Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up with the Minister of Human Resources on that very issue.
Last week it was revealed that up to 60 foreign workers were doing tunnelling work on the new rapid transit line in Vancouver and that they were being paid as little as $5 per hour, that they were working nine to 10 hour days and six days a week. That is in violation of all of our labour and employment standards. It is a wage rate that no Canadian would find acceptable and is in fact illegal under our minimum wage laws.
The other side of that is that Mark Olsen, the business manager of local 1611 of the Laborers International Union of North America said that he “has a stack of resumes of qualified workers who are experienced, willing and able to do this tunnelling work”.
How can it be that the minister's department would give a labour market opinion allowing bringing in those temporary foreign workers to do work that Canadians are available and ready to do, and there is a whole stack of them waiting to do exactly this kind of work?