Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 16th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Can I interrupt you? Do you have much more in your presentation? We generally like to cut it off at about seven minutes so we can allow some interaction between our members and the panel.

First of all, we'll have Madam Folco.

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

Thank you, Mr. Wyman and Madam Mills.

There's so much to say, and I don't want to repeat myself on some of the things I said earlier this morning.

On Bill C-50, Mr. Wyman....

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Chair--

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

I'm not going to go there, Mr. Komarnicki.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

This witness knows better. The hearing is not on that. He's gone way off and made some accusatory remarks that are off base, and I just want to be sure that we don't--

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

For the benefit of everyone, including our witnesses, we've had some disagreement as we've gone along, simply because our mandate was to study these three things: temporary foreign workers, immigration consultants, and Iraqi refugees. We have been a little bit lenient when people have gone into Bill C-50.

For the benefit of our witnesses, again, we have agreed, as a committee, that we're going to study Bill C-50. It will be the subject of hearings on April 28, actually. So Bill C-50 won't be rushed through or glossed over. We will be having full consultations on Bill C-50.

Anyway, let's try not to get too heavily into Bill C-50. Let's try to confine our remarks, as much as we can, to these three topics we've been mandated by the House of Commons to study.

Now, as chair, I'm not going to bring the hammer down on people who wish to make reference to Mr. Wyman's remarks. Everyone will have an opportunity, including the parliamentary secretary. But let's not make Bill C-50 the subject of this hearing. It is temporary foreign workers, Iraqi refugees, and immigration consultants we're looking at here.

With that comment, I would ask members to police themselves. Don't have me interrupt and bring the hammer down every time, because that's not the purpose of the meetings. We don't want to do that. Police yourselves, please, and be as judicious as you can be in your comments.

Go ahead, Madame Folco.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll police myself, but I'm absolutely not a good policewoman—not of myself.

Let me say, Mr. Wyman, that I entirely agree with what you have said about the arbitrary powers of the minister, and so on. I won't go into the details. All I wish is that what you have presented to us this morning, you will let as many people know as you can across Canada, and particularly in your own province and within your own network, that this is how you feel about this, and this is how some other members of Parliament feel as well, including me and my colleague, Mr. Telegdi, from the Liberal Party. That's all I want to say about it.

It's a bad bill. There are all sorts of things one could say. We are in agreement with you on this. Please, we do our own work: I'm doing work in Montreal, which is my home base, and I hope you will continue to do your own work in Halifax.

Having said that, and for what it's worth, I'm not sure that the whole question of bringing in low-skilled workers as opposed to high-skilled workers, which Madam Mills referred to, was really a political way of winning votes, if you like, which is what I think you were suggesting. My take on this is that there was a need for this. Where we went wrong, whichever government it was, is that once these people came in, we didn't allow them, for the most part, to actually practise the jobs they came to Canada for. Obviously, I'm thinking of doctors and engineers.

There's a joke among us, or the people who are involved with immigration, that the best place for a woman to have a baby is in a taxi, because the chances of the taxi driver being a doctor are very high, and she will immediately get fantastic service and aid from the taxi driver. It's a joke, but it happens to be partly true as well.

So I think the mistake was in not making sure that once these people came in, with their high skills that are required here.... God knows, we need doctors. I come from the province of Quebec, where we need doctors in a big way—not just doctors, but also other people in the medical professions. But we're not doing anything, either the provincial governments or the federal government or the corporations, to make sure that once these people get into the country, whichever province they come to, they actually have a job to go to, which is what they were expecting when they got here. That's one aspect.

Regarding the low-skilled workers, when the huge wave of immigration came in after World War II in the fifties and sixties, practically all of the people had low skills. In Montreal, it was the Italians and the Greeks who built the roads. Because we had a new immigration policy, which said that when people came in they had the right to bring in their families, it allowed these people to bring in their families. We now have, as a result, a second and even a third generation who are totally Canadian.

I won't even refer to the horrible policies we had as a Canadian government regarding the Chinese railway workers, or the Hindus who were turned back, the Sikhs in particular, the Jews, or whomever. We've learned from our mistakes. But obviously, it seems that we have not learned enough from our mistakes. When temporary workers come in here and then have to leave, it is definitely wrong.

I wasn't part of the western part of the trip, but definitely in the Quebec and eastern part of the trip, if there's one thing this committee has learned, it's that people like you have made it very clear to us that the temporary foreign worker program has gaping holes in it, and it has to be looked at as a real program.

