Jinny Sims

[Employment, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about Canadians losing jobs, but Conservative mismanagement is responsible for that. The government has had six years to fix this program, six years to make sure good jobs are not being taken from Canadians. However, the government has only made matters worse and failed Canadians and failed temporary foreign workers.

Will the minister do the right thing, admit he was wrong, and immediately ask the Auditor General to launch an independent audit?

[Employment, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is Conservative mismanagement that is taking away Canadians' jobs, not the opposition.

In response to a written question asking for basic information on temporary foreign workers, the government refused even to say who applied for labour market opinions, who got them, or where. It claimed it would be too much work. No wonder this program is failing. Given the minister's failure to fix the program, will he now agree to do the right thing and launch an independent audit?

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his very thoughtful speech and his very balanced way of looking at the issue of temporary foreign workers. As he articulates, the idea here is not to blame the temporary foreign workers, who come here in good faith and often suffer abuse at the hands of employers and at the hands of some not-so-nice consultants along the way as well.

Over and over again the government keeps wanting to blame just the employer, but I am reminded over and over again that the LMOs are given by the government. The reciprocal of the program is administered by the government. The 62% the minister talked about that do not require LMOs are administered by the government.

Do you believe that the audit is one way to start fixing this broken program totally?

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the problem is that we know, because of the egregious reports from the media from coast to coast to coast, that there have been serious abuses of this program. However, one area in which I do not see the government taking responsibility is in the fact that it is the government that gives out the LMOs.

I looked up the Victoria situation where LMOs were given out to McDonald's. This is a city with high youth unemployment. What kind of a common-sense approach was taken in an area with high youth unemployment that LMOs were approved for temporary foreign workers? What kind of improvements would the government make to the LMOs and take responsibility for them?

Second, would my colleague agree that an audit is a good beginning to fixing the program?

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have a little correction for my colleague across the way. He said that the NDP was late to the game after the moratorium was called. Let me assure him that when some very brave Canadians broke the story on CBC about how they were having their hours and pay reduced or being fired, it was only then we became aware of how widespread this abuse was. We called for a moratorium on low-skilled workers before the minister actually declared one.

I keep hearing the fact that it is so difficult to get LMOs. Would my colleague like to explain to me how a McDonald's owner in Victoria, with very high youth unemployment rates, got LMOs when he reduced hours and fired a person? Why would anybody think that Victoria, one of the most beautiful cities to live in, would have had that kind of shortage? What kind of oversight is there to ensure LMOs are not given out willy-nilly?

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I want to assure my colleague that he does not have to worry about my focus. My focus is very clear.

The Liberals introduced a program with very tight guidelines at the beginning, and New Democrats absolutely supported it. We would support a program that is highly regulated and enforceable today for the skills shortage and legitimate needs. However, it was the Liberals who opened the door, and it is the Conservatives who have now opened the floodgates to allow for the abuses that are taking place today, which are denying Canadians jobs, losing Canadian jobs, and keeping our young people out of the job market, where they could get the kind of training they need to up their skills.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, let me remind my hon. colleague across the way that the story I cited about somebody who was being paid $3 an hour was investigated. It was all over the media. It is not a secret to anyone else, but apparently it may be to the minister.

Second, let me also reassure my colleague across the way that absolutely no member of the NDP has ever asked for a Canadian worker to be fired or not to be hired.

Let me also remind my colleague across the way that it is his government that gives LMOs, and that once it grants the LMOs, if our MPs help with the process of the guidance of that through the system that exists, that is different.

I want to make it very clear that this party, this caucus, is not opposed to a temporary foreign worker program that is robust, highly regulated, enforced, and has very clear consequences. The minister seems to think that, just because advocacy occurs at some time, we are opposed to the whole program. We are opposed to the government's granting of LMOs, which only it can grant, willy-nilly and without any oversight.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has been open to abuse resulting in the firing of qualified Canadian workers, lower wages and the exploitation of temporary foreign workers, and therefore the government should: (a) impose an immediate moratorium on the Stream for Lower-skilled Occupations, which includes fast-food, service and restaurant jobs; and (b) request an urgent audit of the whole program by the Auditor General.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Saint-Lambert.

