Mr. Speaker, like my friend and colleague on the human resources committee, the parliamentary secretary, I am a Nova Scotian and I represent a rural community. We have long seen the movement of people from rural communities to urban centres, from Atlantic Canada to opportunities in Saskatchewan and Alberta. However, one thing we had not seen in my time in politics is that sectors in the seasonal economy had not had any problem getting workers. For the first time, we are seeing fish plant operators and tourism operators making applications for temporary foreign workers.
It may be great for the government to say that its only seeing 1% in refusals for those who apply for employment insurance in those seasonal industries. However, what we are seeing is that people in those communities are voting with their feet. They are moving out of those seasonal industries into other industries. We are seeing those communities being impacted; certainly, the businesses are being impacted.
Is there any way that the government is measuring, beyond the 1% refusal, as to what kind of impacts these changes have made? We do not have access to the information, but anecdotally we are hearing that people are leaving the industries.