Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to comment on this report about migrant workers and ghost consultants.
I would like to provide some background because the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration has been talking about this issue for a long time. We started talking about it during the last Parliament. We submitted several reports. We held consultations across Canada on a number of issues, including ghost consultants, migrant workers and temporary foreign workers. We submitted some of our recommendations during the last Parliament. At the beginning of this Parliament, we resumed the study we had begun earlier and we completed it so that our efforts would not be wasted. We kept working and produced this report. To put this report in context, it follows up on allegations involving the member for Brampton—Springdale and her family with respect to employing live-in caregivers.
That may not have been the committee's greatest moment. There was a bit of a media circus about the story, and even though the committee did not have the necessary means, nor was it our mandate, we tried to shed some light on what happened with the Dhalla family. However that case is not what we should be focusing on if we want to help workers in general. I think that we need to move away from this case, which was really sensationalized in the media. We have to take a more thorough look at the issue in general and figure out how to go about getting better public policies.
In the report, we referred to the fact that recommendations had been made in a previous report, the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, recommendations that the government has not yet acted on.
If I may, I would like to go back and review those recommendations so that we can see how they might help people who come to work here temporarily and end up in difficult situations.
I would like to begin by explaining the famous live-in caregiver program, for those who do not know what it involves. This program enables a foreign worker—and often, we are talking about a female foreign worker—to come here and work for an employer for a certain length of time. If memory serves, an individual can work as a live-in caregiver for two years. A caregiver used to be called a maid. That is probably no longer the appropriate term, but we are talking about someone who comes to live with an employer who is wealthy enough to pay someone to do housework, look after the children, prepare meals and do any other sort of domestic work.
Under the program, if someone does this sort of work in Canada for two years, she will automatically be granted permanent resident status. That is what attracts these people to come and do domestic work here. In our consultations in Canada, we found that there were two main problems with this program and that one of them applied as a general rule to all temporary foreign workers.
The first problem is that the law requires that the caregiver live with the employer. Imagine someone from abroad who comes to a country she does not know and where she had no family or contacts. She is required to live with and work for her employer for two years. Because this person has little contact with the outside world, there is a very significant risk of abuse. I want to make it clear that not all employers are abusive, but it is very easy for an employer to take advantage of an employee. The employee has no way out and no opportunity to meet with immigrant worker support groups, develop a social network or get to know people outside the employer's home. Her life is limited to the employer's home.
These people are in an extremely vulnerable situation that can lead to abuse. Sometimes, people are forced to work from morning to night without a break and to put in an incredible number of hours every week. The committee heard testimony about sexual abuse. Once again, the person had no way of getting out of this difficult situation or had a very hard time doing so. In this sort of situation, there is a huge imbalance between the employer's authority and the employee's ability to assert her rights and defend herself.
For that reason, recommendation 34 of the previous report, to which the report we are examining refers, stated:
The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada remove the requirement that individuals with certain work permits [including live-in caregivers] live with or on the premises of their employer.
This was dealt with in more depth in the report before us. I cannot find the reference, but you can trust me, it was studied very carefully.
The second important recommendation was more general. It concerned temporary workers in general, including domestic workers, but also those who work on farms in the summer and in factories during peak periods in certain regions that have a labour shortage. In these regions, foreign workers make up for such shortages. This was a common concern we encountered when we travelled to various regions throughout Canada.
Once again, there seemed to be an imbalance, with the power disproportionately held by the employer. I will explain. Any person who comes to work here must first obtain a formal offer of employment. Then they are given a visa, which indicates that this person is authorized to work for a certain company and that is why they are entitled to be here. The problem is that there really is no possibility of negotiating with the employer if the worker is dissatisfied with the relationship or the working conditions.
Imagine ourselves working very long hours in a farmer's field in very difficult conditions. At some point, we realize that this is not right and that we are working ourselves to death. So we go to see our employer and ask for changes, because it just does not make sense and we cannot go on like that. In many cases, with a good employer, we will be able to make changes. However, an less scrupulous employer will simply say that if we are not happy we can go back to our home country. It is far from straightforward.
In nearly all the cities and towns we visited, and in nearly every group of witnesses that appeared before us, I asked if we should lift the obligation to specify a single employer on a visa application, so that if employees are dissatisfied, they can look for another employer that offers better conditions in Canada and not be left at the mercy of unscrupulous employers.
