Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise in debate, for the second time in a week, on this important subject. I believe it is important. I would like to commend all members who are participating in this debate on the basis of fact rather than on sentiment or fiction, because there is too much of that, I would submit, currently evident in this debate.
Let me say that the objective of the so-called temporary foreign worker program is really twofold. First, it is to permit Canadians to benefit from global labour mobility. We are a country that exports not just goods but also services. Those services are primarily exported by the presence of Canadians around the world. Hundreds of thousands of Canadian citizens work for various durations in countries around the world, typically in high-paying, high-skilled jobs from which they, their families, and the Canadian economy manifestly benefit. Their ability to work abroad is usually predicated on a series of international agreements, such as the General Agreement on Trade in Services, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and various other multilateral agreements that permit the reciprocal movement of Canadians abroad.
While the debate on the temporary foreign worker program typically devolves into a focus on aspects of the low-skilled stream that is employer-driven and is based on the labour market opinion stream, the truth is that the majority of temporary foreign workers fall into the category I just addressed. They are higher-skilled people who have international labour mobility.
To give an example, the number of people admitted to Canada under this program through reciprocal employment agreements increased from 30,000 in 2005 to 63,000 in 2012. In fact, most of the growth in the program has been through reciprocal bilateral and multilateral agreements.
I will admit, without any apology, that one of the largest aspects of growth has been in the International Experience Canada program. The member for Vancouver Centre will know well that a number of young Aussies, French, and whatnot come and work for a few months, perhaps in the service industry in Vancouver or up in Whistler, for example. I do not think Canadians regard an Aussie taking a part-time job while living up in Whistler as a fundamental threat to our economy. We give a young Aussie in his or her gap year from university doing his or her walkabout in Canada, as they call it, an open work permit. A lot of them do not use the work permit. However, some of them, if they can find casual part-time jobs, will do them, at Canadian wage rates and so forth. We are talking about a tiny fraction of a percentage of the Canadian workforce, in reciprocity for which young Canadians can do the same abroad.
As the member for Cape Breton—Canso pointed out, there are fewer young Canadians who work abroad in this, the largest portion of the temporary foreign worker program, than there are young foreign nationals who come to Canada. That is true. However, that is a reflection of the vitality of our economy versus those of our friends around the world.
I saw a comment by the member for Markham—Unionville, the Liberal immigration critic, on Twitter last week saying that this program has “young foreigners taking Canadian jobs”. It is a sad day when the immigration critic for the Liberal Party of Canada would formulate such a sentiment as “foreigners taking Canadian jobs”.
We all have to be careful and responsible in this debate. That kind of formulation one would typically hear from spokespeople for the nativist anti-immigration parties of Europe. I am not suggesting for a moment that the member for Markham—Unionville shares such sentiments. I do not believe that he does. However, I believe he shares an obligation to speak carefully, prudently, and responsibly on this issue. To say that a reciprocal youth mobility program allows foreigners to take away Canadian jobs, I am sure my colleagues will agree, can set up an us-versus-them kind of nativist dynamic, which we should all avoid.
I know all of us in politics misspeak from time to time, but on this debate let us just be a wee bit careful. We all know there are people who would like to set up divisions between Canadians and those from abroad, who would like to shut down labour mobility and would like to reduce permanent residency immigration. Let us not give them succour in this debate. That is a point I wanted to raise.
The government will be opposing the motion, although much of it is actually quite sensible. I will go through the motion point by point.
First, the motion calls for an immediate and full review of the program by the Auditor General. I believe the Auditor General should be master of his own agenda. The Auditor General's predecessor, Sheila Fraser, did a report in 2009, all of whose recommendations the government accepted and virtually all of which have implemented. However, if this Auditor General determines that this issue is worthy of his attention again and decides to come back and review the program, we would of course enthusiastically co-operate with his investigation. Let there be no doubt about that.
