Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 14th, 2008

[Marc-André Dowd]

We'll talk more about the application of Quebec's Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, which comes within our area of jurisdiction.

As I said, this is a very close community. As there is a situation of very great vulnerability, there are few complaints, few incidents of whistle-blowing. There's also a major language barrier. It's a community that's hard to penetrate.

I'll simply say that very significant efforts are being made to increase awareness of rights. We've prepared a brochure in French and Spanish for agricultural workers. We ensure it is distributed so that agricultural workers know their rights when they are in Quebec. We have also established a project to inform workers in the Live-in Caregiver Program of their rights in English—

[Carole Fiset]

—in Tagalog and in French.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Dowd. Thank you, Mr. Blaney.

Mr. Telegdi is next.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Boudreau, Madame Folco asked a question. She asked what's different from when we got the Italians, the Croatians, the Hungarians, or Portuguese, or all the people who..... What they really had going for them is that they wanted to come to Canada, they wanted to work hard, and they wanted to build a country. My parents came in 1957 during the Hungarian revolution. You have a fair number of Hungarian Canadians now in Quebec.

I'll ask you the question I asked the business folk in Winnipeg. If you could get workers into Quebec who would fill those job vacancies as permanent immigrants and who would make a commitment to Canada and wanted to build a nation, wouldn't that be preferable to temporary foreign workers?

[Yvon Boudreau]

Absolutely, but that's something of a theoretical question. In actual fact—and we may lament it—it takes a certain time—some say nearly two years—to go through the entire immigrant selection procedure.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Let me stop you there, Mr. Boudreau. There were 40,000 Hungarian refugees who ended up in Austria. Within less than six months, 90% of them were in Canada. So it's not impossible.

We have a bureaucratic system that doesn't respond to the needs of the market. The 2002 change in the point system was a total, complete, utter disaster. I agree with you wholeheartedly. We need mechanics, we need bricklayers, we need carpenters, we need people in the trades, and we need to be working with our unions, instead of setting up a situation where temporary foreign workers are brought in and create a very hostile environment.

The only thing I would say to your group is this: demand that the government pay attention to immigration. In the last two years—in less than one year—this government brought in two ministers, neither one of whom knew anything about citizenship and immigration. Unfortunately, while I'd love to say that the Liberal ministers preceding them were much more knowledgeable, they weren't.

Until we have the political will and the demand that we don't want to become a country of servitude, where we have temporary foreign workers.... Take a look at what happened to Germany, with their guest worker program. It can create all sorts of problems. Having a whole pile of single males coming here, with their families far away, is a horrific situation to work in.

Yes, I agree with you, it's totally inexcusable that it takes so long for people to get here. But I don't think the answer is to bring in temporary foreign workers who can be exploited. And I agree, in terms of why they haven't accessed the charter, that for a temporary foreign worker to get to the Supreme Court of Canada is virtually impossible. It's bad enough for groups that are from here to get there.

I think, Monsieur Boudreau, you might want to push the government and tell them not to take us down this path. I can tell you that bureaucrats have been trying to do this ever since I was first in this Parliament, and that goes back many years. They tried to put in place a system exactly like this, whereby we use people and discard them.

Well, the fact of the matter is that we need people to come in and to help build this country, and there are very legitimate situations for low-skilled people. Mr. Mike Lazaridis, the inventor of the BlackBerry I'm holding, would never get in here today. He is now employing 6,000 Canadians, and I'll bet you in the next year it's going to be 10,000 Canadians, and it's going to be more and more. Frank Stronach would never get into the country today. Frank Hasenfratz of Linamar would never get into the country today.

The problem we have is that we have a dysfunctional system, but dammit, we can demand from the politicians that they fix it, and demand it from whichever government is in power, because this exploitation that we're undertaking with temporary foreign workers is not helping to build Canada.

[Yvon Boudreau]

If I put on my hat as a representative of a business employers organization, I entirely share your point of view. One of the major purposes of immigration is nevertheless to contribute to the wealth of Canadian society and, in particular, through labour market entry. As you said, when you have a job, the rest comes somewhat in addition to it.

I'm simply trying to say that, in actual fact, immigration is not entirely a placement agency. It's a little more complicated than that. I can understand that there are other objectives and that, especially in these years after 2001, that a certain number of checks have to be done and that that takes a little time, even though we can deplore the fact that there indeed seems to be more bureaucracy in this sphere of activity. I willingly admit that. We can clearly do better, and go faster. Some criteria used to select immigrants clearly help submerge employment-related criteria. There is a kind of dilution of these criteria. So I agree with you.

However, having regard to all that—and I'll close on this point—it is important that, while working very hard, while insisting that government simplify these procedures, we also have a mechanism or a release valve, as it were, that is faster, temporary workers, while putting in place conditions so that these workers are not exploited. In that respect, I entirely agree with the organizations that have testified here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Carrier, you have the last six minutes. Go right to it, sir.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm going to continue in the same vein and speak to Mr. Boudreau as well.

