Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise to speak to this opposition day motion, and I want to start by stating the obvious: that as Canadians we are, apart from first nations, a nation of immigrants and refugees. Those of us who arrived here first have always been very welcoming of those who come after. We have always welcomed those who want to come here to build the country and create stability for their families, and in doing so, create a loyalty to Canada.
Now we are in the unfortunate situation where we have expanded the temporary foreign worker program so much that each year we have more and more temporary foreign workers and we have more temporary foreign workers in the country than we have immigrants every year.
Despite long wait lists for immigration by those who would love to come to Canada to make a solid future here, despite long wait lists for family reunification for people who have been waiting years for their parents or their children to come here, it is very hard for me to see how we have arrived in the situation where immigrants are still waiting to have their applications considered for six, eight, ten years, where the Conservatives have simply thrown away applications, just cancelled them, from skilled workers who want to come to this country.
It is very hard for me to see how we got to where we are today, other than to say that clearly the Conservatives have put a wrong emphasis on the temporary foreign worker program rather than on immigration and family reunification. This is an emphasis that I think most Canadians, if they were they aware of it, would never support.
We have been a welcoming country. We want people to come and join us here. We recognize that long-term immigrants will help to build a better future for all of us and a better future for their families.
We all know the experiences other countries have had when they have created guest worker programs, especially those in Europe, where they deny people long-term rights to be part of society, to be part of the country in which they are working. I belong to the school of thought to which I think most Canadians belong. If people are good enough to come and work here every day, then they are good enough to stay here and share Canada with us.
I am not opposed to the temporary foreign worker program. As my hon. colleague who spoke before me said, there are some legitimate skills shortages in our economy that need to be filled on a temporary basis. All New Democrats accept that. If highly-skilled, specialized people are needed and a search has been done for Canadians and no one is found, none of us on this side would object to filling those jobs temporarily with foreign workers. However, we do not support a program that displaces Canadian residents and denies access to entry level jobs to both youth and to new Canadians.
We have high youth unemployment rates in my community. We have high unemployment rates for first nations. We have high unemployment rates for new Canadians, all of whom would like access to those entry level jobs to get a start on their future for them and their families. Instead, their future is being blocked by the very large numbers of temporary foreign workers in my community.
We have called for a moratorium for the issuance of permits for lower skilled occupations: those in fast food and those in the service industry. Why have we done this? As we have said, there is a need for a pause here to conduct an audit and to let us have a look at the impact of this vast expansion of the temporary foreign worker program.
It is not that we do not have evidence already. The CD Howe Institute, a group which I, like most New Democrats, usually do not cite, did a study on the impact on British Columbia and Alberta on the presence of temporary foreign workers. Its findings were very specific. It found that the unemployment rate had been driven up by perhaps as much as 4% by the presence of temporary foreign workers. It also found that the impact of temporary foreign workers was to depress wages.
In those sectors of our economy where people are having trouble hiring employees, the normal thing we would see is an increase in wages in those jobs to attract people to the job. Instead, those positions are being filled by temporary foreign workers.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose office the Conservatives must regret having created, is an independent officer of Parliament who works from the facts. When the Conservatives crow about the vast increases of employment they claim to have been responsible for in Canada, the PBO pointed out that at least 25% of all new jobs in Canada since the recession had gone to temporary foreign workers. That is a very large number of jobs that might otherwise have gone to Canadians.
If we stop for a moment and look very specifically at my community on lower Vancouver Island, I will restate some facts: youth unemployment is in double digit; first nations unemployment is in double digit; and unemployment for new Canadians is also in double digit.
However, we have found more than 26 employers employing hundreds of temporary foreign workers in entry-level occupations.
Now, there may be some high-skilled temporary foreign workers working in my riding. That is absolutely possible. However, these 26 employers are McDonald's, Tim Hortons franchises, and pizza franchises. These are 26 employers employing hundreds of workers.
I also want to make it clear that I have no problem with the workers who come to Canada as temporary foreign workers. In my community, they are almost all from the Philippines. They came to Canada to seek a better life. They were often falsely promised that becoming a temporary foreign worker in Canada would provide a path to permanent residency here, so they came to Canada in good faith, expecting to be able to make a life here and expecting to be able to eventually bring their families to Canada. They were just trying to do what is best for them.
Many of those on the Lower Island actually came to Canada after being employed in the Middle East, where they had no possibility of getting any permanent residency status. They actually left jobs with higher wages and better working conditions in Kuwait and other countries in the Middle East to take jobs on the Lower Island.
I know that some of the confusion has been caused by our live-in caregiver program, which again on Lower Vancouver Island is almost entirely staffed by people from the Philippines. The difference between the temporary foreign worker program and the live-in caregiver program is that the live-in caregiver program does provide that path to permanent residency in Canada, so after completing four years of work, it is possible to become a permanent resident, to reunify the family in Canada, and to help become a part of that future that we will all share together.
However, temporary foreign workers have been falsely promised that the same path is open to them, and many of them are in a quite difficult situation now, having borrowed money to come to Canada to take up these low-paying jobs.
What we have is a case of denying opportunities to Canadians while at the same time creating ideal conditions for exploiting temporary foreign workers.
I would argue that those in entry-level jobs are, by the nature of the program, very vulnerable to exploitation. Often they are ill-informed as to labour standards in Canada, having come from other countries. As a result, they are not really sure if they are eligible for overtime. They are not really sure when the employer says, “Oh, to keep this job you have to rent an apartment from me.” They are not really sure how this all works in Canada. They are often pressured into what I would call side agreements, under which they pay inordinate amounts for housing or for transportation to the job, as well as paying all kinds of other fees to their employers.
As I mentioned earlier, quite often in my community I have talked to temporary foreign workers who have paid fees exceeding $4,000 each to get the job in Canada. We all know that is illegal. The minister says if we know of cases of abuses, we should individually, as MPs, report them.
My problem with that idea is that this abuse has been well reported in the media. It is well known that this practice is going on and it is well known who is profiting from the fees charged to temporary foreign workers.
Labour market recruiters charge not only temporary foreign workers to get the jobs but also the employers. We have people on the Lower Island who are making out like bandits on both ends of the temporary foreign worker program at the expense of those workers who are just trying to provide for their families.
There is a danger of creating a rift in my community, but so far, thankfully, through the efforts of groups like the Bayanihan Community Centre, we have managed to avoid pitting the Canadian entry-level workers, the new Canadians who are already in Canada, against the temporary foreign workers. The community centre has worked very hard to try to ensure that we keep the focus where it belongs, which is on the wrong-headed nature of the temporary foreign workers program.
I myself have actually seen an email from an employer to a temporary foreign worker saying, “You are not allowed to go to the Bayanihan Community Centre. If you do so, you will be sent back to the Philippines.” They are in such a vulnerable situation that they cannot even go to the community centre that is offering some community support to those temporary foreign workers.
As I said, government members seem surprised by the abuse that is taking place, and I find that very hard to believe. We can run through, as my colleague before me did, dates stretching back to the fall of 2009, when the Auditor General first reported abuses in the program, or 2011, when the government first created blacklists, or budget 2012, when it said it would align temporary foreign workers better with the labour market, or November of 2012, when it said it would review the program, or April of 2013, when it promised to review it again.
Now, in April 2014, we have this very narrow moratorium on the food services industry. What we are asking for, what we want, is a broader moratorium and an audit of the program. We want an outcome that would see both new Canadians and young Canadians getting the first chance at entry-level jobs and an end to the exploitation of temporary foreign workers.