Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening and pose a question for the minister. I note it is not often in adjournment proceedings that a minister is in the House to respond to a question. This is an important question on the important issue of temporary foreign workers. The minister's presence this evening deserves merit.
The international exchange program is part of the issue surrounding temporary foreign workers. This issue has really taken off. We have been ringing alarm bells for four years with respect to the temporary foreign worker program.
In 2009, a lot of the checks and balances that were in place in that program were cast aside when the current Minister of Public Works declared that she was accelerating the LMO process. Businesses would be allowed to pay their temporary foreign workers 15% less than Canadian workers. The minister was quite proud of the fact that she was speeding up access to temporary foreign workers. Since that time, the program has ballooned.
The international exchange program was initiated by a Liberal government in 1967. The whole purpose of the program was to give Canadians an opportunity to go to other countries and learn all that could be learned about those countries and peoples. The program allowed youth from other countries to come here and learn about Canada and Canadian culture.
The program was intended to be positive, constructive and reciprocal. The program was supposed to benefit visiting students and Canadians going abroad. It was supposed to be workplace neutral and a program with balance. It was clearly identified as a reciprocal program.
In its rush to take in temporary foreign workers, the Conservative government removed some of the checks and balances in this program and that really opened it up. We are not sure of the impact as a result of that.
There are 375,000 unemployed youth in our country. The last job figures show that there are 27,000 more unemployed young people in Canada. When there is a disproportionate number of young people from other countries working in Canada compared to Canadians working offshore, Canadians deserve to be told what is going on with this program.
In light of what has transpired recently with respect to this program and considering there are 60,000 visiting youth in Canada now and less than 18,000 Canadians offshore, could the minister explain to me the reciprocal aspect of that?