I am pleased to stand this morning to introduce our opposition day motion, one I hope all members of this House will join me in supporting.

I want to start by reminding my Conservative and Liberal colleagues of the purpose of the temporary foreign worker program, which is to enable employers to hire a worker on a temporary basis to fill immediate skills and labour shortages when Canadian citizens and permanent residents are not available to do the job.

It might seem curious that I choose to highlight the purpose of the program to both the Liberal and Conservative members of this House. However, the original version of the program was created under the Liberals in 1973 by Pierre Trudeau. In 2002, again under the Liberals, Jean Chrétien grew the program to include a category for low-skilled occupations. The current Conservative government then expanded the low-skilled occupations category in 2006. In 2012, the Conservatives made it even more enticing for employers to overlook qualified Canadian workers by sanctioning lower pay for temporary foreign workers and introduced an expedited LMO approval process, which was no process.

The fact is that the Liberals created this program wrought with loopholes and then made unwise changes that resulted in bigger holes. The Conservative government has continued that trend, so badly managing it that now not only are Canadians being overlooked for jobs in favour of cheaper labour via this program, but they are being fired from jobs they have held for years.

Recently the media has been awash with stories, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. The Alberta Federation of Labour has identified over 200 cases in which employers broke the rules of this program last year alone.

I was opposite the Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism when he was responsible for immigration. It was in that capacity that I first began to ask him about his plans to fix this program. We talked about it in November 2012 when it was discovered that HD Mining had hired 201 temporary foreign workers through this program when there was no shortage of capable Canadian miners who could have filled those positions. At that time, the minister assured me that he was reviewing the program. I find myself wondering what that review looks like these days.

A year ago, 45 RBC employees in Toronto were set to lose their jobs after the bank brought in temporary foreign workers to replace them. At that time, I and my NDP colleagues appealed to the minister and he made some token changes to the program in response. Still, there was no comprehensive review of the whole program.

Earlier this year, 65 ironworkers at an oil sands project near Fort McMurray were fired in favour of temporary foreign workers. In Victoria, three McDonald's restaurants, all operating under the same owner, are accused of overlooking Canadian applicants in favour of temporary foreign workers. In Kelowna, Dairy Queen is accused of taking hours from Canadian employees and delegating them instead to temporary foreign workers. In Weyburn, Saskatchewan, after 28 years at Brothers Classic Grill and Pizza, Sandy Nelson was suddenly fired in favour of temporary foreign workers. In B.C. and Alberta, temporary foreign workers were brought in to work at Tim Hortons and they were made to reimburse their employer in cash for their overtime pay. In Labrador, two dozen temporary foreign workers were housed in a single apartment complex, and in Nova Scotia, a business owner was charged with 56 counts of fraud last year for paying temporary foreign workers as little as $3.00 an hour.

These are but a few of the many hundreds of examples of the Conservative government's complete mismanagement of the temporary foreign worker program. When challenged time and time again, the Conservatives feign outrage and surprise as though it is somehow not the program they are supposed to be running that is allowing for these egregious abuses.

In 2009 the Auditor General told the government that its process for issuing LMOs does not ensure quality and consistency of decisions. There is no follow-up to verify that employers are complying with the terms and conditions agreed to when they were issued the labour market opinion, such as wages and working conditions. The LMO component of this program is deeply flawed. After two years sitting across from the minister, I have had more opportunities than I can count to observe the unbelievable erroneous distribution of labour market opinions by the government. The mess of the LMO granting process alone warrants an audit. When I was first handed the immigration portfolio, I assumed the LMO process was thorough and accurate. It certainly seemed that way at face value. It did not take long before I realized that something was drastically wrong.

Something is wrong. The LMO granting process is in dire need of an overhaul. How else are fast-food restaurants in urban cities where youth unemployment is sky-high getting LMOs to bring in temporary foreign workers? There is no oversight. How can employers state on their applications they will pay x number of dollars per hour and in actuality pay several dollars less? There is no accountability. This is driving wages down in Canada. This is displacing Canadian workers. This is preventing Canadian workers from being considered for entry-level jobs. This is exploiting temporary foreign workers. This is not okay.

