I'm skeptical that the agreement would be truly reciprocal, and I say that based on our experience with other trade agreements.
The federal youth exchange program, for example with countries like Australia, has been skewed heavily towards workers coming to Canada with only a handful going the other way. While this may open some opportunities for a handful of professionals, I think there is a real risk that we're going to see an adverse impact on our labour market.
As union leader here in Alberta, I represent literally tens of thousands of people in the broadest category, professionals, technical workers, and tradespeople especially. We saw what happened here in Alberta during the most recent energy boom when the temporary foreign worker program was dramatically expanded to facilitate more workers to come into the province. In fact, we had some fast-track streams within the temporary foreign worker program specifically for tradespeople, and they didn't have to offer the jobs to Canadians first or prove they were paying a prevailing market wage. What we saw when those kinds of safeguards were eliminated was a tidal wave of people coming into the country as temporary foreign workers. They displaced Canadian workers and they were used to drive down wages. We saw it with iron workers and we saw it with welders. You're playing with fire.
This is even worse because the temporary foreign worker program was a program of the federal government, so if we change the government or if we put pressure on our elected officials, they could fix the program, and some Conservatives might argue that they did in response to Canadians' concerns. The problem with this trade agreement is that, even if we could convince our elected officials that there is a problem that needs to be fixed, because it's entrenched in an international agreement, they won't have the same latitude and ability to respond.