Mr. Speaker, I want to believe what my hon. colleague is saying, that the New Democrats would have supported these changes had they been stand-alone bills, except I vividly recall the NDP speaking out against our changes when we introduced a large number of them in July, including the fee changes and some of the other changes. The opposition members did speak against it, so it is a little rich for them to say that they would have supported it. The fact is that they did not. They did not support it in their voting record. They did not support it when they spoke publicly about the changes. They are coming to the table really late in terms of how we address these issues.
To address the member's question, this is exactly why we brought forward changes like being able to go in and inspect. Today the opposition members are again talking about the Auditor General coming in. We are talking about real inspectors going to the sites and ensuring compliance. We are including stiff penalties if employers are lying or not being honest on their LMOs, which include not only fines but jail terms, being blacklisted, and being banned from using the program for two years. These are real and substantial consequences.
We are looking at the program and will continue to make changes as needed, because at the end of the day we want Canadians to get first crack at every job that is available across the country. We want employers to know that, if it means they need to be paying Canadians more to get Canadians to come and work at that job, maybe that is what they need to do.
We want Canadians to get the jobs. At the same time, we do not want to throw out the whole program, for example, for agricultural seasonal workers.