Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 16th, 2008

[Cordell Cole]

Thank you.

Moving forward, I think there are some steps that could be improved upon when we're looking to determine whether or not our country needs to bring in temporary foreign workers for the construction industry. One I mentioned briefly before is the consultation process with industry stakeholders. I believe that's key. Why should we bring temporary foreign workers in when there are workers available, skilled Canadians who are unemployed?

If it's deemed that temporary foreign workers are needed, then I would suggest that we look first to our neighbours to the south, to the U.S., to see if there are skilled tradespeople available there. They have virtually the same qualifications as the skilled construction workers in Canada.

We also must ensure that temporary foreign workers brought in to fill these skill shortages have the same qualifications.

We should make sure that these people, when they're brought in, are treated the same as the Canadian worker doing the same job on the same site—meaning that they get the same pay and the same benefits, and also that Canadian workers are afforded the same lodging and transportation per diem as companies would give the temporary foreign workers when they come in.

To summarize, the construction industry is cyclical. We had the boom and bust cycles. It varies from area to area. With the temporary foreign worker issue, we must ensure that skilled Canadians are employed first. Let's embrace the thought of training our youth, because they are looking for the training. As I said, there's a lot of them now who can't get into the training programs. Perhaps money should be made available to build more training centres. Again, let's look at bringing our aboriginal communities into the skilled trades, because I believe they will embrace it as well.

That pretty much wraps up my submission

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I thought HRDC had a mobilization program, that if a worker from Halifax, Nova Scotia, had a job out in Alberta, he could get his way paid and could be moved out on at least one occasion. Isn't that still in place?

[Cole Cordell]

That's only if it's a permanent move. If you're going out there to work for six months in the oil field, there's no reimbursement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay.

I want to compliment you and your staff here at the Prince George. It's a wonderful hotel. I've never had a better sleep on the road than I had here last night. And the service is absolutely wonderful.

We have about 30 minutes, so we'll go to a seven-minute round. You can divide it any way you want.

Mr. Telegdi.

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

Thank you very much. We did have a good night, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

It was a wonderful night.

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

We went out for dinner together, so we're working across party lines. All night long--well, not quite all night.

I mentioned to the chair that whenever I stay at a hotel I leave a tip for the cleaning woman because that's what my mother used to do. It's touching. She was underemployed, and eventually she got a position commensurate with her experience.

I think of the demographics. When I grew up as a baby boomer it was tough back in those days to get a job, and I'm sure it was the same across Canada.

We were out yesterday and saw the Bubbles Mansion and Peddler's Pub. They wanted servers, server support, barbacks, line cooks, prep cooks, and dishwashers.

There's something seriously wrong with our immigration system. There are all sorts of people out there who want to come to this country. They will work in menial labour and low-end jobs to help build this country. You cannot have a country that relies totally on high-tech people and high-end jobs.

The person who invented this, Mike Lazaridis, would not get here today. They're establishing a call centre in Dartmouth and will have 1,000 employees. Here's a person who came here as a six-year-old boy in the mid-sixties. His father was an apprentice tradesman. He would not be allowed in today. So our immigration is off track.

Look at the communities. What is Canada about? We had the Chinese who came in as labourers. We had the Ukrainians who came in as labourers. The Italians came in as labourers. The Portuguese, the East Indians, the blacks--people from all over the world came in as labourers. The parents of people who have been here for a while might have been labourers. There's no better example than the Ukrainians. They were the men in the sheepskin coats. The country needed them to tame the prairies, and without doing that the country would be broke now.

Look at the parliamentary secretary. He's a lawyer. When you look at the Ukrainian community as a whole, they are doing very well--and the Chinese Canadians. Everybody has done well who has lived here for a certain period of time. So we have really gone off track with this temporary foreign worker program.