I say this because the question that arises from what you and others before you have said, Madam Mills, is the following: we have a new kind of labour market, where people can move around very easily and very quickly, not only across Canada but also from any country. If we're now bringing in people from Sri Lanka to work here for three or four months, it wasn't possible a generation ago. So we have a new type of labour market. We have new types of communications, whereby people see on their televisions in Sri Lanka, for example, that there are jobs in Canada.

So what can we do to protect our own Canadian workers? That has to be done too, and that is the government's responsibility as well--first of all, to protect our own workers and make sure that where there are jobs, they can go to these jobs, know about these jobs, and are paid well, but also to make sure that these people who come across will come across to the right jobs.

We know there's a lot of abuse in this program, and I think that contrary to.... I won't go back to Bill C-50, in our jargon, the new bill, but the whole temporary workers program has to be seen inside a larger program, which is the labour management program within Canada. I'm not talking about immigration here; I'm talking about labour management in terms of what's happening in the 21st century. I think this is what we really have to look at.

I know my chair is motioning to me, but that's the comment I wanted to make.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You go ahead, Ms. Mills, if you wish to make some comments on that.

[Gerry Mills]

I agree with all you're saying. I think if we're bringing in, in Alberta, for instance, more temporary foreign workers than we're bringing in permanent residents, then there's something wrong. There's a disconnect there that we need to truly look at.

I think with the low-skilled, high-skilled.... I hate the word “low-skilled”; people are skilled. We want everybody in Canada. We want low-skilled, middle-skilled, high-skilled--

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You want everybody to get in--skills are skills.

[Gerry Mills]

Exactly. We need people in Canada. We need to increase our population base. Right now, it's almost impossible to get in if you don't have a degree, if you don't speak English or French. We know that and you know that. It's really difficult.

We need a system whereby people can get in, instead of through the back door, which is what's happening right now through the temporary foreign worker route. That's not what we want.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Good.

Mr. Carrier, is it? You go right ahead.

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

Thank you.

I want to speak to Ms. Mills first. I missed part of your presentation since I received an important call. You are the president of an association of immigrant agencies. You made certain comments about temporary workers. I suppose you're concerned about both temporary workers and immigrants. Is that the case?

[Gerry Mills]

Our business is immigrants, so yes, we're always concerned about immigrants, but right now my comments were very much around temporary foreign workers.

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

You've no doubt heard about those who are temporary workers. Is that absolutely not one of your concerns?

[Gerry Mills]

I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.

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

You were concerned with immigrants. Here we're talking about temporary workers and undocumented workers. Do you have any comments to make on temporary workers? In your contacts with immigrants, some of them no doubt talk about the issues of temporary workers who are not immigrants. Is that one of your concerns? Do you have any comments to make on that subject?

[Gerry Mills]

What happens with us is that we're settlement agencies, and for the most part people don't understand the differences between temporary foreign worker, permanent resident, Canadian citizen.

When we get to the funding of services, that's when it becomes important. So people will walk through our doors and be a temporary foreign worker because they see “immigrant” and they see “English as a second language”. So yes, we see people, but in terms of service, it's very difficult to deliver services to many people, because we're not allowed to with Citizenship and Immigration Canada funding.

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

Thank you.

Now I'm going to ask Mr. Wyman a question. You've made some recommendations. Could you repeat your first recommendation to me?

[Kevin Wyman]

It is essentially that the government withdraw the present amendments.

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

Amendments of CPC, okay.

[Kevin Wyman]

The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

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

Earlier you noted that we didn't want to talk about that bill. We share your apprehensions, but we'll come back to that in subsequent discussions to avoid points of order.

However, you made a lot of other recommendations about current temporary workers. In particular, you recommended that there be a moratorium on deporting those who no longer have work permits and that we also proceed to regularize those cases. Since your concern is about poverty, have you observed that temporary workers are poorer than others and that they are exploited more?

[Kevin Wyman]

Most of what I could say about that, sir, is that we certainly hear about those circumstances from other associations with whom we're affiliated. Is that something we run into specifically in Halifax? I would have to say to you, no, it's not something that we specifically.... That's what I said: the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty recognizes it. We're not a service provider in this field. Our concern is more of a general nature, with the treatment of people and with the arbitrary powers that have crept into this.

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

Do you recommend that we proceed to regularize those who no longer have work permits or those who only have temporary work permits? Do you think their conditions would be improved if they were accepted as immigrants?

You say they shouldn't remain temporary workers, but that they should instead be recognized as Canadian citizens, in order to improve their living conditions. That's what I understand from your recommendation. If you're saying that temporary workers aren't mistreated more than others, it would be preferable to retain this system.

Could you clarify your opinion on that point?