Mr. Speaker, last year, as I recall, there was COVID-19, so there were fewer applications.
While Ottawa is asleep at the wheel when it comes to temporary foreign workers, our small and medium-sized businesses are being clobbered by the labour shortage.
While the government tells us that everything is fine, 15% of Quebec's SMEs are outsourcing their operations because they do not have anyone to work at the plant, and 62% of them are losing contracts because they do not have any workers, because they have to raise their prices, and because they have to deliver their products late.
When will the government realize that they need to do everything they can to expedite and streamline the arrival of temporary foreign workers for our SMEs?