What I really do not want to do is to allow process to become a substitute for action, and this is the primary reason why I oppose the motion. We all recognize that this is an important program, that in principle we need to facilitate the admission of a limited number of foreign nationals to work in Canada, particularly to fill critical skills gaps where they may exist. However, all of us also recognize that there are problems with the program, that there are too many abuses and that there may be some aspects of the program leading to a distortion of our domestic labour market.
Therefore, I agree with my friends in both opposition parties that we need to vigorously address those shortcomings, as we have already begun to do. Where I disagree is that we should hit the pause button for heaven knows how many months, as an external review of the program is done, until we actually fix the problems that we know exist. To the contrary, we need to move to action.
In this respect, my predecessor in this ministry, who is now Minister of Public Works and Government Services, and I, when I was at immigration, launched national consultations on reforming the temporary foreign worker program in the fall of 2012.
That led to a whole series of reforms that we announced in March 2013. As part of that, we announced that we had tightened the rules on labour market opinions. We eliminated the accelerated labour market opinion process. We removed the existing wage flexibility. We added questions to the LMO applications. We extended the mandatory period; employers now have to publish available jobs. We introduced a requirement for those seeking foreign workers to submit, along with their LMO request, a transition plan indicating their strategy to employ more Canadians and reduce their dependence on the temporary foreign worker program.
We introduced those changes last spring and announced our intention to continue consultations regarding a second set of reforms. Frankly, I have to say that there will soon be an announcement about that second set of reforms. I think we need to focus on action, not on the process.
There is no need for further consultations. We have already studied the issue thoroughly. Now we have to take action.
That is really what we have to do.
Second, the motion calls for the disclosure of labour market opinion applications and approvals of temporary foreign workers. I am not quite sure what the member for Markham—Unionville means by this. I am all for transparency and I think that we could provide better statistical information. Quite frankly, the stats on this program are very hard for people to unpick and understand.
Under the Privacy Act, we cannot publish the names of applicants for government services or approvals, such as labour market opinions and work permits. Therefore, I would caution the opposition that if it is actually asking for the names of individual employers, companies or employers, we would have to grapple with the implications of that with respect to personal privacy.
I certainly agree with part (c) of the motion, which states, “a tightening of the labour market opinion approval process to ensure that only businesses with legitimate needs are able to access the program”. As I have already indicated, we have effectively already done that. We opposed the labour market opinion cost recovery fee of $275. We are asking more questions on those LMO applications. We have extended the advertising requirement, not reduced it. As the member said, we have extended it to basically four weeks and perhaps further extension is a good idea. I am open to constructive suggestions in that regard.
As a result of the changes we announced a year ago, we have already seen roughly a 20% reduction in the overall number of labour market opinion applications, which I think is salutary.
Finally, part (d) of the motion reads, “the implementation of stronger rules requiring that employers applying to the program demonstrate unequivocally that they exhausted all avenues to fill job vacancies with Canadian workers, particularly young Canadians”. I wholeheartedly agree with that objective. That again is further reflected in the reforms we made last year, which include, by the way, legislative authority for Service Canada, which is the agency that administers labour market opinions, to enter workplaces unannounced to do inspections to ensure that the employers are actually complying with their undertakings under the LMOs, and also the ability to blacklist those employers that do not comply with the program. We have added a number of employers to that blacklist since it became effective in December of last year.
Let me then turn to some of the errors or misconceptions expressed by the member for Markham—Unionville, speaking for his party on this issue. By the way, I say this in the spirit of comity, because the rules around the statistics are extremely dense, opaque and complex. I have been familiar with this program for several years and every day I see a misunderstanding of various aspects of the program, and that is entirely understandable.
First, the member says that the government has deliberately inflated the numbers of temporary foreign workers. This is not true. In fact, the basic architecture, design of the program, the basic policy that we inherited, is largely demand driven. It is driven by demonstrable demand by employers when they fill out these labour market opinions, or by demand from international mobility like the trade agreements I referred to earlier.
