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?