Mr. Speaker, I am always amazed by the vast ignorance demonstrated by the member opposite on these matters.
The member just suggested that this government created the temporary foreign worker program. Let me be clear. What we call the temporary foreign worker program is essentially issuing work permits to foreign nationals coming to Canada. This has always existed.
In fact, the particular dimension of the program to which the member objected—namely, permitting general low-skilled workers or foreign nationals with permits to work, for example, in the restaurant business—was introduced in 2004 when he was in the cabinet. He sat around the cabinet table to introduce the general low-skilled stream about which he is now complaining.
We have not broadened the policy framework of the TFW program since coming to office. To the contrary, as any of the industry groups will tell him, we have constrained those parameters. As the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business says, the worst thing our government has done is to make it so difficult to bring in TFWs.
The flow of TFWs coming to Canada has gone from 0.7% of the workforce to 1.1% of the workforce since 2005. In other words, 99% of people in the Canadian workforce are either citizens or permanent residents. We have not changed that in any meaningful way.
Finally, on the GIS, is the member suggesting that Canadian taxpayers should be responsible for the social costs of bringing seniors to Canada who have never lived here, paid taxes, or worked in the country? Certainly Ruby Dhalla--—