In 2011 the Conservatives pretended to fix the program by creating a blacklist of employers who abuse the program. It was all for show. That list was blank until this month when, to save face, the government scurried to add the names of three employers on a Sunday afternoon.

The Conservatives talk a good game. They keep promising to get tough on employers who abuse the program and yet the program keeps going and they keep issuing LMOs and reports of abuse keep pouring in.

The fact is the Conservative government has grown the temporary foreign worker program to outrageous proportions. In the lowest skilled category alone the number of temporary foreign workers in Canada has increased by 698% since the Conservatives came into power. To date, the government has refused to do anything to fix this program in a substantive way. Why should Canadians believe them now?

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said there is very little evidence of a skills shortage in Canada and yet the minister goes on and on about a skills mismatch in this country. This is his way of justifying the expansion of this program and ignoring experts who know more in this field.

Between 2007 and 2010 Dominique M. Gross of Simon Fraser University in my beautiful province of B.C., studied the process of hiring temporary foreign workers in B.C. and Alberta. She found that there was very little real evidence of shortage in many of the low-skill occupations, but they were being fast-tracked nonetheless. Her study concluded that the flood of temporary foreign workers in the country added a cumulative 3.9 percentage points to the unemployment rate in western Canada.

Economist Arthur Sweetman agrees with her conclusion. He said that the Canadian unemployment rate would probably be going down a little faster if the temporary foreign worker program wasn't quite so robust.

Christopher Worswick, an economist at Carleton University, feels especially bad for young people in all of this:

The kinds of jobs that are more and more likely to be filled by TFWs...were traditionally first jobs for many young Canadians and/or supported them while they pursued post-secondary education. If employers are able to bring in TFWs rather than raising wages to induce young Canadians to take these jobs or perhaps move to regions where such jobs exist, this could mean that young Canadians may face even greater difficulties in becoming established in the labour market and accumulating the skills they need to move into higher-skilled occupations.

The real reason we are here today is to protect jobs not only for my teenage grandchildren but for everybody's grandchildren, children, nephews, and nieces.

Therefore, I am calling on the government, and I am reminding my hon. colleagues, to do the right thing. The unemployment rates among young people have risen. For those with a high school education, it is at 15.5% in my home province of B.C. This program, as it is being managed, is not going to bring that number down.

We are asking for an immediate moratorium on the stream for low-skilled occupations, no new applications for fast food or hospitality, cleaning services, food processing, general labourers, or working a cash register. We want this program fixed first, actually fixed.

We are also asking for an urgent audit of this program by the Auditor General. The Liberals and Conservatives have been in charge of this program since its inception, and it is a mess. We must clean it up. We must go forward and use this program as it was intended, for temporary labour shortages.

I look forward to standing with my colleagues from all parties in this House in unanimous support of this motion. The evidence is clear. This cannot continue.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have absolutely no confidence in the government doing anything right when it comes to dealing with young people's safety.

Michael Geist, a Canadian research chair in Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, compared a number of provisions included in Bill C-13 to the controversial Internet snooping legislation. We know how divisive that was. Bill C-30 was killed by the former justice minister in the face of widespread criticism.

You had this mountain of opposition and you withdrew the bill. Now you bring it forward, and in it you bury something that is so important. It is all about protecting our young people from cyberbullying. That is playing politics.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague for the amazing work he has done regarding the everyday pressures on Canadian families as they struggle to make ends meet. Whether it is rising gas prices or credit card fees, he knows how to handle that file and does a great job.

Members do not have to take my word or one group's word for the fact that the government has cobbled together legislation in a way that was totally unnecessary. The essential piece of it could have been passed just like that, but it was not.

Let me quote David Fraser, a Halifax-based lawyer, who said something about this piece of legislation which I think is cynical and disappointing. He stated:

There's a whole bunch of irrelevant or other stuff in here that's going to distract from the legitimate discussion on how to fine-tune this to get this absolutely right.