Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration.
Before I get into the substance of the Liberals' opposition day motion, I want to speak on the strong action taken by the Minister of Employment and Social Development on this issue. We have been concerned that the number of workers coming through the low-skilled pilot system, created by the Liberals, has increased significantly. For that reason, for over a year, our government has been engaged in a thorough policy review of this program to ensure it functions as it was intended. We need to ensure the program functions only as a last and limited resort for employers when Canadians are unavailable to fill these jobs.
In pursuit of that goal, we have announced a number of important reforms over the past year. Let me detail some of these reforms.
We now have the authority to conduct on-site inspections of employers to ensure they are meeting the conditions of the program. We have before Parliament right now a bill that would give us the authority to impose significant financial penalties for employers who break the rules. We have the authority to ban employers who break the rules from accessing the program for two years and the authority to add their names to a public blacklist. Employers who legitimately rely on temporary foreign workers due to a lack of qualified Canadian applications are required to have a transition plan to transition to a 100% Canadian workforce. We ended wage flexibility to ensure that the temporary foreign workers are paid in Canada at the prevailing wage. We added questions to the labour market opinion application form to ensure that the program is not used to facilitate outsourcing of Canadian jobs. We introduced a $275 per position fee for employers, to ensure they are covering the cost of administering this program, not leaving the burden to Canadian taxpayers. The fee acts as a disincentive by imposing costs on employers to hire foreign nationals on work permits. We ensure that English or French are the only languages that can be used as a job requirement when hiring through the temporary foreign worker process. We also suspended the accelerated labour market opinion process. These reforms are just the start of our thorough policy review to ensure the program will operate as it was intended.
In recent weeks, there is no doubt that there has been a lot of concern and many allegations made about the temporary foreign worker program. On April 3, 2014, the minister became aware of very serious allegations that a McDonald's franchise owner in Victoria, British Columbia, broke the rules of the temporary foreign worker program. The minister immediately ordered his officials to begin an urgent investigation to determine the facts in this case. Within 24 hours of becoming aware of these allegations, inspectors from the department did an on-site inspection of the location in Victoria, and the minister suspended all labour market opinions and work permits in process for the franchise, pending the outcome of the investigation. The franchisee was then placed, along with two other employers, on a public blacklist, shaming them for all to see.
Despite this swift and unprecedented action, there remain serious concerns regarding the use of temporary foreign workers in the food services sector. That is why the minister has announced an immediate moratorium on the food services sector's access to the temporary foreign worker program. Accordingly, ESDC will not process any new or pending LMO applications related to the food services sector. In addition, any unfilled positions tied to a previously approved LMO will be suspended. This moratorium will remain in effect until the completion of the ongoing policy review of the temporary foreign worker program.
I know this moratorium is going to hit employers hard, especially those employers in tight labour markets in western Canada, so let me explain the rationale behind the decision. In recent weeks we learned of a number of allegations of abuse of the temporary foreign worker program. Some of these cases were reported in the media, and some were not, as they were received through Service Canada's confidential tip line.
What is clear from these allegations is that there is a particularly concentrated level of allegations within the food services sector. Our government is planning on announcing further reforms to the temporary foreign worker program in the future. What has become clear to us, given the number and concentration of allegations, was a need to put a pause on this sector's access to the program immediately and to have that pause stay until such time as our review is complete and further reforms are announced.
This moratorium must also serve as a stark wake-up call to employers, not just employers in this sector but employers in all sectors of our economy. When our government says that the temporary foreign worker program must only be used as a last and limited resort, when Canadians are not available, we mean what we say.
We expect employers to obey not just the letter of the law but also the spirit of the law. Employers need to convince us that they are not advertising job opportunities for the purpose of checking a box in their LMO application. They should be advertising to try to encourage Canadians to apply for the jobs they have available. Employers also need to do more to make jobs attractive to Canadians, including increasing wage rates and improving working conditions.
As the minister has said many times, we are distressed that wage rates have barely kept pace with inflation since the global downturn. This is not indicative of a tight labour market like the ones we are experiencing in many regions of Canada. We were also disappointed that Canadian employers invest less in training than virtually any other developed country. These are points that the minister has been making to employers for a long time. With this moratorium, we are putting employers on notice that we expect them to do better.
In conclusion, our government is firmly committed to ensuring that Canadians have the skills in demand today and into the future and that they are always going to get the first crack at available jobs within Canada. As we demonstrated last week, we will not hesitate to act if we believe this is being compromised.
Unlike members opposite, the government will take a thoughtful, fact-based approach to the temporary foreign worker program. We will conclude our policy review of the program and make the reforms necessary to ensure that it operates in the best interests of all Canadians.