Public Accounts Committee on April 13th, 2010

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I have more questions, but I won't ask.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you, Mr. Linklater.

Now Mr. Young, please, for five minutes.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

I want to disagree with my parliamentary colleague across the way, Mr. Christopherson, with regard to your accomplishments in reducing the backlog, which I think are significant. The only fair assessment is from February 2008 forward when the new rules came in. In parallel, you reduced the old list by 241,000 workers, while at the same time reducing the waiting time by over five years for 80% of new applicants. I think that's a major accomplishment. It's good management, and you deserve to be congratulated.

My question is along that line. You mentioned you need some mechanism to limit the intake of applicants because there are so many applicants and because 450 million people in the world want to come to Canada. Do you have a recommendation for the minister on how to do that, and if you do, what might it look like?

[Neil Yeates]

Thank you.

I should just note that it was 45 million, but it's still a lot of people either way.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

That's the official number.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Neil Yeates]

Yes, it's a lot.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

There are a lot we don't know about.

[Neil Yeates]

Yes, that's right.

I think really the shape of it will be a revised list of occupations that are seen to be in demand over the next five years, based on our national assessment, and then put that alongside assessment by provinces and other stakeholders. One of the tricky things about doing this is trying to assess things at a national level versus regional and local--labour market demand--and trying to balance all of that into a list of occupations.

We're also thinking about various options in terms of how we might manage these kinds of occupational lists. Just to give you an example, if we have an occupational demand for college instructors--which has been actually fairly popular and is on the current list of 38--over the next five years for, say, 1,000, and these are just hypothetical numbers, I think we need to look at an option where, once we hit 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 applications in our system, we perhaps not take any more applications for college instructors until we've worked our way through that inventory of applications for that particular occupation.

There are various ways we could go about looking at moderating these taps. We have in our backlog quite a few cases that we think may be of interest to provinces, even for their provincial nominee programs, so we have sent lists of these cases to provinces and territories for them to take a look at as well. That's another option, as a way of working through this remaining 400,000.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Do you think six to 12 months is the appropriate inventory? Is that your goal?

[Neil Yeates]

Yes, we think that's reasonable in the grander scheme of things.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

My second question is with regard to live-in caregivers and domestics. We've heard credible testimony in this place about workers who are basically powerless people. They have had to hand over their passports, which means they're basically trapped in a job. They have to work long hours, sometimes 12 hours or more. They are asked to shovel snow. There is a whole range of things that is very unfair.

How are you helping live-in caregivers by protecting their rights? What new ways have you found to protect the rights and to help these powerless people?

[Neil Yeates]

Thank you.

In December of last year, we put forward some regulatory amendments that are effective now, April 1 of this year, to strengthen the protections for live-in caregivers.

There are a number of important things there. Employers must now provide health insurance at no cost to the caregiver until the caregiver is eligible for provincial health coverage; employers must register caregivers with provincial workplace safety authorities, so workers' compensation; employers must cover all of the recruitment costs, including costs of a third-party recruiter, and those cannot be recouped from a caregiver; employers also must cover one-way transportation costs for their caregivers to their place of work here in Canada; and employers and caregivers must sign and submit an employment contract to HRSDC and CIC. So that will help clarify the responsibilities of the employer and the caregiver.

As well, we have some other changes that will allow caregivers to complete the work experience requirement for them to apply for permanent residence, extending the period from three to four years, allowing overtime to apply to the calculation of residence, and removing the standard requirement for a second medical examination when they're applying for permanent residence. I'm also setting up a system with HRSDC that will be in place next month for emergency processing within three weeks of new work permits for caregivers who find themselves in an untenable situation. Lastly, we're expanding and updating our information products for caregivers and for employers.

So we think actually quite a range of regulatory measures have just now come into force.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Merci, monsieur Yeates.

Maintenant, madame Beaudin.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the witnesses for being here today. I would like to ask a brief question.

I am particularly concerned, of course, about the human resources issue. My colleague talked about live-in caregivers. You listed certain measures that you have put forward to defend the rights of live-in caregivers. Is any regular follow-up being done with employers? You talked about a number of measures concerning employers, but I wanted to know more about the rights of live-in caregivers. Are you conducting regular follow-up with employers, or in cooperation with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada regarding fraud and fraudulent job applications, among other things?

[Neil Yeates]

Ms. Charette can answer your question.

[Janice Charette]

As I said in my comments, we are responsible for relations with employers.

Maybe I can add to what Mr. Yeates commented on earlier in terms of some of the changes with respect to the live-in caregiver program.

One of the things we've also introduced at the front end of the process—and I think this responds to questions raised earlier around genuineness—is that employers now who are applying for a labour market opinion as part of the live-in caregiver program have to submit to us a signed attestation of their identity, along with their application, to try to deal with some of the concerns that have been expressed previously about this program. That attestation will have to be witnessed by a guarantor, who will have to testify that they met with the employer and that the identity being represented in the application to us is true and accurate. So that will deal with making sure that the live-in caregiver and employer application is genuine.

As well, we'll be asking for their Canada Revenue Agency business number, which is a representation that they're actually proceeding with the source deductions, and so on, on behalf of the employee.

In addition to that, we come to the issue of the employer compliance reviews, which we're dealing with as part of the overall temporary foreign worker program, where we do follow up with employers to make sure they are living up to all the conditions, which Mr. Yeates went through, in terms of explaining the health insurance and the one-way transportation costs.

And the other piece that I think is important, which Mr. Yeates mentioned at the end, is the information we're now providing to the live-in caregivers themselves as they're coming into the country, so that if they find there is an issue in the employment relationship, they know who to call so that there can be the appropriate follow-up done.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

That's good, thank you.

I'm nevertheless concerned. In my constituency, a number of threats have been made by employers. Furthermore, foreign workers are not necessarily receiving adequate housing.

You say you have conducted 250 reviews in Alberta and British Columbia. That was 250 reviews, but how many employers were hiring live-in caregivers?

[Janice Charette]

I'm sorry, I don't have the breakdown of which categories of temporary foreign worker are aligned with the compliance reviews. I can go back and try to get that information for you, Madame.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you very much.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

With regard to the foreign worker program, you said earlier that you had conducted consultations with the provinces. Was the objective to establish a vision for the program? Did you conduct an extensive review of the program to make it more effective?

[Neil Yeates]

Sorry, is this the live-in caregiver program?

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

No, I'm talking about the foreign worker program in general. You say here that you conducted a broad consultation. I would like to know what plan you've come up with to process the backlog and how you expect to make the program more effective.

In the context of the department's operational priorities, the plan is to cut 114 positions from this program. I'm trying to understand how you have aligned yourselves with the provinces.

[Neil Yeates]

Perhaps Mr. Linklater could give you some details.

[Les Linklater]

With regard to our visioning the future exercise, we have undertaken to examine the program as a whole with the provinces and territories. The idea is to determine how we can make the process work better between the permanent program and the temporary program, in this instance the links between the federal and provincial programs in the context of the permanent program.

Our long-term goal with the visioning exercise is to understand how to best meet structural and cyclical labour market needs through immigration, long-term skills needs, short-term pressures, and the variety of programming that best suits the response to these types of pressures.

On the resource side, I believe the figures you cited relate to corporate resources that were previously dedicated to the program but not actual processing resources in the field.