They did, Mr. Speaker.
The Liberals also voted against introducing legislative authority to impose significant financial penalties on employers who break the rules, having the ability to ban non-compliant employers from the program for two years and to immediately add their names to a public blacklist, and requiring employers who legitimately rely on temporary foreign workers due to a lack of qualified Canadian applicants to have a plan to transition to a Canadian workforce over time. That sounds pretty reasonable to me.
They voted against requiring employers to pay temporary foreign workers at the prevailing wage by removing the existing wage flexibility, adding questions to LMO applications to ensure that the temporary foreign worker program is not used to facilitate the outsourcing of Canadian jobs, introducing fees for employers for LMO processing, and increasing the fees for work permits so that hard-working taxpayers are no longer subsidizing these costs. The Liberals do not care about taxpayers.
The Liberals voted against making English and French the only languages that can be used as a job requirement when hiring through the temporary foreign worker process and against suspending the accelerated labour market opinion process.
After all of this, Liberal MPs continue to ask the Minister of Employment to have denied labour market opinions approved and to have more temporary foreign workers in their ridings.
I guess that this should not be a surprise, because the only constant position the Liberals have on this issue is hypocrisy, or it may be simply that they are just very confused.
Let me recap what we have heard from the Liberals.
First, this is a good program, but it displaces hundreds of thousands of Canadians.
Second, the Liberals criticize our government's action to place a moratorium in the food services sector but vote with the NDP members, whom they criticize, to shut down the entire low-skill stream.
Third, the Liberals say that reducing access to temporary foreign workers threatens Canadian jobs, but then they argue that the program is hurting the middle class.
Fourth, the Liberals say that they are okay with the program so long as the temporary foreign workers who come in can become Canadian citizens.
Fifth, the Liberals want the minister to overturn negative LMOs by independent public servants so that they can have more temporary foreign workers in their ridings.
Lastly, the Liberals ask for stronger rules, yet vote against every single one of the stronger rules that this government has put forward. I really would like them to decide.
It is quite clear that the only party with a plan to fix this program is our Conservative government. Under the leadership of this government and this Prime Minister, Canadians know that they will always be first in line for available jobs. That is why our government is committed to looking at even more reforms to the temporary foreign worker program to ensure that employers make great efforts to recruit and train Canadians and that the program is only used as a last and a limited resort when Canadians are not available.
Canadians can count on our government to fix this program. That is why we will be, and I will be, opposing this motion.
As a correction, I am going to be splitting my time with the member for Peace River instead.
I am now ready for questions.