Here are a couple of quick points.The evidence you are stating regarding the provinces' requests for temporary foreign workers raises, fundamentally, a more serious question about what we're not doing in our country in training individuals to meet the skills needs of the economy.
That comes back to the whole transfer of responsibility from the federal government to the provinces. They have the resources, and yet they are not equipping their people with the skills needed.
What employers are doing, and we're seeing it again, and this needs to be highlighted in this process, is an abuse of the temporary foreign workers program. All you have to do, essentially, is file an application. Most of the procedures that are supposed to be followed by the department are not being followed, and essentially people have been brought in to work for minimum wage, or in some cases worse, and some in situations of abuse. We have tracked it in complaints we have filed with the department.
In regard to changes to the points system, there's no question that the points system brought a little more transparency and fairness to what had existed prior to that, but if there's going to be a thorough review of our immigration system, of course we need to look at it to ensure that if these are the categories employers have identified for which we need to bring in people, it is fair that they be given an equal amount of points, so that they could come into the country. Right now, they would not be qualified, because they're not the ones Canada wants. Essentially, we're mostly looking at skilled immigrants—and highly skilled immigrants, for that matter.
There are many changes we would consider or be supportive of respecting what the points system needs to reflect, given the current challenges we face in our economy, but the reality is that this is not the question we're asked.
I'll also ask Karl to comment on this, based on our knowledge of the temporary foreign workers program.