When I ask employers if they would prefer a temporary foreign worker or somebody who is landed in Canada, invariably they say they want a person who is landed in Canada, but it takes so long to get them here. The problem is not the people. The problem is with an immigration system that has become so bloody elitist that it doesn't supply the people needed to build the country.

If you had your choice and could get either a temporary foreign worker or a landed immigrant who was glad to take the job, which one would you want?

[Carol Logan]

Are you talking to me or Lynn?

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

I'll put it to all of you. If you have a temporary foreign worker and a landed immigrant, they'll do those jobs. We need those people to do the jobs at the end of the economy that other people will not do. It's just that simple, and we have done that historically.

[Lynn McDonagh Hughes]

Ideally we would want the landed immigrant. The reality is that our sector is one of the fastest growing, and we do not have enough people to work in the industry here. Even with the aboriginal community, which is the only youth community that is growing, we still do not have enough people here. Using temporary foreign workers is a solution for us now, but it's not a long-term solution. This will not go away. It's going to get worse for our industry, especially in line-level occupations.

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

Tim Hortons hired 100 people from the Philippines to work at Tim Hortons. They are university graduates. They'll stay long enough to get landed and they'll be gone. They're not going to work at Tim Hortons. It doesn't make sense to me, from a business perspective, to stick people in jobs they're going to leave.

I'll pass it on.

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

Thank you.

Yes, service with a smile is very pleasant.

One of the things I like about what you presented to us this morning is the fact that to make the system work in your particular locale, you have prepared what we call, in Quebec, the whole society. That is, you've prepared the staff and said that these people are coming, this is what it means to you, and this is how we want to work. You've also prepared the people who are coming in from the outside.

That's a model a lot of people do not follow. Mind you, it is perhaps the kind of employment and the fact that it's in a hotel, in a closed environment, which lends itself to this. Nonetheless, you did do it, and I'd like to commend you for this. This is an important aspect of what happens to the temporary workers.

In many instances--not all of them, by any means--they're brought to Canada and they're dumped into some isolated place. Some of them don't even know how to get to a telephone, because there isn't one where they are, and so on. So what you have done is to be commended.

I would like to address my remarks to Mr. Cole. Mr. Cole, I'm not an expert on the construction and building trades. However, my understanding is that one of the big problems for the construction and building trades is that there is very limited mobility across Canada for people who exercise these trades. Am I correct?

[Cordell Cole]

Thank you.

Actually, we have a very mobile workforce. As I mentioned earlier, we are sending people to the west. Many--

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

But there isn't just the west, Mr. Cole; you could send people to Quebec.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

It is wherever the unions call.

[Cole Cordell]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

If the union calls, and they're looking for....

[Cordell Cole]

Yes, that's right. I'm using the west because that really is the focal point for sending workers now.

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

Are you telling me that mobility for the construction and building trades is the way it should be, that a worker can go to whichever province he wants to go to and he can get a job and everything is fine? That's if there is a job, obviously.

[Cole Cordell]

Yes. The way the system works now is that once the local area people are working and the need comes for more skilled people, they will call the other areas and ask if they have unemployed people they can send. Then we will dispatch those unemployed people.

The problem is that it's very costly for the people to pack their bags and get on the plane.

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

This is very interesting. My understanding was that it was very difficult for people to go to certain provinces--perhaps not all--and be legally employed, because the provincial trade councils would not....

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

It depends on whether they belong to an international union association. If you happen to be an ironworker, you'd belong to the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers, and they have scope right across the country. Even down in the States, when certain states might run short of iron workers, for instance, they'll call up the unions in Canada and ask them to send their people down.

[Cole Cordell]

That's correct.

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

In fact, the question I addressed to you could have been addressed to another council that deals with other skills, not necessarily building and construction skills. That's what I was trying to say to you.

[Cordell Cole]

The problem is not with the ability to move people across the country. The problem is the financial restraints people have in moving from place to place. So my point was that if we could put a program in place so they could claim some of these expenses and perhaps get a rebate on their income tax....