canadian Charter, that is to say freedom of association, the right to freedom and security of the person and, lastly, the right to equality, that is to say to non-discrimination based on gender and country of origin.

What is happening is that, in addition to the Slavery Convention and the Canadian Charter, there is also another convention, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. That convention isn't too much to take. We're talking about minimum standards for the protection of human rights. Canada hasn't ratified it for a billion reasons, more or less. I conducted a study for UNESCO and the reasons why Canada hadn't ratified the convention. You can consult it in the references.

1:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle

Maybe we can have some interaction from the panel, if you don't mind.

1:20 p.m.

Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier

Sure, or I could just close.

1:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle

Okay, if you want. That'll be around 15 or 16 minutes. You can have another minute.

1:25 p.m.

Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier

I simply want to add that there is a convention. One of the most important things in the convention is that migrant workers, temporary workers, must not be authorized in sectors where it is illegal to unionize. In Ontario and Quebec, it is illegal to unionize in agriculture. So we're bringing in workers to work in sectors that are not yet properly regulated. The same is true in Quebec. Domestic workers are not entitled to CSST and are not automatically covered. The international convention specifically states that these people should not work in these sectors unless they are given protection.

I'll stop there, and I'm prepared to answer your questions.

1:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle

Good. Thank you. We appreciate it.

We have about 35 minutes. We can go seven minutes for each individual, if you want. We have five people. So you make up your mind which way you want to do it--you, Madame Folco, or whoever.

April 14th, 2008 / 1:25 p.m.

Liberal

Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON

First of all, thank you very much for coming forward and making your presentation.

I saw in your brief that you talked about farm workers, and I was shocked when I saw 60 years. Do we actually have somebody who has been a farm worker, coming in for 60 years? On page 4, you have 20, 40, or 60.

1:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle

On page 5 in French, okay.

1:25 p.m.

Liberal

Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON

On page 4 of the English translation, second line from the bottom.

1:25 p.m.

Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier

No, no, what I'm saying--maybe it was a weird way of saying it. What I was trying to say in these parentheses is that whatever the number of years, these women will never be entitled to ask for permanent status. This is contrary to the LCP worker, to the live-in caregiver program. In the case of these women, if their employer doesn't authorize a switch to the LCP, they won't have any rights even after--

1:25 p.m.

Liberal

Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON

Okay, I understand.

I heard that for about 40 years people have come back under that program. Of course, they come, they work, and then they leave.

I'm really glad that you came and put this into this perspective, as we have heard about it. I've always had a certain misgiving about this temporary foreign worker program, because having people without the rights we are supposedly enjoying under the charter just doesn't seem to be quite right.

I would agree with you; I really have serious charter questions pertaining to the temporary foreign worker program. It reminds me of the time when we brought in the Chinese to build the railway; then, when that was done, we were going to shovel out the redundant.

There's a beautiful book out, written by Barbara Roberts, entitled Whence they Came: Deportation from Canada, 1900-1935. What it means is that where you came from is where you were deported to. It documents abuses that.... I wish I had brought the book; I was looking at it on the weekend. It talked about domestics. If they were raped and complained, they would be deported for being women of loose morals.

The mindset that exists in this department has always bothered me. They operated in the shadows back in those times, and in many ways they're operating in the shadows now, outside of the supervision of Parliament, really, and certainly, as much as possible, of the courts. There's always been a reluctance by the department to be answerable to the courts, and every time they try to do something, they're trying to get back to the “good old days”. I see this battle going on all the time.

This is what your presentation has very strongly reminded me of, and I would recommend that book to anybody around the table to read: Whence they Came, by Barbara Roberts. It really is a wonderful piece. I never cease to be shocked at how this happens.

The next question I have is, what kind of society are we building when we're relying more and more on temporary foreign workers? The issue that comes to my mind is the guest worker program in Germany and the problems it caused there. The other one is that with our present immigration system, 95% of the people who came here as immigrants at one point in time would not get in. I include people such as Frank Stronach of Magna International, Frank Hasenfratz, who's the head of Linamar Corporation, and also Mike Lazaridis, who invented the BlackBerry and employs 6,000 people. This strikes me. To me, it comes to asking what kind of country we are trying to build.

Do you have some comments on that?

1:30 p.m.

Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier

Yes, I do, actually.

In the document I will leave with you there are many more statistics. One thing we can see is that indeed there have been many more temporary foreign workers than foreign workers admitted as immigrants during the last 10 years. What is striking is how the temporary foreign worker program has increased in numbers. In Alberta last year, I believe there were more of them than there were of immigrants. So there's absolutely a switch going on.

One important thing—this is related to the point system, as you mentioned it—is that employers want people from all skill levels, and not temporarily, but they are forced to use the temporary foreign worker program. One important thing will have to be, for sure, to adapt the point system in order to maybe have this guest worker program only work for temporary labour shortages and not permanent labour shortages, whereby we put temporary people under temporary status.

1:30 p.m.

Liberal

Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON

The question then becomes that we have some low-skill jobs, which will always exist in Canada, jobs that Canadians now will not do. Surely, to my way of thinking, if we give these folks landed status and let them raise their families here, they have a much better quality of life and we as Canada become stronger for it.

In Waterloo we have two universities, and one thing I always notice when I go to the graduation programs, and the thing that never ceases to amaze me, is that in the most difficult programs at the university you always find a huge number of people who came here as refugees or as immigrants, because the kids recognize what an opportunity they have and do much better in a lot of ways than kids born here. We're losing that.

Do you have a comment?

1:30 p.m.

Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier

I totally agree.

In the appendix that I brought, which I'm going to leave with you, there's a list of recommendations that came out this year from community groups and human rights NGOs from Quebec. One of the main recommendations in terms of this temporary foreign worker program concerns the immigration system, the point system. So we have to see that this is related.

There's also one thing that I would like to say. Now we have the Canadian experience class program. Some of these temporary foreign workers are invited to apply for immigration. But one important thing that has to be understood here is that most human rights abuses of domestic workers are linked to the fact that there's an obligation to get the sponsorship from the employer. This is a mistake. I believe this is the wrong direction that PNPs, provincial nominee programs, are going in, and also this Canadian experience class program.

I'm not saying this is not good. If somebody is sponsored by an employer, that's great. Actually, that should count in the.... However, if there's abuse--and there have been cases and cases of employers saying, “I never hired her. I don't know her”--all abused people are deported. I'm just saying that we also have to think about things that appear to be detailed. In this immigration category, I think it's important to say that workers unions and NGOs must be allowed to sponsor, as well as employers, so that we don't deport people who are abused.

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle

Mr. St-Cyr.

1:35 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here today, Ms. Depatie-Pelletier. You've submitted a very comprehensive brief to us. You had a lot of things to tell us.

I would like to go back over a few points. First, in your presentation, you emphasized what you present as items that simply contravene the Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. No one here is judging, but you claim that these programs are simply unconstitutional.

1:35 p.m.

Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier

Exactly. According to the Charter, rights and freedoms cannot be restricted in Canada. The government may limit rights and freedoms, but that must be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. In this case—

1:35 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

You claim that isn't the case.

1:35 p.m.

Research Associate, Canada Research Chair on International Law of Migration, University of Montreal, As an Individual

Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier

Exactly. Furthermore, one of our main recommendations, which I'm going to leave with you, concerns the work permit that is currently linked to a single employer. It would be enough simply to limit it to an employment sector for everything to become constitutional and legal.

1:35 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

I'm going to go back to that because the committee discusses the subject a lot.

To your knowledge, has the constitutional aspect of these programs been challenged in one way or another?