Human Resources committee  Awareness of the line would be one area. We should be always making sure that we're promoting awareness about the line.

Human Resources committee  One area that's particularly knowledgeable about it would be the seasonal agriculture worker program, in which there's a greater opportunity to brief workers who are coming in, because it's managed in conjunction with the consulates from the participating countries. There's a full briefing on worker rights, including access to the tip line.

Human Resources committee  Do you mean inspection of non-compliance by the employer?

Human Resources committee  The penalties that came into effect in the fall of last year, in December, for any offences committed after that date, are as I mentioned $100,000 per violation and up to $1 million plus a ban for up to a lifetime from use of the program, so there are pretty significant penalties for non-compliance.

Human Resources committee  There's a lot of opportunity to use the programming in place in the department and programming in provinces and territories to help find suitable Canadians. There are some partners who are doing significant work in this area, and some of our programs are active in this area. Our youth employment strategy, for example, is finding youth at risk and using Canada Summer Jobs programming to help meet some of the needs.

Human Resources committee  We require them to make some.... For example, an employer must reach out to some under-represented groups before we will actually process their labour market impact assessment. In many cases this results in outreach to some of our indigenous training organizations, for example. Once those avenues are exhausted, then yes, the TFW program could be used.

Human Resources committee  The increased compliance rate is certainly the objective, and there's been a significant increase in efforts on many fronts in terms of our two main fronts. In one, increasing our capacity to do inspections and investigations, there's been considerable ramp-up of activity, as well as penalties that were put in place, which now are up to $100,000 per violation and up to $1 million per employer.

Human Resources committee  I can speak to the labour market impact assessment portion. There's more to getting the permanent residency than just that part of the process. Each of our different streams for processing our LMIAs has a different timeline associated with it; some are faster, some are slower. In 2015, the data I have says that it took about 56 days on average in processing time for a labour market impact assessment for someone seeking permanent residency.

Human Resources committee  That wouldn't be in the temporary foreign worker stream. It would be in support of an individual, who could be a temporary foreign worker, seeking permanent residency through a—

Human Resources committee  You could speak to the express entry—

Human Resources committee  I would say the capacity in the program has been augmented significantly, which is one of the main reasons for the imposition of the higher fee. The $1,000 fee has gone into supporting a more rigorous process. That's both the front-end review of the applications as well as the compliance regime, with a target of one in four employers for inspections as we're moving into this new regime.

Human Resources committee  I can't speak for the minister. The minister has a strong interest, as she has stated many times, in finding Canadians first for all the available jobs. I know she also is very interested in hearing the results of the review of this committee to guide the work going forward.

Human Resources committee  Just to clarify, are you asking how many have been approved under that special exemption?

Human Resources committee  In the range of 600 TFWs have been processed, which is up.

Human Resources committee  There's been a considerable increase in the capacity for inspections. I'm informed that we have about 85 inspectors on staff who are now doing inspections across the country, so—