The one aspect that the government does control, and I will admit this, is the quotas for the international experience Canada category. There was a period, from 2006 to roughly 2011, when the Government of Canada, and the member might want to listen to this because I am giving him ammunition, actually signed a number of additional youth mobility agreements with foreign partners that increased effectively the quotas for the reciprocal international experience Canada program, youth mobility programs. It did that in good faith, because one of the priorities of this government is expanding our trade markets, expanding our exports. In principle, we think it is a good thing to have more people exposed to Canada to increase that kind of mobility and to give young Canadians a chance to work abroad.
However, it is clear that there is an imbalance in that while the quotas are reciprocal, the movements are not within that program. That is worthy of consideration. This is primarily because we have a much stronger economy than almost all of our partners, so younger people from abroad prefer to work here than vice versa.
However, it is a legitimate question and it is true that it is the one element of the program where the government has inflated numbers, but again, that is largely benign. I have not heard any Canadians say that they are terrified of 20-year old Aussies working serving beer part-time in Whistler who are, in the words of the member, taking away Canadian jobs.
Second, the member opposite has said that the program takes away jobs from Canadians, but he has also suggested that all temporary foreign workers should have access to permanent residency. I really have a hard time grasping the illogic of this position, which is shared by the NDP. If temporary foreign workers are displacing Canadians temporarily from jobs, why then do the Liberals and NDP want to displace them permanently from the same jobs by granting all of those temporary foreign workers permanent residency?
There is a further incoherence in the Liberal position vis-à-vis immigration. I want to remind the House that under this government's immigration reforms, such as the creation of the Canadian experience class and the massive expansion of the provincial nominee programs, we have seen the number of so-called temporary foreign workers, foreign nationals who work to transition to permanent residency more than triple, going from about 13,000 a year to about 40,000 a year.
However, there is a limit to the number of immigrants we can admit. That is expressed in our annual immigration levels plan and currently that operates at about 260,000 permanent residents a year, which is a very large number. It represents 0.8% of our population. It is tied with New Zealand for the highest per capita level of immigration in the developed world, and in absolute terms, it is the highest level in our history. It is also at the outer limits of what Canadians believe is acceptable. Roughly 80% of Canadians say that they think immigration levels are high enough or too high. That is not because Canadians are nativist, but because they have a sense of the practical limits of our ability to integrate people.
Yet the member opposite said that we should grant permanent residency to all of the temporary foreign workers. He said that we should also increase family reunification, which is already at a record high level. He said that we should also increase the number of refugees admitted to Canada. I also infer from his desire to speed up even more the federal skilled worker program, a higher level of admissions there.
It is one thing for the opposition parties to say whatever they like without accountability, but he has an obligation to tell us what the implications of that are for immigration levels. Also, for example, the opposition seems to like the seasonal agriculture program. That program operates very well in part because the people who come here for seasonal work know they have an obligation to go home. They make good money here, they go home and return typically year after year.
If we adopt the member's position and start granting all of those people permanent residency, guess what? They will not come to work on the farms. Instead they will migrate to cities because they will not take that kind of work. Therefore, we would end up creating a revolving door. By the way, the challenge there is that one of the reasons Canada is considered as having something as a model of immigration policy in the world is because at least a significant portion of immigrants, about 20% of the primary economic immigrants selected, are selected based on their human capital, their official language proficiency, their level of education, professional experience, et cetera.
I submit that we do not want to replicate the sad experience of western European countries whose immigration policies were based almost exclusively on permanent admission of people with very limited levels of social mobility, lower levels of education, lower levels of official language proficiency and lower levels of social ability. Already 80% of our immigrants are not screened for human capital, including the large number of resettled refugees, spouses, family members and so forth. Therefore, all the underdogs already have a large access to our immigration system, but we need to preserve it. The data tells us that immigrants who succeed most and who end up contributing most to the Canadian economy are unsurprisingly those with higher levels of human capital. I would in all honesty suggest that the member and his party be cautious about this. We do not want to undermine those aspects of our immigration program which are actually producing the greatest economic results.
Finally, I accept the motion largely in a spirit of comedy. I think most of it we support, but we disagree with point (a) because we think we need to move from study to action now and not wait several months to do so.
