Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.
I am honoured to rise today in the House to speak to the motion on behalf of my constituents in Surrey North. I do not know where to start. What a mess the Conservatives have created. They have badly bungled this program. I have no other way to describe it.
There appears to be a trend in the government's response to a number of programs. Mention is being made in all of the papers across the country about Canadian workers being replaced by foreign workers. There is also the issue of abuse in the Senate by both Conservative and Liberal senators with regard to expenses. There is the issue of the government's inability to catch tax cheats. The current immigration program is being abused. Government programs in different departments are being abused and there seems to be a trend.
The government appears to be getting old and growing tired. It has failed to provide leadership to Canadians in order to provide them with the services they need. It has failed to manage programs in the way Canadians expect them to be managed in this country.
The Conservative government is once again failing Canadians in order to benefit their rich corporate friends. How is it that in a time of high employment, rather than striving to match hard-working Canadians with available jobs they are being replaced with temporary foreign workers? This is unprecedented. It is happening under the Conservative government.
I have heard members of the Conservative government talk about the reforms they are bringing in and how they are investing money in their economic action plan. We have seen this picture many times before. This problem did not just happen yesterday. This has been an ongoing problem. The government has known about abuse in the temporary foreign worker program for years. In the fall of 2009 the Auditor General reported that the practices of HRDC “do not ensure the quality and consistency of decisions when issuing labour market opinions”. The government has known that this program has not been working since 2009, and perhaps prior to that. We have not had any answers from the minister in the House with regard to when he first knew about the problem. We know from the Auditor General that this abuse has been going on for the last nine years and yet the Conservatives get up in the House time and time again and say they are going to fix the problem. The Conservatives have failed to fix this problem for the last five years. It is unbelievable.
In 2011 the Conservatives stood up in the House and said they were going to create a blacklist that would name employers who have broken the rules of the temporary foreign worker program. We have not seen any blacklist and no companies have been charged, yet in the House today members of the Conservative Party get up and use the talking points from the Prime Minister's Office to say that they are going to fix this problem, that they are matching Canadians with jobs. We know that is not happening and Canadians know that is not happening. It is time for the Conservative government to fix this for good.
Let me give the House another example.
In November 2012 over 200 low-skilled temporary foreign workers replaced workers at a mining company in British Columbia, my beautiful province. Many workers in my constituency were more than willing to go up north and work in the mines but the Conservatives chose to bring in those temporary foreign workers instead of employing Canadians.
Again, in April 2013, there was another example, so this problem was not created today. This has been going on for a number of years, and the government has been notified. We have brought this issue up in the House many times, and the Conservatives have promised to fix it. It has not been fixed.
In April 2013, RBC brought in foreign workers to replace Canadians. The government has known about this. This was about a year ago, and Conservatives still have not worked on this matter.
I could provide other examples of where the government has failed to act on temporary foreign workers. Under the Conservative government, the temporary foreign worker program has grown exponentially. There are over 350,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada at this point. When we look at the queue to get into this country on a permanent basis for family reunifications, it takes eight years, yet we are importing over 350,000 temporary foreign workers to this country.
The Conservatives make up stats to justify programs that are seriously broken.
We often hear Conservatives talk about market forces and how they drive our economy. If we look at the gas price today, it is $1.52 a litre in my constituency. I have had a number of constituents talk to me about high gas prices in this country. It adds to the cost of living for Canadians, yet the Conservatives will tell us that the market drives the prices, and there is nothing they can do. We have proposed many solutions. We have asked the government to appoint an ombudsman to look at these unfair gas prices.
We have heard in the House over and over about high cellphone prices. We know the roaming charges we pay in this country. The government says that market forces drive competition, and it does not have any control over it.
When it comes to wages, what do the Conservatives do? They use their power to drive down wages. How? It is with temporary foreign workers. Why do we not let the free market economy determine wages? No. It is a way to help the Conservatives' corporate friends. They will bring in temporary foreign workers to drive Canadian wages down. I do not know how the Conservatives can justify that to Canadians.
They talk about the free market. Why do we not let the free market determine the wages of people who are going to be employed, especially Canadians? Yet the Conservatives interfere in low-paying jobs and low-skill jobs. They bring in foreign workers to drive down wages. That is not fair. When it comes to wages, the Conservatives do not believe in the invisible hand in the economy.
It is clear that the Conservatives have created a double standard to please their big corporate friends. The government is assisting these companies to work around the marketplace to the disadvantage of Canadian workers for the sake of the bottom line and on the backs of Canadian families.
The Conservatives will stand and talk about how they are going to fix this. The fact is, the problems have been ongoing in this program for the last four or five years. The Minister of Employment and Social Development is promising the House and Canadians that he will fix the problem. Unfortunately, Conservatives have failed Canadians. They have not worked hard enough to ensure that Canadian workers, not temporary foreign workers, are employed in good-paying jobs.