Good afternoon. I'm Andrew Tarr, business manager with HVACR Workers of Ontario, UA Local 787.
I represent 5,538 building service professionals—313A refrigeration and air-conditioning mechanics, and 313D residential air-conditioning mechanics, pipe welders and gas technicians. I've been in this position for 14 years. Prior to this, I was a business agent for three years. I worked within the joint union-management training department for another three years with apprenticeships. Our main office is in Brampton, but we represent refrigeration workers right across Ontario.
Today I hope to provide a quick insight into what is happening at the ground level with immigration, particularly work permits. It's no secret that there's a feared labour shortage and that governments at all levels are working to make sure people are aware of the trades. Unfortunately, with all the hard work, there's a major disconnect between the levels of government and failures in the work permit system.
I've attached with my submission two examples of issues—not the most recent, but the easiest ones to find. They're work permits that have been supplied to me of people who are trying to get into the union.
The first work permit is an open work permit. The person who has that work permit can't get work other than in the sex trades, and they're limited in taking any training. The second work permit was issued to a person who I believe was sponsored here by a company. They come from Australia, and they claim that they are experienced in the field. They got the work permit, but they had to stay with the company within Ontario.
On the first work permit, the person claimed they had experience in Ontario, but they'd never been registered as an apprentice. They claimed they had experience to work in the trade. They never were registered as an apprentice, but they'd taken a gas course. It says quite clearly on their work permit that they're not allowed to take training. When I asked the person if they were able to take training, they said they didn't have any paperwork to support taking training. They had a résumé, which I couldn't find, that showed they had experience in Ontario working as an HVAC installer.
The second permit was for a person from Australia. They claimed that they had experience. They had about 15 years' experience in Australia. When they came to Ontario to work with their work permit, they were supposed to register with Skilled Trades Ontario. There's a process. Ontario is one of the few provinces that has a process where you have to register right away and sign up for equivalency. This person failed to do that. After a year, they came to us through an organizing drive. We found out that they didn't follow through with their promise. As a union, we tried training them, but we're limited in what we can do, because they have training restrictions on their work permit.
Work permits are a big problem. As I said, people coming here don't understand what they are. They don't understand the limitations. Right now, Local 787 has 53 people with what we call “900” SINs, or social insurance numbers. Those are people on work permits. All of them are unable to train. They came to us through organizing drives. They signed up before I was aware of what 900 SINs were. The Government of Ontario had sent out a notice about two years ago that those people could not take apprenticeship programs. The only people with 900 numbers who could take apprenticeship programs were in the refugee stream, I believe.
It's becoming an issue. On work permit number one, the person had taken training at one of the colleges, I would say one of the private colleges, and had obviously supplied a résumé that he had been working in Ontario unlicensed. People like him can't get into the union. We don't bring in 900 numbers because we can't train them. They end up in the non-union world, typically working for cash and undermining our system.
That's really all I have to say: that we need to fix the work permit issue. There needs to be better follow-up with regard to work permits. If people come here on a work permit, people should be making sure that they're following the rules, and they should be making sure that, if they come here through a sponsor, they're following the rules as a tradesperson and getting their equivalencies before they start working in Ontario.
Thanks.