John McCallum

[Employment, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is such a waste of time to argue about facts, especially when I am totally right and he is absolutely wrong.

[Employment, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have the government's two blacklists in front of me.

One has zero employers blacklisted, and the other has four. Not one of these is blacklisted for employee abuse.

The minister was clearly wrong yesterday in claiming that companies had been blacklisted for abusing their employees. That is not true.

Does this not make it obvious that the government simply does not care about employee abuse and human trafficking?

[Employment, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, he is addicted to this silly Conservative line about cleaning up a Liberal mess, which did not exist in those days.

If we want to be more serious, this guy talks about employers on the list. There are zero employers on any list for abuse of employees, so I would ask this minister, or if he does not know I will ask the real minister, can he name one employer on the list for abusing employee rights? Can either of the ministers answer that question?

[Employment, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, he just said that as soon as the employer does something bad to employees, he is on the list. He should know that there is no one on the list. That is the point. There is no one on the list. That is why the real immigration minister usually answers the questions.

If that minister wants to answer the question, will he tell us, given that there are zero employers on the list who have maltreated employees, why this is? Is this not blanket evidence that they do not care when employees are maltreated?

[Employment, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Immigration. I have a blacklist issued by his department of employers who have maltreated temporary foreign workers. However, the list is empty.

Can the Minister of Immigration explain why his department has been missing in action on this and why it is doing nothing to deal with the exploitation of temporary foreign workers?

[Employment, May 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud that the Liberals have voted against the government on this program, because it has made such a monumental mess out of it.

As for cancelling that program, the website today says it still exists. The website today says no employers are on the list. It is obvious that it is under the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. It is his department. Why does he do nothing to enforce the rules? Why does he have nobody inspecting companies to detect such abuse?

[Employment, May 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, three years ago the immigration department set up a blacklist for companies abusing temporary foreign workers, a good idea in theory, but can members guess how many companies have been blacklisted so far? Zero.

We could have all the legislative powers in the world, but if we do not do anything with these powers, we do not achieve anything. Will the Conservatives finally commit to regular inspections of the workplace?

[Employment, May 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the position that is hard to understand is the government's position. On the one hand it illegally pays less than the going wage to workers, some 10,000. On the other hand, the minister now is open to a system where a foreign worker, working beside a Canadian and doing identical work, will get paid more per hour. On the one hand it wants to pay less. On the other hand it wants to pay more. All in all, this is a grossly self-contradictory, incompetent government hopelessly flailing about in its own Conservative mess, so why does it not just adopt the Liberal five-point plan?

[Employment, May 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives do not seem to know if temporary foreign workers are getting paid too much or too little.

Under this government, nearly 10,000 foreign workers were paid less than the prevailing wage for the work they were doing. In many cases, that was illegal, and it certainly lowered Canadian wages.

Why did the government break the law?

[Extension of Sitting Hours, May 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is a breath of fresh air to hear from a Liberal. Under current circumstances, I would not even mind hearing from a Conservative, given this deluge from the NDP.

My colleague reminds me of inside baseball. We are not just talking in a bubble; We are talking in a bubble that is in a bubble that is in a bubble. We are a country mile away from anything of concern to Canadians.

My suggestion is that we get this over with quickly and move on to the real business of the House. That business is of some interest to Canadians across the country.