Evidence of meeting #15 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was caregivers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Vice President, Investment Attraction, Toronto Global
I will see if we have that data. If we have it, I would be delighted to provide it. I will do my best.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Again, thank you to all the witnesses for their excellent testimony and their contribution to this important study.
We are going to suspend for five to 10 minutes so that we can transition to the next panel.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Welcome back to our second panel today.
For the benefit of our new witnesses, I'd like to make a few comments.
For those on Zoom, as a reminder, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mic, and kindly mute yourself whenever you are not speaking so that we can make sure we avoid any background noise. As well, at the bottom of your screens, you can select the appropriate channel for interpretation: floor, English or French.
For those in the room, I encourage everyone to use an earpiece and select the desired channel.
As always—and this is more toward our witnesses—kindly wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. All comments should be addressed through the chair.
I'd like to formally welcome our three witnesses for our second panel this afternoon.
We have Mr. Doug Parton, business manager and financial secretary for Ironworkers Local 97.
From the World Education Services, we have Ms. Shamira Madhany, managing director, Canada, and deputy executive director.
From the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, we have Mr. Peter Copeland, who's the deputy director of domestic policy.
Each one of you will have five minutes to give opening remarks, after which we will go to rounds of questions.
I'm going to begin with Mr. Parton of the Ironworkers Local 97 for five minutes please.
Doug Parton Business Manager and Financial Secretary, Ironworkers Local 97
Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Doug Parton, and I am the business manager of the Ironworkers Local 97, representing more than 2,400 members across British Columbia. Our members build bridges, towers, dams—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Mr. Parton, could pause for a second? You have put something in front of your camera. We prefer to see you to make sure you're not an AI-generated voice. Thank you.
Business Manager and Financial Secretary, Ironworkers Local 97
All right.
We build LNG sites, public transit and industrial projects to keep our province and our country powered and moving.
Ironworkers take great pride in our craft. We invest heavily in apprenticeship skills development and safety. Every person in our craft knows they're part of something bigger: building communities and building Canada. Our role is to supply labour.
That is why this issue matters so much. The temporary foreign worker program's construction stream was meant to be a last resort when no local labour was available for critical infrastructure. However, in British Columbia, and particularly in our trade, it has been used far too often and not as intended.
We are seeing employers using the program as a business model for cheaper, untrained labour, not as a measure of last resort. They are claiming shortages that don't exist and are using temporary foreign workers to drive down wages and to bypass Canadian tradespeople who are ready and able to work, tradespeople who invested in their training and skills development.
In fact, the federal job bank wage data lists rates as much as $10.44 below the hourly wage actually paid in our industry. The flawed data leads to bad actors who claim a shortage, and who import cheaper labour to avoid paying fair collective agreement and PLA-negotiated wages. Multi-employer agreements, freely negotiated, represent an accurate market perception, or they would not be agreed to.
This wage suppression isn't just about fairness; it's about the ability to make a living. When federal wage benchmarks undervalue construction work by $10 or more per hour and do not consider benefits packages, it only drives down the market. It also leaves workers unable to afford housing, food and transportation in the very communities they help to build.
The government has defined the prevailing wage as related to an eligibility for investment tax credits, and this is one of our recommendations. The number of TFWs brought in under the construction scheme is disproportionately high, despite a strong local workforce and record union investments in training.
This not only hurts our members but also weakens apprenticeship recruitment, undermines career pathways for young Canadians and creates unsafe conditions for workers unfamiliar with Canadian standards and job site expectations.
Safety is not negotiable in our trade. Ironworking is dangerous and technical and demands rigorous training. When the system allows unverified labour to enter work sites through loopholes, it puts everybody at risk. We cannot compromise safety for cost.
These are our recommendations.
The first is to require consultation with union and local building trades before approving any trade-related LMIA so that we can confirm whether local workers are available. If there is an available supply, the employer should not be granted an LMIA.
