Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll do to Mr. Poirier.
Mr. Poirier, as you know, our manufacturing universe in Quebec consists of 3,000 SMEs with 10 to 500 employees each. The proportion of businesses that recruit outside Canada has jumped 11 percentage points since 2019 and now stands at 44%. The number of job openings has increased 36% in only a year, with an average of 12 vacancies per business. So there are 36,000 job openings, a number never previously reached.
I asked the question in the House, and the government answered, through the parliamentary secretary, that it was proud to have accepted approximately 100,000 work permit applications in the last quarter. That's far more than last year, a COVID‑19 year. At the same time, we can see that the number of applications has completely skyrocketed.
I think that labour market impact assessments, LMIAs, have become an obsolete measure. They impede the process of accepting foreign workers for businesses. They also provide information that we already gather in Quebec through labour market partners.
Do you agree that it's time to suspend or abolish the LMIA requirement for foreign worker applications?