Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to talk to this motion, what the opposition has proposed and what we have already done as a government.
I very much appreciate the comments of my colleague from Peace River. The fact is the opposition is not only late to the game, but in some ways it is speaking out of both sides of its mouth on this issue. What we all recognize, and what the opposition clearly recognizes, is that there is some value in the temporary foreign worker program. If opposition members did not believe that, they would not have asked us many times over the last number of years for temporary foreign workers to come to their ridings. Therefore, they recognize the value in it.
They obviously recognize that there are flaws that need to be fixed, but we do not have the support from those members to fix those flaws and make it a better system. Instead, they do things like they are doing today. They stand to present motions that are somewhat redundant and empty because they do not have a lot of actual action in them. Instead of supporting real reforms, real changes, they bring forward these kinds of motions.
I appreciate the fact that we can talk about it today, but I want to talk about what we have done, review what has gone on in the last few weeks and then talk about the changes we made this past summer. Just after I was sworn in to my current position, I worked with Minister Kenney, and we brought forward some changes to the temporary foreign worker program in July—