It's certainly an issue that the federal government is engaged in and looking at, not so much with regard to the seasonal agricultural worker program, perhaps, where individuals are coming for certain months and then returning on a seasonal basis. But the low-skilled pilot, which began about 10 years ago, grew dramatically in size during the economic boom of 2006-07, especially in western Canada. There you have low-skilled workers who are in Canada for multiple years on a continuous basis, who are not returning to their home country.
The growth in that program stopped in 2008, for evident economic reasons, and it has subsided a little bit. Nevertheless I think it is a policy preoccupation for the reasons that you laid out, sir. In addition to the provincial nominee programs, which do use about a quarter of their spaces for low- and semi-skilled workers, and therefore do provide a pathway to permanence for some of those low-skilled workers, it does raise the question of whether or not we should have concerns about developing those sorts of problems.
So far the order of scale is relatively small. I think the low-skilled pilot numbers peaked at about 25,000 in 2008 and have come down somewhat since. But I would agree with you that it's a serious policy issue worth discussing.