Second, replace the job bank standards with accurate, collectively bargained prevailing wages that reflect the livable wages and the real cost of living in provinces like B.C.
Third, restrict TFW access to employers who invest in the training of Canadians and who have a clear apprenticeship plan to transition back to a domestic workforce.
Business Manager and Financial Secretary, Ironworkers Local 97
Finally, pause any approvals while a review of the new framework is in place.
We support immigration done right. We respect every worker who contributes to building this country. But we must ensure that the system reflects Canadian values, fairness and opportunity for all. Our message is simple: Invest in Canadian workers first. Give us the tools and training capacity and we will meet Canada's labour needs right away, with a safe, skilled, homegrown workforce that strengthens our economy and provides meaningful careers in the trades.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Thank you so much, Mr. Parton.
We will now go to Ms. Madhany for five minutes, please.
Shamira Madhany Managing Director, Canada and Deputy Executive Director, World Education Services
Thank you, Madam Chair.
My name is Shamira Madhany. I am the deputy executive director and Canadian managing director of World Education Services, WES.
On behalf of WES, I'm pleased to contribute to this study on Canada's immigration system. WES has been one of five organizations designated by IRCC to provide educational credential assessments under express entry. In 2024 alone, WES processed more than 251,000 applications as part of our broader mission as a not-for-profit social enterprise that supports immigrants, refugees and international students.
Today I will focus on how the immigration system can be renewed and strengthened to support Canada's future. As we know, immigration has been foundational to our economic prosperity and social identity. Recently, however, support for immigration has eroded. Policy responses favour short-term fixes over long-term planning.
To build one Canadian economy, we must fully integrate immigrant talent into our labour market and embed immigration into our social fabric. The reality is that more than 20% of Canadians are over 65. Canadians' productivity continues to lag and our GDP is declining, and yet we have one of the most educated populations of G7 countries. This is partly because we have such a highly educated immigrant population where one in three immigrants is underemployed. We have all experienced a conversation with an Uber driver who is a trained surgeon or civil engineer, or perhaps even a nurse. The scale and scope of this skills mismatch costs us up to $50 billion in GDP annually.
As the federal government embraces immigration as a nation-building strategy, Canada needs coherent coordination mechanisms and systematic reforms to ensure that newcomers and all Canadians can thrive for generations to come. To advance this vision, WES offers three reinforcing recommendations.
First, levels planning must go beyond numbers alone. It must be guided by clear objectives, principles and measurable outcomes. This can be achieved by creating a new cross-departmental coordinating body, including such key federal ministries as IRCC, ESDC and Health Canada. A whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach means immigration planning must be part of a cross-functional effort to advance national economic and social goals, including infrastructure initiatives, accessible housing and closing Canada's skills gap.
Second, we must address the mismatch in skills through a national skills strategy that includes immigrant skills recognition and labour mobility. On the one hand, Canada invites professionals in health care and skilled trades through our immigration system. On the other hand, we allow these skills to go to waste. Research shows that 47% of internationally educated health care professionals are working outside their field or are underemployed. Meanwhile, the federal government anticipates a shortage of more than 117,000 nurses by 2030 and 20,000 family doctors by 2031. A harmonized skills strategy future-proofs Canada's workforce and positions immigration levels planning as a core foundation for population renewal and economic growth.
Third, we need a comprehensive transition plan with clear pathways from temporary to permanent residency. The federal government has prioritized permanent immigration as the foundation of its strategy, and yet there's limited detail on transitioning temporary residents, including how many will gain pathways and on what timeline.
Managing Director, Canada and Deputy Executive Director, World Education Services
Many temporary residents have been in Canada for years, employed, paying taxes and contributing to the economy. Prioritizing permanent residency ensures a stable system, especially in sectors that rely on temporary workers despite long-term labour needs.
Madam Chair, the only way we will build a stronger Canada together is one where newcomers can put down roots, thrive in the workplace and contribute fully to society.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Thank you, Ms. Madhany.