You tell us that the labour shortage in certain technical fields is filled by temporary workers, and you justify that by saying that the immigration process is too long. So we quickly resort to temporary workers. The fact remains that we act as though they were goods to be used one year and set aside the following year. However, the testimony we've heard in the past two weeks in various regions of the country has made us aware of all the problems this causes for temporary workers.

Other workers have suggested that we grant permanent residence to those who come to work here for a number of consecutive years. However, the backlog of unprocessed immigration applications has been highlighted and we've wondered whether granting permanent residence to these workers wouldn't mean favouring them to the detriment of those who filed applications a long time ago. That's a whole issue.

We see that the use of temporary workers is merely a short-term solution that we repeat year after year. Mr. Telegdi cited the example of Hungarian immigrants who arrived in large numbers because there was an urgent labour need. You said that the people who were granted permanent residence also had to meet other non-work-related criteria. We want them to be good citizens for the country.

If you had the choice, would you press the government to accelerate the immigration process and establish specific criteria to meet labour needs in each of the regions, which would eliminate the necessity of resorting to temporary workers?

[Yvon Boudreau]

The federation has spoken out on the increase in the number of immigrants admitted each year. That number is currently 45,000 and, according to one of its scenarios, the Quebec government wants to increase it to 55,000. The federation agrees. Since we'll be short of labour, it's just as well to see to the matter immediately.

Of course, we want these people to integrate into the economy as quickly as possible, to occupy jobs for which it is hard to recruit. We will clearly prefer by far to make use of permanent residents rather than temporary workers. However, it's not necessarily one or the other.

There are seasonal jobs. Harvests normally last only a few months. I don't see why we would look for people who would then stay here permanently and have all the troubles in the world keeping themselves busy the rest of the year. Many countries in the world make recurrent use of temporary workers. In addition, the number of persons they use is much higher than here, but they do things in an entirely proper way.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

What percentage of the 25,000 temporary permits is granted to seasonal workers?

[Yvon Boudreau]

Approximately 5,000 permits are intended for agricultural workers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I think Madam Fiset has a comment she wants to make.

Did you have a comment?

[Carole Fiset]

I'd like to answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay, you go ahead.

[Carole Fiset]

For eight or 10 months, there is indeed a turnover of foreign seasonal workers. They mainly come to work in the agricultural sector. You're right. However, and this is also true for old stock Quebec workers, regional agreements are reached with processing businesses which must process their food products during the rest of the year. There is often a labour shortage in this sector in the regions.

Temporary seasonal agricultural workers could very well stay in the country as permanent residents because, during the rest of the year, they could meet labour shortages in the processing industry. I know because I've seen that commonly happens, particularly in Montérégie. The argument concerning harvest and planting times and so on should be qualified. Once again, it's not certain that this labour force couldn't have work throughout the year.

[Yvon Boudreau]

I'm going to cite another example. Take the tourist industry. The tourist industry's peak period in Mexico is winter. Here it's summer. We could completely meet the needs of Mexican workers who come to work here in the summer during the tourist season and who return home in winter through an arrangement that would be acceptable. Everyone would benefit from it. But the primary purpose is first to recruit permanent immigrants who meet the needs of our labour market. There's no doubt about that.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you.

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Your time is up. Do you have one last little question? Madam Folco has a point she wants to make.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

I wanted to tell the people from the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse that I very much appreciated their recommendation that there be a right of association adapted to temporary workers and even a structure to oversee that right.

According to your recommendation, who would be responsible for that? Would it be the Commission des normes du travail? How would that be managed?

[Marc-André Dowd]

We don't have a specific model. It remains to be developed. For example, we wondered how we would include the right to be consulted. Very simply put, we could conduct a survey or administer a questionnaire at the end of the season and ask what working condition problems they had had and what should be improved the following year. There we would have an initial reaction to the problems experienced by the people directly involved. Currently we don't even have that reaction.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Did you have a point of information you wanted to give us?

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

I would like to submit a proposal. Let's refer to the history of domestic workers. When I was in the Quebec government, as Ms. Fiset will remember, we worked very hard so that those workers could become permanent residents after two years. We did a lot of work on that at the time. I wonder what prevents us from doing the same thing for temporary workers.

I could submit that recommendation to the committee. Temporary workers could have access to permanent residence under certain conditions. We can study the details at another time. That would meet the needs of the industry, as Mr. Boudreau clearly indicated, and the needs of these temporary workers.

Going back to the Italians, the Italians didn't do much in winter. They stayed at home and did small jobs, like everyone does.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you very much for coming in today. You've given us a lot of really good information, and I'm sure it will be very valuable to our analysts and to us, as a committee, when we do our report.

Pardon me?

[Carole Fiset]

Can we do a conclusion?