Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here today. We've travelled a lot in Canada. We've talked about a lot of things, and from a fairly broad perspective. Yesterday once again, I had the opportunity to talk a little with the people from New Brunswick about how they integrate their francophone immigrants. I had a chance to speak with the people from the Fraser Institute about the economic imbalance in Canada. I had the opportunity to talk about the policy of accepting refugees in general and the immigration policy in general. The only taboo subject in this committee is Bill C-50. That defies understanding. That's probably because the government wants to wait to do its advertising in order to propagandize and indoctrinate the public before parliamentarians have the time to talk about it. It's paradoxical that the government finds it inappropriate to talk about Bill C-50 in the context of immigration policy, but considers it entirely normal and appropriate to talk about it in a fiscal policy context. That's ironic to say the least.
I was really lucky to be able to say all that without Mr. Komarnicki rising on a point of order.
That said, going back to the subject of your presentation today, you talked about worker protection. This subject has been coming back again and again since the start of our consultations, as has the issue of closed visas for temporary workers, in particular. A worker is assigned to a single employer, which gives that employer a disproportionate advantage. If the employment relationship is broken, the worker, to all intents and purposes, must return to his country.
It seems increasingly clear that that will have to change and that, in our report, we'll have to recommend an open visa, but restrict it to a specific employment area and to a specific province. We have to give workers the choice of changing businesses along the way, like any other workers.
That said, employers have told us that, when they bring in foreign workers, they have a certain number of expenses. They have to pay a recruitment firm, for airline tickets and so on. It also seems clear to me that, if we allow foreign workers to change jobs along the way, we must require new employers to compensate the first employer for the expenses he has incurred.
Do you think that would be a good compromise, a good solution, that would help workers, while respecting employers? My question is for both witnesses.