Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, perhaps I may respond to two aspects of the honourable member's issues.
At the very beginning of his seven minutes, he mentioned that the federal government and the minister herself are committed to speaking to the provinces and territories. Now it's his own admission to draft out future issues on immigration and skilled workers. By his own admission he has acknowledged that only the provinces and territories are to be consulted.
What I think has been a consensus here.... I'm not sure what the other witnesses have said, but at least the six of us sitting at this table are somewhat unanimous that there needs to be some sort of method of addressing the matter from the grassroots level, the people who are in the field, the people who are there, not the people who are sitting on Parliament Hill away from the common people. I'm not saying you are away from the people, but as a reality a lot of your work may not involve dealing with people's lives, one on one, in front of us.
You mentioned that the safeguards are there, but at the same time we've had sunset clauses on a lot of laws that never came to pass, and that's what I wanted to address. The issue of skilled workers, all those names you took, honourable members, we understand, and I understand, all those agencies, whether it was the Canada India Foundation, or whatever, were all agencies, organizations, and employers who were siding with the government on the skilled worker issue.
We don't have an issue. We understand the immigration legislation needs to be fixed. The immigration backlog needs to be fixed. But there are aspects of this that are way too broad for the mandate of only fixing the immigration problem and encouraging skilled workers to come to Canada. The issues are much deeper than that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.