The reason I mention that is in my neck of the woods, in Waterloo, I'm growing used to being able to go around the block and touch every continent. That really is an enriching experience.
I mention that because there's a way you can attract visible minorities, such as allowing more of them to come together as a cluster so they have a community they can relate to, particularly when they start out. Watching migration over the years, that seems to work well, and also going to less populated areas. There are all sorts of places in Ontario where you never saw a visible minority person, except somebody, say a Sikh, comes in and runs a gas station, and brings in family members, and all of a sudden you have the population.
I really appreciated your comments on temporary foreign workers, and particularly when you referred to the Chinese head tax, because that's what Canada did—I wasn't here—to build the railway. They brought in the Chinese. When the job was done, they were looked upon as redundant and they tried to get rid of them. They didn't allow their families to come in.
The problem with the temporary foreign worker program is that in many cases, with lower skills, we're dealing with putting them in a position of servitude. I really shake my head.
Under today's rules, 95% of the people who came to this country as immigrants would never get in. I just have to look at people like Frank Stronach of Magna International; he wouldn't be here. Frank Hasenfratz of Linamar wouldn't be here. In my community.... I love this thing the BlackBerry, invented by Mr. Mike Lazaridis, who came here as a young boy, six years old, in the mid-1960s; his father would never be allowed in. I shake my head and I wonder what we're doing.
To the provincial people, I commend you. Using the provincial nominee program is excellent. We have gone coast to coast, and one of the questions I ask employers is “If you had a chance of hiring somebody who got here as a landed immigrant, who was here with their family, and temporary foreign workers with low skills can't bring their families, which doesn't make for a very healthy environment for them, would you prefer a temporary foreign worker or would you prefer a landed immigrant?” The answer has always been the landed immigrant. What really disturbs me is that we're keeping out people who obviously have helped build this country.
You mentioned undocumented workers. We have something like 200,000 to 500,000 undocumented workers. These are people who came here, for the most part, legally and their visas expired. One of the people referred to them as having “precarious status” in terms of immigration. The reason they used that terminology is that they don't want to create the impression that all these people who are undocumented now snuck in. There was a huge growth in the undocumented population between 2002, when the point system was changed, and now. People are saying we need mechanics, we need bricklayers, and these people can't get in.
From your end, provincially, I think you can push the federal government to open up as to who comes to this country. If you look at what happened to the waves of immigrants that came—the Hungarians, the Germans, the Italians, the Portuguese—they came here and they came here with a dream, which was to start a new life and to work hard. They themselves struggled, brought up their kids, and the kids have done really well. It built a wonderful mosaic.
So whatever you can do to push for a more sane point system that is not elitist.... The one we have now is elitist. Our educational systems, I've found, discriminate against trades. They don't teach trades in the schools. When I went to school, there used to be a vocational school option, which got eliminated because people said vocational schools were for dummies. Well, you know, we have a lot of university grads who are driving cabs and not working in their areas.
I'm not sure which province we talked to, but one province in the Maritimes asked that, instead of deporting undocumented workers, we send them to the Maritimes. It's a very necessary pool. If you took out the undocumented workers from Toronto, they would go into a major recession in the building trades, because we just don't have them.
So whatever you can do as a province to push for that would, I think, be very useful. We are in a competition for immigrants with other nations, and it's getting to the point that immigrants will go elsewhere, because we have a very cumbersome system. It doesn't have to be that cumbersome for the landed immigrant to come in. It can be just as effective and as quick as it is in the temporary foreign worker program, if we want to do it. So we need some push in that area.
Mr. Maicher, you mentioned undocumented workers. How many do you think you have? I know it's a tough question, but how many would you say you might have in the Maritimes whom you're aware of? Do you have any idea?