The mechanisms that will allow the TPP to suppress wages are similar to the mechanisms that allowed employers to use the temporary foreign worker program to suppress wages. But I think it's worse, and that's why in my presentation I said that the TPP is essentially the temporary foreign worker program on steroids.
The labour mobility provisions in this agreement could be used by employers to suppress wages simply because they will be able to bring in a significant number of foreign workers, and in many cases, as I said, in unrestricted numbers and for indefinite periods of time.
Those safeguards that were in place under the temporary foreign worker program were not particularly well enforced. The record clearly shows that, but at least the rules were there. There was a rule that employers had to pay temporary foreign workers the prevailing wage in order to stop employers from using them as pawns to drive down wages. However, for every single category of worker that will be allowed to be brought into the country under this program, those same safeguards simply do not exist. There's no protection for prevailing wages. There's no requirement that employers will have to offer the jobs first to Canadians. There are fewer requirements about training. This is going to be a system that's rife for abuse.
As an Alberta trade union leader, I'm particularly concerned about how these provisions will be used in the construction trades. We've seen it with the temporary foreign worker program, and I should point out that in many countries around the world, construction trades, which used to provide well-paid, family-sustaining, community-sustaining jobs, have been degraded by labour mobility. Whether in the Middle East or in South America or even increasingly in Europe, what used to be good jobs in construction have been degraded because people from around the world, the cheapest workers, can be grabbed and plugged in there. I don't want to see the same thing happen to our construction trade sectors here in Canada.