Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 15th, 2008

[John Robison]

Yes, I assist companies with the recruitment aspect of foreign workers coming to Canada.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

So you go outside Canada, you recruit someone and you bring the person back here. The business needs help recruiting workers, but workers often need help too. They often have to deal with a consultant.

Do you offer those people that kind of service?

[John Robison]

No, I'm not a member of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, so I can't do immigration work for these individuals. I process applications and do interviews with references. I do the preliminary work for transportation or trucking companies. I also handle their referrals, when they want to help someone get a labour market opinion, etc., and I assist in that capacity.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

When you have recruited someone outside Canada and that person needs help with the immigration process, do you refer the person to one of the three official consultants who belong to CSIC, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants?

[John Robison]

Yes, I either refer them to members of CSIC or to a legal firm, an immigration lawyer, who will assist them. Some companies will help the employees themselves, but most are not geared to do that part of the task.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

So your firm has never given advice or helped people in that process for pay. It deals only with the employer.

[John Robison]

No, once a foreign worker is here, we don't represent them in their application for permanent resident status. We will act as a liaison to the degree they would like us to do that. We generally know the kind of documentation they're going to require when they come to Canada. As you know, the documentation has to be translated into English or French. But we do not work on the immigration process ourselves. We are a recruitment firm.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

You just told me that you don't work as a consultant for the permanent resident status application part, but you help the workers in their application for temporary worker status. Is that right?

[John Robison]

That's right.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

That's a narrow and not very clear line. In the Act, or the spirit of the Act, all consultation work has to be done by members of CSIC.

[John Robison]

That's right.

Anyone who works in the industry has an immigration consultant. By law, in Canada, the person must be a member of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants or a lawyer.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

One of the things Mr. Doyle talked about was the fact that the trucking industry is known for having low requirements, low skills and low knowledge.

That's a little odd. My brother works in that industry. He had to take a fairly lengthy training course and he has to have fairly complex skills and knowledge. You say that this classification doesn't create any problems in selection. You also say that it means that the employer has to provide funds to pay for a return ticket. Apart from that, you say it doesn't cause any problems.

Do the people who work in the trucking industry have a closed visa, a visa assigned to a particular employer, like other temporary foreign workers?

[John Robison]

Most of the work permits that are granted will state that the person shall work for one employer only, and that's the employer that's named on the visa. Nevertheless, work permits can be changed. Some employees actually leave their initial employer and go to work for another employer. There is a process they need to follow to get a new work permit, which means getting a new labour market opinion and then applying for the work permit. So they can indeed change employers, even though the initial work permit will often state that the person can work for that named employer only.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We'll got to Mr. Carrier.

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

Good morning, Mr. Robison. You will notice that you have two Bloc Québécois members questioning you. We do regret the absence of the Conservative Party members and some of the Liberals. We take our work seriously.

Based on what you do, what proportion of temporary workers are you looking for, as compared to potential immigrants?

[John Robison]

Yes.

The only workers I will assist with are those in a foreign country, and it is only those who are coming here as temporary foreign workers. There's a reason for that. In the trucking industry, generally speaking, when employers need someone, they need someone relatively quickly. Applying regularly as a permanent resident would take so long that the position wouldn't be available when the employee gets here. It's just too long a process. The combination of temporary foreign worker, together with the provincial nominee program, in my view, is a wonderful combination and does serve the industry very well.

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

I want to get a clear understanding of the work you do and follow up on what my colleague was asking you earlier. I assume that at some point these people need an immigration consultant, given that you want to recruit people as effectively as possible. You talked about that a little. I have to assume that you refer these people to immigration consultants to finish their cases, despite your own familiarity with it.

Do you refer them to an immigration consultant automatically?If so, to whom do you refer them? Do you refer them only to members of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, or to other consultants? As we know, there are some who aren't members of CSIC, they may work parallel to it.

[John Robison]

Yes, I am fully familiar with the process, and I would not be referring a candidate to a person who is not a full member of CSIC. There are legal firms that will help. You also have to hold in mind that the citizenship and immigration system is pretty user-friendly, with rather clear instructions to individuals who wish to process their own documents.

The persons who would have the most problems, I would think, would be those who would not speak English that well. Someone who is reasonably sharp can catch the process from the website of Citizenship and Immigration Canada quite easily.

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

You refer to speaking English. Given that I am a francophone from Canada and that New Brunswick is an officially bilingual province, I'm wondering whether you also recruited or tried to recruit candidates who can speak French. Do you give them training in French, to help the present government improve the status of French in New Brunswick?

[John Robison]

We are by all means. I appreciate your point, but there is a fact you need to be aware of in this particular industry: virtually all the trucks of the trucking companies in Atlantic Canada also go into the United States. In other words, they must get across the American border, and the truck driver must be able to communicate with the customs officials, immigration officials, police officials, and weigh scale operators. Some of the people on the border in the United States are not too tolerant of those who can't speak English fairly well, so that's the reason.

An individual has every right to apply for immigration in French or English. That's not a problem in itself. The problem is really created though the cross-border nature of the trucking industry, since the Americans are the ones who require the English-speaking competence.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. St-Cyr.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I thought of a few questions in the meantime. The exercise we are conducting across Canada is helping us to understand what goes on. We are talking a lot about temporary foreign workers, and we are starting to get a good picture of the situation. Where it becomes more difficult is in the grey areas. We have less information about undocumented workers because they are reluctant to come here to testify. The same is true for the people referred to as ghost consultants. People are reluctant to come and testify because they are often in delicate situations. For those two categories of people, the advantage of a parliamentary committee is that they are protected by parliamentary privilege, which means that they cannot be held liable for what they say before a committee, provided that they tell the truth, obviously.

You do recruiting outside Canada. I know that in some provinces, in Alberta, if I recall correctly, there is a specific prohibition against recruiting agencies charging fees to the people recruited. The employer alone pays the recruiting fees. Does New Brunswick have that kind of prohibition? What is the practice in your business? Does it charge the employer and the person recruited, only the employer or only the person recruited? That will give me a better idea of the situation.

[John Robison]

It is charged to both in the following manner. Local employers in the trucking industry have been very resistant to pay total costs, in this part of the country, for recruiting. I'm aware that in some of the western provinces that is indeed a requirement.

What local companies seem to be prepared to do in this part of the country is to help rather significantly in settlement within the community. Some companies will do this themselves, but most are not equipped to do it. There seems to be no hesitation to pay for assistance to help with the settlement functions.