Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 31st, 2017

[Leslie MacLean]

Officers have to evaluate various factors before they can make a decision. Unfortunately, I will have to switch to English in order to better answer your question.

It's genuineness and labour market factors. Genuineness, for example, would be whether the offer was coming from an employer that legally exists and operates a business related to the job offer being made. In other words, is there a real job?

On labour market, will it have a positive, neutral, or negative impact on the labour market?

The pilot project is intended to create a framework to ensure that decisions are consistent from coast to coast. The results of the team's work show that the framework as set out will work well. So we will continue to implement the quality assurance framework.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

In your response to the Auditor General's recommendations, you pointed out that a national framework will indeed be implemented by the fall of 2017.

Are you saying that implementation of the framework has already begun or will begin in the coming weeks or months?

[Leslie MacLean]

Implementation will begin in the coming weeks. Our objective is to have the framework in place in December, in a few weeks then, for all officers who make decisions.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Deltell, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your House of Commons. I must admit that the topic we are discussing bothers me and concerns me a great deal as a Canadian.

The unemployment rate is indeed low. Consider my region, Quebec City in particular—Mr. Massé talked about it earlier—the problem is related more to labour than employment. As a Canadian, I am not proud to see people in our country looking for work while people are being brought in from outside to take jobs, as humble, modest, and in particular as difficult as they are.

Canadians should be able to work as much as possible and contribute to the country's growth and prosperity. I see cohorts of people arriving from other countries and I welcome them with open arms, but that reminds me that there are people in Canada who are out of work. This concerns me.

My colleague from Calgary, Ms. Rempel, talked about your analysis of seafood companies in the Atlantic region. It is our understanding that people were available to work, but they did not get any work. Furthermore, in some cases people left their jobs and were replaced by foreign workers.

This is always a tricky expression to use. As the son of an immigrant myself, I do not like talking about foreigners. I would rather say future Canadians or people who want to be here.

That is probably the most worrisome example. In a city, a region, a village, people were available to work, they were doing a job, but they no longer are, and people are coming from other countries to do that job.

How can that be considered normal?

[Louise Levonian]

I will start to answer this question and perhaps someone will want to add something.

There are requirements set out in the program that everyone must meet.

I mentioned, for instance, that employers must first inform Canadians of their needs before they get a positive labour market impact assessment, or LMIA.

They also have to provide reasons for refusing to hire Canadians who have applied. They must explain why they did not hire them. The program framework sets out requirements to ensure that the situation you describe does not happen, but it is not perfect. It is not always like that. There are cases where employers do things they are not supposed to do and it is up to us to try to detect and review them, but it does happen from time to time.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Yes.

[Louise Levonian]

We are in the process of consulting representatives from sectors, such as the seafood sector. We want to develop an action plan with employers to work together to ensure that this does not happen, and we are in the process of adjusting this plan.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

You are in the process of adjusting it, Madam Deputy Minister, but how? The CBC reported last March that the government had eased the rules in response to pressure from the seafood industry lobby and from local MPs. Their objective was in fact to be able to hire more foreign workers, even though we know that this region has the highest unemployment rate in the country.

Does that mean that the discussions you mentioned earlier are intended to ease the rules or, on the contrary, to make them stricter so that Canadians who are in Canada, who live in Canada, who pay taxes in Canada, can work?

[Louise Levonian]

That is a good question. Achieving that balance is exactly what I was talking about earlier. There are also cases where employers do not have access to Canadian workers and have to close their plants if they are unable to hire people from outside Canada. That is not good for Canada either.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

I can understand that in some cases, such as farms in remote areas, but we are talking about the seafood industry here, which has been around forever and has employed people for generations. I enjoyed some myself during my vacation in Prince Edward Island this summer.

Why do we have to ease the rules, as was done in March, for places where the unemployment rate is the highest in the country?

[Louise Levonian]

Let me repeat what I already said. It is always hard to know whether it is really necessary to hire people from other countries for a given processing plant. That is exactly what we are trying to do with the review by sector; we are trying to find ways of preventing those situations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

We'll now move to Mr. Arya, please. You have five minutes.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Levonian, you mentioned there has been a 75% decline in food positions between 2013 and 2016. We do see, from exhibit 5.1, to take the example of caregivers, there is a dramatic decrease from 12,695 positions in 2014 to just 3,968 positions.

While on paper it appears good, does it mean that demand has gone down? Does it mean that Canadians have started working as caregivers?

[Louise Levonian]

A number of reforms have taken place over the last number of years that have resulted in a reduction in those numbers. One of the key factors, I would say, is the increase in fees, which were increased from $275 to $1,000 for each position that an employer wants to—

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Do you mean to suggest that one of the major factors is just the increase of fees? This is a dramatic decrease from close to 13,000 to less than 4,000. Is it because you stopped approving these positions?

[Louise Levonian]

There are many factors that I can go through. We've strengthened advertising requirements. We've introduced a cap on the number of TFWs. We've limited the length of time a TFW could stay working to one year. There are transition plans required. Their fees were increased.

There are many factors that go into that.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Okay.

You've said that you're increasing unannounced on-site inspections, which appears to be good on paper, but for small businesses that may mean additional stress. Small businesses are already under heavy regulations. For them, in managing their business, unannounced on-site inspections may create some problems.

[Louise Levonian]

Absolutely. That's exactly why we haven't done unannounced on-site inspections yet. It's the analysis we're doing before implementing something like this that would take into consideration those kinds of.... We want to make sure our employees are protected. We want to make sure that the procedures are properly in place. We want to collaborate with provinces to do that—

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

I am happy to hear that, because for a small business like a restaurant, where a husband and wife, the owners, work along with the temporary foreign workers, they'll all be working, say, at a busy lunchtime. If you drop in for an unannounced on-site inspection, I can imagine the impact that will have.

Coming back to this program, it has been around for quite a long time. I'll go to your remarks. You say that the program plays an important role in supporting a strong Canadian economy by helping employers fill labour market jobs while ensuring Canadians have first access to available jobs. Next, you also say that this is a critically important balance to strive for but in practice can be quite difficult to achieve.

This program has been around for a long time, and now you say that this is a very difficult balance to achieve, that there are national, regional and industry specific considerations. These have been there for a long time. Why have we not found a solution yet?

[Louise Levonian]

I wish I could say that it's an easy thing to solve, but some things are difficult. There are always demands, as you've just heard from the conversation that's taking place here today. There are always, on the one hand, those employers who are saying, “I truly cannot find employees and I need them to continue my job and continue economic growth.” On the other side, there are Canadians who are asking why it is that they're not being hired.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

I understand. My time is quite limited, and I have one last question.

You did mention that the Auditor General flagged concerns about how the program may be negatively impacting Canadian wages. You've said that the program “should not be putting downward pressure on Canadian wages”. Once again, this program has been around for a long time. If the AG suggests that there may be a negative impact on Canadian wages, and you're saying that there should not be, how do we know who is correct here?

[Louise Levonian]

I can answer that. To a certain extent, the program has evolved significantly. Because of all these pressures that are constantly evolving, it has different impacts on the labour market and on wages as it evolves. The primary thing we keep in mind is that when an offer is made, it has to be made at the median or above. Therefore, we would not expect there to be implications. However, that's not to say that there aren't many factors in play here, and we want to continuously analyze—

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Have you tried—