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?