Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
It's always a pleasure to talk to you.
Since this is our last opportunity, I want to emphasize that the most important question raised today is that every effort needs to be made to ensure that hiring foreign workers is really something employers do as a last resort. In this regard the Auditor General's report is quite scathing. This is what it says:
In cases where, in our opinion, the information provided by employers warranted further questioning, we found that program officers did not sufficiently question employers in 40 % of the cases.
The same report also says this:
We examined almost 500 records of employment issued by these plants over a three-year period and found that just over 80 % of the Canadians they laid off had claimed EI at the same time as the plants were employing temporary foreign workers.
The report also says this:
[...] expanded the department's powers to inspect up to 21 program requirements and to act if employers were not meeting them.
Nevertheless, the Auditor General points out that:
However, we found that, in general, the department inspected employers for compliance with only 7 requirements [...]
In closing, I will ask you a question which will, I think, give you an opportunity to summarize the situation well.
What measures are you going to take to be even more rigorous, and to ensure that businesses offer the jobs to unemployed Canadian workers before seeking to hire foreign workers?