Mr. Chair, I want to begin by acknowledging that I am speaking to you today from the unceded territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin nation of Canada.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today to discuss the Auditor General’s report.
Please let me start by saying that Employment and Social Development Canada, or ESDC, understands the importance of this audit and agrees with its recommendations.
Before we discuss the steps taken by the department to completely rebuild the temporary foreign worker program's compliance regime, please let me briefly provide an overview of this complex program and its purpose.
Temporary foreign workers are a key source of labour, particularly in agriculture and agri-food, and ensuring their reliable entry and safe working conditions is key to continuing the food security of Canadians and Canada's economic recovery.
A critical aspect of the program is that it seeks to address labour and skills shortages while balancing the interests of Canadian workers and employers and the protection of the foreign workers. To that end, we have measures in place to mitigate potential impacts of the program on Canadian workers, such as downward pressure on wages and displacement of Canadians by temporary foreign workers.
Mr. Chair, the challenges brought on by COVID‑19 have been unprecedented—and its impact on the temporary foreign worker program cannot be overstated.
As the pandemic hit, thousands of temporary foreign workers were scheduled to arrive in Canada. At a time of global uncertainty, the department was essentially put in a position of having to build and fly the plane at the same time. ESDC acted quickly to introduce new regulations and build a completely new virtual inspection regime, which evolved amid changing public health directives and crisis conditions throughout the pandemic. The department also implemented new inspection operations to verify employer compliance with quarantine conditions. We issued permanent bans in the most egregious cases of non-compliance.
Despite our best efforts, the Auditor General’s report made it apparent that there were fundamental flaws in a number of areas in ESDC’s management of the program, and in the design of the program itself. Chiefly, as the department rolled out its new inspection regime in 2020—and doubled its inspection workforce from about 100 to 200 inspectors, and continued to hire and train inspectors in preparation for the 2021 season—there was an undesired impact on workload. Simply put, the quality of the documentation of inspections was not satisfactory to support the department’s final decisions.
ESDC owns these shortcomings, but with the delivery of any program, particularly during an unprecedented crisis, there are going to be risks. People were doing their jobs, but because of the situation and the challenges of the pandemic, the program came up short in some areas.
This is not to say that we have not learned from our experience during the pandemic. Though there continued to be challenges in 2021, in July the department reviewed its strategies, and measures such as training, guidance and enhancements to inspection tools were put into effect. Additionally, ESDC's internal audit team conducted a review of 60 compliant inspection files completed in September through December 2021, and concluded that there had been a 45% increase in files that met departmental inspection requirements since June 2021.
We continue to make positive progress as we prepare for the 2022 agricultural season. By the end of February 2022, the prepandemic inventory of inspection cases, active at the onset of COVID-19, had been reduced by 92%. As part of our plan to ensure timely inspections, we have streamlined inspections and balanced inspection workload with departmental capacity. We are aiming for a rate of 90% of inspection files without substantive errors by no later than September.
The department also recognizes the importance of well-trained inspection staff, and all staff responsible for inspections took supplementary training in February 2022.
Finally, we are working with the provinces, territories and key stakeholders to develop program changes that address the most immediate health and safety concerns in employer-provided accommodations. Our goal is to communicate these changes by the end of this year.
Mr. Chair, ESDC agrees with each of the Auditor General’s recommendations. We are committed to completely rebuilding the temporary foreign worker program compliance regime.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. We are happy to now take your questions.