I must say, this idea gathered a great deal of support, even from many employers. However, people felt it would be appropriate to impose a few restrictions. On the one hand, people said that work permits should still specify one type of employment, one economic sector and one province, instead of specifying just one employer. Why? Because these visas are granted based on the state of the labour market in that province and in the employment sector in question. As part of the process, if an employer asks to hire temporary foreign workers for their business, we must ensure that there really is a shortage and that the employer is unable to hire Canadian or Quebec workers. We definitely do not want to create a “cheap labour” program. The program is meant to fill real needs for labour.
We have a process in place. Clearly, if open permits were granted that allowed people to move from one employment sector to another or from one province to another—because the reality can vary from one province to the next—this whole labour market opinion process would become pointless. Indeed, we would have no control over whether people work in sectors that have a labour shortage in Canada or in which there are already more than enough local workers to do the work.
On the other hand, it must be understood that in the context of this program, when employers decide to hire a foreign temporary worker, they become responsible for certain fees, including for instance, the cost of recruiting. Employers usually deal with foreign recruiting agencies, even though some abuses occur. This could be the subject of an entire debate. As part of the process, employers are obliged to pay the recruitment costs, and not the employee. Another example is the cost of airline tickets. When an employee applies for a visa, the employer must agree to pay for that individual's return airfare.
An employer considering making that investment will want some guarantee of a return on it, a guarantee that once the employee gets here, he or she will not go work for someone else who has not gone through this process, who has not spent the money, but ends up benefiting from having the employee.
In its report, the committee recommended implementing a mechanism under which, if an open permit is issued to allow workers to move from one employer to another, the subsequent employer has to pay the original costs paid by the first employer on a pro-rated basis.
There are a number of other recommendations too, but I will not get into the details. I think that these two recommendations represent the most important steps we can take to restore the balance of power between employers and temporary foreign workers, particularly when it comes to live-in caregivers.
Secondly, the committee addressed the issue of consultants taking advantage of temporary foreign workers, which happens a lot.
For example, we are seeing a lot of cases involving phoney job ads. People come here, and once they arrive, they find out that there is not actually an employer ready to hire them. We have seen cases where consultants strongly recommend that new arrivals stay in their apartments and pay them rent. Sometimes they even force people to do this. We have seen plenty of cases of exploitation. A lot of temporary foreign workers and other classes of immigrants have problems because of immigration consultants.
The whole situation is chaotic. The Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, the so-called regulatory body that was recently created, is not doing its job. To be honest, in committee and during various meetings that I personally participated in, it became clear that this organization has some serious governance problems.
When I was younger—some people might not believe me if I say “when I was young”—I was very involved in student associations, most of which were run more democratically than the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants seems to be. This is a serious problem. There have been obvious cases of bad governance, favouritism and nepotism. So there are problems. There is no enforcement when it comes to who can call themselves an immigration consultant and no way to find out whether people really are members or not.
An article in yesterday's Globe and Mail talks about a consultant with offices in Toronto, Mr. Rana, who calls himself one of the most famous consultants in the world and who has been accused of terrorism. I will not go into detail, but he is an major immigration consultant, and yet he is not on the list of consultants of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants. I have just checked on the Internet.
The society itself is negligent because it is poorly governed. The members care more about themselves than the profession, and the lack of regulation is a problem. The federal government should not be responsible for regulating this field. The committee recognized this, because there is a recommendation that states specifically that immigration consultants in Quebec should be regulated by the Government of Quebec. This profession should therefore be regulated as a Quebec profession. The professional code is very sophisticated and extremely complex. The Office des professions can monitor, regulate and even go so far as to take over a professional body in the case of negligence. A sort of trusteeship is possible. In addition, there is a regulatory framework that is several hundred pages in length.
When we look at what the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants has come up with, it is a few sections that take up two pages of the act. This is extremely minimalist, and even if the society were to sort out its governance problems, it would not have enough of a legal framework to do its job.
This issue needs to be addressed and transferred to the provinces, which already have all the authority they need to regulate the professions. Moreover, the provinces will be able to decide whether they feel there should be immigration consultants. This is the only area of law where non-lawyers and people who are not members of the bar can provide legal advice. Why is this allowed in immigration, when it is not allowed in family law, civil law, criminal law or any other area of law?
There is obviously a gap here. I will not go any further, because it is up to the governments of Quebec and the provinces to pass legislation in this area. We feel strongly that the existing structure is flawed and that the provinces must be asked to take charge of regulating this profession.