Thank you very much.
I think most Canadians are familiar with the exporting of workers from Newfoundland. A good friend of mine, Max Hussey, was the fire chief. He actually started off working in a factory and ended up being fire chief at the Waterloo Fire Department. Now he is happily retired to Ladle Cove in Gander. I think he's heading down to South Carolina next week to play a little golf.
Of course, we have Dr. James Downey, who was the president of our university, Ottawa University, and made huge contributions. So you certainly have been exporting them, and we have Newfoundland clubs right across the country. They're always great places to visit and the hospitality has been fantastic.
Let me tell you, we started three weeks ago in Vancouver, and the chair's disposition improved every day as we got closer to Newfoundland. The man was giddy yesterday when we came in, as soon as we touched Newfoundland airspace. This is a fantastic place, and I really like visiting and I am enjoying the hospitality.
You mentioned the underground economy. That's one of the issues we're studying, because the underground economy in many cases involves undocumented workers who are in an even more precarious position than the temporary foreign workers. The previous government was going to do a regularization so we could get them above ground and make sure they're paying taxes and not being exploited or used to undercut organized labour.
Anyway, the bureaucrats who tend to drive these things.... We're the politicians; we sit here and then ministers come and go. I've been on this committee for 10 years. Seven ministers have come and gone. None of them really get their teeth into the file before they're gone to someplace else, and then you get a new minister. So essentially what you have is the bureaucracy running the department.
This whole question of undocumented workers and the proposed changes coming to the immigration act were things that were tried even before I got on the committee 10 years ago. Quite frankly, this government is asleep at the switch, and they allowed that to happen because they were not aware of what they were doing and the bureaucracy finally got their viewpoint through. They couldn't get it through the previous six Liberal cabinet ministers, because the cabinet of the day was a little too smart. But in this one they did get it through.
I think you really need to make sure it's an issue that you will fight for, because, ultimately, we're probably going to be fighting an election on it, this and other issues.
The immigration policy we have tends to be very elitist, and I dare say 95% of the people who came to Canada...well, no, it would be higher than that. It depends on how far we go back, but 95% of the people who came to Canada who are Canadians now but were not born here would not be allowed to get into the country under today's rules. The reality is that we need people who can do labour and we need them here with their families. We need them here helping to build a country, not to be used and discarded once they're found to be redundant.
This is not dissimilar to what happened when the Chinese were brought in. They were brought in, and when their labour was no longer needed, there was an attempt made to discard them. It didn't happen, but, you know, it goes back historically.
I think it's really incumbent upon the labour movement to keep fighting to make sure that when you come and work in Canada, you're not going to be exploited. I think that's a very strong tradition we have, and I think it's something that really is worth fighting for, because we have to honour and respect labour; everybody does not have to be a rocket scientist. Rocket scientists have to live in houses. It takes people--carpenters, tradespeople, bricklayers, you name it, all the people who can't get into Canada today--to build those houses.
So that's the message I have for you.
As a question, because I want this on the record, would you agree that we should be doing it through an immigration policy, building this nation, instead of trying to bring in temporary foreign workers to be discarded at will?