Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right. This government has overseen about an eight-fold expansion in the number of permanent residents admitted through the provincial nominee program, most of whom are arriving in Canada initially on work permits through the temporary foreign worker program. That has, by the way, led to a much better geographic distribution of immigrants, a tripling of immigration in the prairies, in many rural communities where there are skills gaps. It has also permitted a certain number of low-skilled temporary foreign workers to transition to permanent residency. Specifically, we have gone from about 8,000 to about 40,000 permanent residents through those PN programs.
On the member's first question, in the package of reforms announced a year ago, it included a statutory power that was adopted by Parliament in the Budget Implementation Act that became effective in December to allow for the blacklisting of non-compliant employers. They cannot apply for labour market opinions in the future.
Second, we now have before Parliament in this year's BIA a proposal to create and impose administrative and monetary penalties for employers who abuse the program.
Third, I have essentially created a new policy direction, where we will refer any cases of apparent fraud in LMO applications to the Canada Border Services Agency for criminal investigation, because IRPA, the immigration act, allows for criminal sanctions of up to five years in prison and $100,000 in fines for misrepresentation, fraud.
I met last week with the president of the Canada Border Services Agency. We have already referred several such cases to his agency. We look forward to vigorous enforcement of the criminal sanctions in IRPA for misrepresentation in LMO applications.