Chris Alexander

[Business of Supply, May 6th, 2014]

It was absolutely ended by this government, finally.

[Business of Supply, May 6th, 2014]

It was ended by this government.

[Business of Supply, May 6th, 2014]

I absolutely flagged that as an issue within the embassy and recommended that it be stopped henceforth. It would have been stopped had the public servants of that time had their way. However, they were told by the political level that this was absolutely a legitimate form of employment that was required for political purposes, presumably by members of the Liberal Party at that time in the greater Toronto area and elsewhere who benefited from the support of certain establishments where those poor women went. We all know that stream was linked to criminality and human smuggling. We are all proud on this side of the House, and I hope at least all women in this place are proud, of the fact that it has been ended, and ended as long as we are in office, for good.

[Business of Supply, May 6th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased join this debate on an important issue.

I am joining it at a point when the inconsistency for which the Liberal Party has been renowned is on spectacular display, not just on the question of temporary foreign workers but with regard to immigration policy.

We have just heard the member for Scarborough—Guildwood say that this is a program that has merit. A couple of hours ago his leader said that at best it was a limited Band-aid solution and at worst it was a program that was driving down wages, putting Canadians out of work, and something that was extremely undesirable for the Canadian economy and for Canadian immigration policy.

Which is it? Even after having put forward an opposition day motion, the Liberal Party cannot make up its mind whether it wants a temporary foreign worker program or not and whether it has merit or is a Band-Aid solution that is driving down wages. This again reminds us that the Liberal Party gave us an immigration program that was rampant with abuse. It gave us a temporary foreign worker program that was only that, where there was almost no pathway to permanent residence and where people were expected to be here, be quiet for a short period of time and then go home.

We are in a very different world today. We, in this party and in this government, are delighted to have the opportunity to highlight our reforms, to highlight the improvements we have made to the immigration system generally and to highlight the reforms my colleague, the Minister of Employment and Social Development, has made to the temporary foreign worker program as recently as the beginning of this year and more recent with this moratorium, which shuts down a stream of temporary foreign workers coming into our country and began with the Liberal Party.

If there is abuse in this stream, I would love to hear all the opposition members who have spoken and who have asked question to at least take responsibility for the fact that this stream, which led to the moratorium in recent weeks, a painful decision, because it is always painful to see abuse being committed, was created by a Liberal government, not subject to oversight from the very beginning because of its predilection for avoiding these forms of accountability.

Even on the fundamentals of today's motion that concern my portfolio, we are not sure where the Liberal government stands. The plan that the member for Papineau mentioned has five points. One of them is to increase pathways for immigration for temporary foreign workers to Canada. That is exactly what our government has been doing for eight years.

The motion does not even mention immigration. The motion talks about tightening up the temporary foreign worker program, turning back the clock to an era when we did not let accurate labour market signals, as the Minister of Employment and Social Development was just saying they should do, determine how we built up and formed our labour market, first and foremost, on the basis of Canadian workers, second, on the basis of immigrants and only as a last resort on the basis of temporary foreign workers.

The motion does not even talk about permanent resident as a status to which temporary foreign workers could graduate if they met the criteria. It is not in the motion.

We do not know whether to believe the Liberal leader, who may have made a desperate attempt to change the motion or change the emphasis of the motion. We have not heard an amendment from the Liberals that would bring the word “immigration” into the motion. Do we believe the member for Markham—Unionville, who has been spectacularly inconsistent in discussing the temporary foreign worker program?

We do not know where the Liberals want to go. That is not unusual. It has been their modus operandi for decades. Let us just remind ourselves of some of these stations along the way.

The member for Papineau mentionrf that his father had brought in the temporary foreign worker program in the early 1970s. That was at a time when there really was not a pathway for these workers to become immigrants. There was not a program dedicated to making temporary workers and temporary residents permanent. That dead-end pathway was extended to low-skilled workers by the Chrétien government in 2002.

I can speak from personal experience, having worked in our embassy in Moscow in the mid-1990s and the early part of this century, that there was a particularly shocking sub-stream of the temporary foreign worker program that came across my desk because, in the minds of those of us in the embassy in Moscow, it was often linked to organized crime. That was the exotic dancer stream of temporary foreign workers brought in by a Liberal government, scaled up to include hundreds of people who not only populated certain establishments, which the members across the way are smiling about because they take this lightly—

[Employment, May 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we will never consider Canadian students and young people entering the job market in this country—where jobs are relatively plentiful and where the labour market is buoyant—as cheap labour. We are proud of the talent of young Canadians. We are proud of the foreign students who are studying in this country and bringing economic benefit to Canada. Those phenomena have grown under this government.

We are proud of the absolutely stronger performance of our job market and the fact that we have created more jobs in this G7 economy than any of our peers since the depths of the recession.

[Employment, May 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the reason for the drop is quite simply the Canadian economy's superior performance.

During a time of global recession, when there were huge job losses and serious crises in Europe, the United States and Asia, Canada remained strong. We created 1.1 million new jobs, and that attracts foreign students to our country.

We are going to continue promoting different opportunities for young Canadians both here and abroad. We expanded this program, which was created by the Liberals, and it is working quite well.

[Employment, April 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is always fascinating to hear members of the Liberal Party stand up and denounce a program that they created in 1951 and then expanded dramatically in 2003. We will leave it to them to answer those questions about their lack of consistency.

The truth is that the job opportunities in Canada are much better, thanks to this government, than they are in many of our partner IEC countries. Thanks to the leadership of this Prime Minister, thanks to the leadership of this team, 1.1 million net new jobs, a lower youth unemployment rate today than—

[Employment, April 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is always—

[Citizenship and Immigration, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, our government has been a leader in opposing anti-Semitic activities, wherever they take place around the world, and that is not going to change.

Decisions in this case, like others involving our asylum system and refugees, were taken by the independent Immigration and Refugee Board. We have been following the case at the Law Society closely, and we will look at our options, just as we do in every case where the circumstances change and where there is a potential risk for those who are facing removal from Canada.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, there were a large number of inaccuracies in that speech. I would just like to ask the member about the two most serious of them.

First, in the case of the company she cited but did not name, where $3 per hour has been paid to a temporary foreign worker, has the member or her office brought this to the attention of the hotline, the CBSA, or law enforcement so that these illegal activities can be stopped? We have a responsibility in cases such as this not just to talk about them anonymously in this House but to take action to ensure the law is enforced.

Second, there has been a flood of a different kind in recent months, as my colleague the Minister of Employment and Social Development mentioned in this House yesterday, and that is of continuing requests from NDP members for LMOs for low-skilled workers to come and serve companies in their ridings.

Before asking for an even broader moratorium than the one we brought in, will the member in question start with a moratorium on those requests from her caucus to my colleague the Minister of Employment and Social Development and to me for LMOs for low-skilled temporary foreign workers to come to their ridings?

There is a double standard here, and we need to clean that up first.