Public Accounts Committee on March 31st, 2022

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I come from a part of the country that has over 12,000 temporary foreign workers. We have a growing greenhouse industry and other sectors that are vital to our economy. I have employers who are constantly building new housing—just following up on my colleague Mr. Duncan's questions—and they're really looking forward to meeting those new standards. They're guessing at what the future standards will be. We're looking forward to the end of the year for those reports.

I want to go back to the questions I asked ESDC earlier. There wasn't enough time for an answer regarding the coordination of inspection processes with the local authorities. In one of your answers most recently, you alluded to the fact that it's a provincial and local authority, and that happens before the workers come.

What is the coordination? This is particularly because those same organizations do post-outbreak audits, and I know growers who are facing audit after audit, trying to comply, but it's one after another. What's the coordination between ESDC follow-up audits and the local inspections?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

We have agreements with most provinces, and we try to develop more agreements with local authorities to make sure we have a capacity to share information as it happens—live, basically—because, you're right, that is one of the issues we need to address. We have to make sure there is actually not just a coordination but also a capacity so that, when something happens, the person who can act does act at that moment. That's clearly an issue for us.

I would ask Mary to complete the answer with what is done on the compliance side to increase the work with local authorities.

[Mary Crescenzi]

We have introduced an escalation process that identifies the provincial touchpoints whenever there is an issue that needs escalation where the health and safety of the TFW is of concern. We have done system enhancements and provided training to ensure that this is introduced as part of the ministerial commitments.

On the ground, we work very closely with public health officials. They are in fact one of the first responders to an outbreak, as you were indicating. We have established very strong relationships in the governance tables across the country with provincial and local public health authorities so that we can work in lockstep with them.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you. My time is limited.

I'm going back to the Auditor General.

In paragraph 13.21, you found that, in conducting a number of inspections of compliance with respect to the regularly mandated requirements on the basic living conditions, there wasn't sufficient documentation in the files.

Are you inferring that the employers are not compliant, generally speaking, despite having this housing as a condition of program participation inspected by local authorities?

[Karen Hogan]

That's a bit of a complex question to answer, because it is the employer's responsibility to comply with basic housing requirements that are set either provincially or municipally. The temporary foreign worker program inspection regime is one that's supposed to ensure that the employer continues to meet the minimum standards prepandemic and even in those post-quarantine inspections.

What we saw was that the inspectors were not gathering any evidence to demonstrate that they were still meeting those basic requirements. They weren't asking questions about standard living conditions and occupancy limits. In the absence of having evidence, you can't conclude that those questions were asked. That's not a question of virtual or in person. That's a question of quality and rigour in an inspection.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you.

The point I'm making is that it's in the process of inspection far more, from my experience, than it is on the actual compliance on the ground.

I'd like to go to 13.30, where the Auditor General acknowledges that the department stated that the temporary foreign worker population in a pandemic situation was a vulnerable population. We know this. This has been a vulnerable population since 2017, it's been acknowledged, particularly in congregate living situations.

Given the focus of all us that vaccines are a major tool in addressing COVID-19, did the Auditor General examine ESDC's policies on vaccination of temporary foreign workers as a condition of the program?

[Karen Hogan]

The scope of our audit did not look at vaccination policies. We looked at the changes to the immigration and refugee protection regulations. Any traveller coming into Canada has to comply with vaccination rules, and that would have been handled by another party, but it wasn't part of the inspection regime.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you.

This question is for ESDC, then.

Your workforce is subject to the federal vaccination mandate. Would it be fair to say that you would have the authority to make vaccination a condition of program participation and then chose not to with the 2022 season?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I would ask Mary, because I'm not sure I know the answer to this question. I'm sorry about that.

Mary.

[Mary Crescenzi]

Mr. Chair, the way I would answer this question is to say that the order in council governs the border in regard to who can come in and out of the country. Temporary foreign workers were identified as an exemption to mandatory vaccination, but there are specific rules for what needs to take place for unvaccinated workers to come into the country.

Our department has been working with source countries to encourage and share education so that more and more vaccinated temporary foreign workers are coming into the country. Of course, there's value added in doing that for all concerned. We are seeing from some early numbers coming in that more than 80% of temporary foreign workers in the agriculture and agri-food sector are fully vaccinated.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

MP Yip, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

It's wonderful to see the Auditor General is with us today. Thank you to all the witnesses for coming.

This is a question for Mr. Forbes.

In the OAG report there was little assurance for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada that all the funded employers met program terms and conditions. Did Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada ever recover any funds from employers who did not adhere to the program guidelines?

[Chris Forbes]

Mr. Chair, if I may, yes, we have. Over time, we use the public information resulting from the work of ESDC and Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada.

I think the numbers I have, as of around this week, are totalling about 12 cases where we've actually taken action. That could be stopping an application, potentially stopping payment or trying to recover funds if the funds had already been paid out at the time that we discovered the non-compliance.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Were there any monetary penalties? I seem to see that there are penalties ranging from $1,000 to $1 million. How many employers were fined in 2020 and 2021 and in what amount?

[Chris Forbes]

Mr. Chair, on that question, we would recoup, delay or stop funding from our program. The penalties would be from ESDC, so I might turn to Mary, if it's possible, to respond to that question.

[Mary Crescenzi]

Deputy, with your support, I'll continue and indicate that as I've shared earlier, over 330 employers were determined to be non-compliant. The administrative monetary penalties equated to more than $2 million. The range of penalties started at a warning letter and went up to $100,000 per TFW, up to $1 million for each employer, depending on the size of the farm.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Forbes, how do you plan to use the results of ESDC's inspections to evaluate whether employers meet the program terms and conditions?

[Chris Forbes]

I think we would continue to work with ESDC. When we understand that there are those situations of non-compliance in this or any other program, we obviously ensure that no funds are delivered to recipients who are not eligible.

We do ask that employers who are participants in the program keep any records for, I think, six or seven years. Certainly if we find new information from work done by ESDC, we can always go back and revisit the situation with those who have received a payment when they were, in fact, ineligible.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I was really concerned when I saw in the report that the timelines were mismatched in that often inspections were not able to be completed or that the quarantine period had already gone by and then the inspections were not able to go through.

I'm thinking about the need to balance the completion of active inspections with the timeliness of the completion of new inspections. How does the department intend to achieve this balance?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

You're right. It is essential to make sure we have the capacity to deliver the inspections and the results of the inspections on time.

What happened at the time was that we doubled the number of inspections at the same time we were changing from real to virtual inspections.

Since then we have developed the workload strategy management plan, which helps us prioritize to make sure we have a good sense of what the high priorities are in terms of inspections.

We have reduced the famous backlog from before the pandemic by 92% and we have reduced by, I think, close now to 50% the existing load of the inspections. It becomes way more manageable and we will continue to make progress in that regard.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Could you—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You have time for a statement of 10 or 15 seconds.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

All right. When is this national workload strategy going to be implemented?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

The workload management plan was actually issued last summer, and we committed to send it to the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Ms. Yip. That was perfect.

We are now in the third round, beginning with MP Lawrence. MP Lawrence is appearing virtually today.

It's over to you, sir.