Mr. Speaker, first, I am sure the hon. member meant to refer to his colleague in the House as a Canadian. One cannot be a Portuguese member of Parliament, only a Canadian member of Parliament. However, I am of Portuguese heritage, and that probably needs to be corrected for the record so whoever is listening will know very clearly that everybody in the House is a Canadian citizen and that is the only way one can serve in the House.
There was a reference that my hon. colleague, the member for Laval—Les Îles made about herself, that we were immigrants, but now we are Canadian citizens and are blessed to be in the House serving all of Canada.
On the issue of undocumented workers, I have worked very hard on this file for many years, even before I was elected as a member of Parliament. The issue is obviously not an easy one, but when we speak to anybody in the industry, certainly in the large urban centres, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, they will attest to the fact that there is an incredible shortage of workers, specifically in the construction sector. Without these workers, many of whom come from Europe and Latin America, filling that demand, the construction sector would come to a halt.
We have people in the country already doing meaningful work. Many of them have children who have been born in this country. They have also bought homes. They have fully integrated as much as possible. Yet unfortunately the system is not working to help them stay. A lot of that has to do with the point system and a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are not processing these applications fast enough.
However, the moment I was elected in 2004, I raised this over and over again, with my government at that time and within my caucus. We did have an action plan that we started to put in place. There was a real sincerity from the minister of immigration at the time that we would address the issue.
Unfortunately, the former Conservative minister of immigration, to whom I had spoken about the issue, had very little time for it. I really do not know what the new minister's views are, but in less than a year there have been two ministers in that very critical file of immigration. There have been enough changes that it will make it impossible for some real concrete changes to take place; that is changes within the ministers' portfolios.