Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First, I'll correct one thing. I don't appreciate the characterization of “the bureaucracy of this Conservative government”. The public service is professional and non-partisan regardless of the elected government, and I think we should recognize and appreciate their good work.
In terms of the consultations that the member asked about, there have been multiple consultations. The one to which she refers was started in 2011 and there's been a second round of negotiations recently, conducted by both my department and HRSDC. Minister Finley and I, together with other members of the government, met with stakeholders. I would be happy to provide Ms. Sims with a list of those who made submissions, but I could tell you that, for example, I met with a round table of union leaders and representatives of various business and employer groups. We tried to obtain balanced input on the program.
We recognize that we need to constantly calibrate the temporary foreign worker program to make sure it's working in the best interests of Canadians and the Canadian economy. Nobody wants to displace available Canadian workers through accessing people from abroad. However, we all recognize that there are acute labour shortages in various regions and industries.
I know Ms. Sims recognizes that because when I saw her at the heritage committee she and her colleagues were demanding that we provide faster and more streamlined access to temporary foreign workers to work in the video gaming industry. That was just one particular interest that they happened to be responsive to because, I guess, they'd been lobbied. But Mr. Chairman, there are multiple industries like that with evidence that they are facing acute labour shortages right across the skills spectrum.
In answer to the member's second question, I can say that labour market opinions were required in terms of the number of entrants into the temporary foreign worker program in 2011. I'm sorry I don't have more recent data. Among those workers, 70,000 came in on the basis of labour market opinions and 120,000 were exempt from labour market opinions. Those include the spouses of some temporary foreign workers, those coming in under free trade and provincial and territorial agreements, and people such as university researchers and those with intra-company transfers. But the largest category is people coming in under youth mobility agreements. That was about 55,000 people in 2011.
I think people perhaps don't really understand the breadth of what we call the temporary foreign worker program. Kids coming in from Australia for 10 months to work as ski instructors on their working holiday at Whistler are considered temporary foreign workers. They don't come with the intention of staying permanently. They're filling available jobs, and these are reciprocal agreements. That constitutes the single largest portion of the TFW program.