Next, we're going to go to Mr. Copeland of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute for five minutes.
Peter Copeland Deputy Director, Domestic Policy, Macdonald-Laurier Institute
Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for having me. It's my pleasure to contribute.
Canada's once-strong immigration consensus has unravelled. The 2022-24 surge did not create the crisis so much as exposed the limits of a world view that treated openness, autonomy, mobility, and diversity as unqualified goods. A model built on boundlessness has now collided with reality, and we're relearning that people are not infinitely malleable and societies require shared norms, bonds and identity to flourish.
For decades, policy followed an extreme open society ideal that downplayed borders, integration and common culture. The result has been diffuse national identity, declining trust, strained services and civic fatigue. A serious reset must return to first principles, what immigration is for and what kind of society it must sustain.
The examples of failure in the present system abound. Canada's increasing reliance on temporary migrant labour has depressed wages in some sectors and entrenched low productivity business models. Employers can rely on a rotating pool of precarious workers rather than investing in training or technology.
The post-secondary sector shows a similar pattern. Universities and colleges have become financially dependent on international students, driving aggressive recruitment, inflated tuition and, in some cases, low-quality programs and dubious employer and international partnerships.
Far from diversity being an outright strength, a recent 2020 meta-analysis estimates that a robust negative relationship between local ethnic diversity and social trust exists in the short term across all studies. This suggests shared norms, customs, mannerisms, beliefs and behaviours are crucial to the facilitation of everything from basic interactions on the street to broader co-operation, integration and trust at higher levels of social interaction. Trust data reflect this. Canada's general social survey shows generalized trust in people was stable at around 54% from 2000 to 2013 and has now declined to levels in the mid-forties.
Over the last 20 years, Canada has seen social trust decline and become more fragmented and fragile, with stronger pockets of mistrust and loneliness in precisely the big, diverse metros that carry most of the immigrant and population growth. One would expect this when the proportion of immigrants as a share of the population rises from 15% to 25%, not including non-permanent residents and foreign-born citizens, as it has from the early 1990s to the present day. These pressures are compounded by weaknesses in border integrity. Asylum backlogs, inconsistent enforcement and permissive temporary resident programs have eroded confidence in the system, creating openings for organized crime, trafficking networks and diaspora-driven political conflict to thrive on the streets of our major cities and university campuses.
Immigration has also been used to mask deeper demographic challenges. Canada's total fertility rate fell to an all-time low of 1.25 last year. Immigrants often arrive with stronger family structures, but over time many adopt the same hyper-individualistic norms that suppress domestic fertility. Using immigration to paper over demographic decline is not only arithmetically impossible but also signals that the aspiration to marry and raise a family, one of the most basic and natural human desires, crucial to individual and social well-being alike, is of secondary concern to policy-makers.
What's more, foundational social goods are weakening under relentless autonomy and mobility. The Global Flourishing Study shows that marriage, family stability, community ties, religious participation and purpose are central predictors of human well-being. Our fundamentalist commitment to openness, autonomy, individualism and choice, as exemplified by the values that animate our immigration system, strain several of these pillars simultaneously, and Canada now scores poorly on many of them.
I will argue that these challenges are not merely technical, they're philosophical. Immigration is embedded in an ecosystem of culture, economics, demography and identity, so reform must begin with a change in world view. Diversity is only a strength when embedded within a unifying framework. Our original vision for multiculturalism understood this. As Michael Bonner notes in a piece for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute—
Deputy Director, Domestic Policy, Macdonald-Laurier Institute
—the royal commission that preceded the development of official multiculturalism mentioned the term only twice, and stressed the idea of “acculturation”, emphasizing integration of immigrants into a Canadian way of life and a harmonious system that could achieve unity in diversity, advice not heeded in the development of the official policy.
