With regard to charter compliance, it took until 2006 before security certificates got through the Supreme Court and became unconstitutional. That was a quarter of a century from when the charter was enacted. So I hope, Mr. Parliamentary Secretary, that you find a different line on charter compliance, because charter rights can be denied for a long time before they're dealt with by the courts.
I was here in 2002 when this thing was put through, and the committee was very much against it. I don't give a damn what any immigration ministers have said since I've been here, because basically they have all been pretty incompetent. Bureaucrats have run the department. So when they're talking about a minister's real power, it's bureaucratic power.
This thing was a total disaster. The reality is that we have a huge backlog, yes, but just imagine if you didn't have a backlog. What would that say about Canada? The fact of the matter is that you can find people in the backlog who the economy desperately needs right now. That is where we have a crisis. And we predicted it back in 2002, that blue-collar immigrants couldn't get in, labour couldn't get in.
Essentially the fault lies with the points system and how the points were allocated. If we want to keep the points system, which has been praised by all the countries we've looked at, be it Australia, New Zealand, Britain, or the United States, which have undertaken studies, for objectivity and clarity I think the fix has to be in fixing the points.
You mentioned allocating more for family. That makes sense. Allocating more for a job offer makes sense. Our points system is out of whack when you compare it to other countries in terms of being responsive.
So if we decide on that, and we want to keep the points system because we want to keep the objectivity of it, then we have to fine-tune the points system so that a job offer means a lot more in terms of getting in the queue. Once you're in the queue, we have to have a method of bringing people out of the queue--so if we need 100 welders, we can grab 100 welders from a backlog. That backlog now doesn't contain any welders, and that's the problem. The government is looking at temporary foreign workers, which I think is totally the wrong way to go in terms of satisfying the shortcomings of the present-day points system.
If we want to fix the system and we want to keep what is good about it, then we have to be a lot more responsive in terms of meshing the points system with the requirements for the country economically. Labourers are needed in this country, and the only way they can come in is either as refugees who happen to be labourers.... But in terms of the economic files, the only way they get in is through the temporary foreign worker program, which creates a whole slew of other problems where people are exposed to servitude, exploitation, and the list goes on and on.
My whole argument is, make the points system responsive to the needs of the economy, be able to fast-track people. Processing doesn't take that long. The only reason we have a backlog is that when we have 500,000 people applying, we take out 250,000. Well, guess what? The backlog will have grown by 250,000. There you have a backlog. But the big problem with this backlog is that we don't have welders and we don't have labourers.
People have expectations that if they come because of their degree and knowledge of the language, they're going to get some job that is commensurate with their experience. We heard evidence in committee of an engineer who comes here, can't find a job, and is very unhappy. In the meantime, you have a bricklayer who comes here and finds a job and is very happy.
I'd like to have you comment on that.