A report was issued in June 2020 looking at the conditions during March, April and May. It followed the work we had done previously. I can tell you that a year later we are in not the same crisis but a much deeper crisis. The housing conditions are bad, if not worse. The labour conditions are the same. The overall experience of migrant workers....
We are now in a third wave. People keep losing work, and people keep facing further exploitation. Either there are no vaccines or if there are vaccines, it's coercive. Last year when I was at committee, I called it “a human rights catastrophe”. We had migrant and undocumented people in conditions of great suffering.
Now I'm at a loss for an adjective. The federal government has made minor reforms. Twenty-seven thousand people were given permanent resident status, but only if they had high-wage work experience, which doesn't exist during COVID for most people.
The low-wage workers are the essential workers. They are the construction workers, the cleaners, the health care workers, the delivery workers, the retail workers and the workers in grocery stores. Those are the people we rely on. Those are the people we call “essential”, but those are the people we deny permanent residency in this country.
It's a very simple solution. We need to turn away and transform the immigration system away from one where there is temporariness and some undocumented persons. I'm saying have no work permits but just permanent residency for everyone. There is no other way to get any other rights in this country. That's just it. It's not about whether you stay or go; it's about whether you can access any basic rights.
Thank you.