I think we should look to the Danes, who have a fairly restrictive, tightly managed immigration and integration regime. They limit inflows, especially of asylum seekers and low-skilled migrants, and they make long-term residence and benefits conditional upon integration, where immigrants must demonstrate labour market participation, self-sufficiency and civic conformity. The rationale for the policy explicitly links immigration control to preservation of their social welfare state, recognizing that unrestricted immigration can strain social solidarity, redistribute burdens unfairly and erode trust and cohesion.
Immigration can be a profound source for good if we consider the pace, scale, promotion of social trust and integration to a much greater degree.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Thank you, Mr. Copeland, with four seconds to spare.
Now we're going to begin our first round of questions, which is a six-minute round.
We begin with Ms. Rempel Garner.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Thank you, Chair.
I'll start with questions for Mr. Parton.
Mr. Parton, in early September of this year, you were cited in a news article where you gave a quote and said that they:
...bring TFWs in for 50 per cent wages and outbid employers who have been supporting the apprenticeships, investing in Canadians to train the next generation of construction workers. You lose out on the bid because you're not competitive anymore.
This committee often hears testimony that we need to sustain the high levels of immigration that Canada has seen over the last several years, but I find that incongruent with data that shows we have a serious youth jobs crisis.
Can you expand on the statement you made and talk about why it is important to scrap the TFW program and perhaps more important to be training Canadian youth, looking at productivity measures within and incenting productivity measures within industry rather than relying on immigration to address some of these gaps?
Business Manager and Financial Secretary, Ironworkers Local 97
Yes, absolutely.
When I said “$10.44”, I was talking about ERSD's model wage that they think an ironworker is worth. Certainly in our union, it's upwards of that. It's probably a 45% to 50% higher wage bracket.
I would talk about the work that my local has done specifically in attracting young Canadians, young ladies and young fellows, to come to what we call “boot camp”, where they spend two to three weeks. It's a kind of a pre-apprentice thing: Earn while you learn. We ran 140 young ladies and young men through that, and 102 are still with us. It was an 80% retention rate. All of those young people are out at work for $30 an hour as a starting wage, and they all entered into the apprenticeship.
When we talk about temporary foreign workers, I think the median wage for them in ironwork was $30 to $31 an hour. Why would I, as a young person, if that was the top wage I was going to get as a journeyperson after taking all this training, even enter the trade, when I could go to Tim Hortons and make $18 or $19?
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Can I interject, just for time?
There's a canard or a bit of a fallacy, I think, or this perception that high levels of temporary foreign workers, whether they come in through the traditional TFW stream, or in unsustainable levels through student permits, don't take first job opportunities from Canadian youth.
Do you think that statement is true? Or, from what you've seen in your union, does it actually show the opposite, which is that it actually in fact does take opportunities from Canadian youth?
Business Manager and Financial Secretary, Ironworkers Local 97
It does. It cuts the legs out from underneath the apprenticeship system as well.
Four to five years ago, 80% of all the TFW ironworkers came to B.C. It was statistically impossible that somehow British Columbia was living in the Goldilocks zone.... It became a business model of low wages. When you're paying low wages in the city of Burnaby.... If you google it right now and ask what you need to afford rent in the city of Burnaby, it's about $42 an hour.
Not only were we undercutting wages for everyday working Canadians, but we were also doing a disservice to the TFWs as well.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Just to be clear, you would advise the committee to recommend that the government scrap the TFW program and reduce other forms of temporary work permits in lieu of perhaps focusing more on apprenticeship training and securing opportunities for Canadian youth. Is that correct?
Business Manager and Financial Secretary, Ironworkers Local 97
Yes. Again, I'd go back to my recommendations.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Thank you.
With the time I have left, I'm going to go to Mr. Copeland.
You talked a bit about the Danish model and the need for integration.
It's sometimes a taboo topic, but I think we are starting to see a loss of cultural cohesion in Canada. We have to be very sensitive about how we talk about it so that we're not eroding Canada's pluralism through the discussion, but we also can't assume that Canada's pluralism is going to be maintained without having the discussion in a structured way. You talked about the Danish model.