Mr. Speaker, family reunification has been key over the years and it has been one of the most successful parts of our immigration policy. We know that when folks come to Canada to join family members here, they are often some of the most successfully integrated immigrants in our society because they have a settlement team waiting for them here in Canada, that have family and relatives who are there to help them become part of Canadian society.
We also know they are very important in the workforce. Often, people who come as part of family reunification do not have the same expectations that people who come as part of the economic class have. We have seen the very serious problems that have arisen from the economic class and the kind of expectations it raises and the lack of jobs in key areas where people cannot get work in their areas of training that have been caused by that program. A lot of those same problems do not exist when people come to Canada to join family members here because the motivation to come here is to have the family together again in Canada.
One of the things that is coming out of our meetings we are having, and I am having one this coming Friday at the Burnaby mosque on the immigration policy, is that there has an overemphasis on temporary foreign workers from the government, that there has been a significant expansion of the temporary foreign worker program. We know we have very serious concerns about the exploitation of foreign workers, that they are often the people who are most easily exploited in our workplaces, that often the wages they are paid are below Canadian standards, and that often the employment situation, the employment standards, the safety standards are below what Canadians would find acceptable. Many of us are concerned about their exploitation in that regard.
We also know that what the Conservatives are moving us toward is more like a European guest worker policy than the longstanding tradition in Canada where we bring people here because of the skills that are needed by our economy. We ask them to come here. We accept their application based on the skills that they have and we make them permanent residents with the rights and responsibilities that that entails, but we also encourage them to become full citizens of Canada and become full participants in Canadian society.
We know other countries have made different decisions where they have not allowed temporary foreign workers to become permanent residents, to have permanent status in the country, and certainly have not encouraged them to become full citizens. I think that has been Canada's great strength when it comes to the whole issue of temporary foreign workers and encouraging workers to come into Canada.
It is very sad, very troubling and very dangerous that the Conservatives are moving away from that, and moving away from it at breakneck speed in so many ways. We need to get back on track to ensure that people who come here to build Canada, to be participants in our economy, do so with full rights, full protection, and that we are encouraging them to remain here and become full Canadian citizens as part of that whole process.