Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's interesting, you're asking a question that I was asking of my staff before I came here this afternoon. The answer is that neutral labour market opinions are issued primarily when it is a job or an occupation that is so specialized it would have no impact on Canadians.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  HRSD deals only with the employers, and under present regulatory authorities, our responsibilities are diminished significantly at the point when the labour market opinion is issued. But as far as the workers themselves and how we determine whether they leave, I'll turn that ov

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For low-skilled workers, the employer is required to pay for their return airfare to ensure that the employee actually has a ticket home.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll start. First of all, the employer approaches HRSDC or Service Canada in the regions in each province making a request for a labour market opinion. For instance, they need a certain number of employees in a particular occupation. They identify the advertising they've undert

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, they actually do pay EI premiums. It's not an easy issue to address, because the principle behind EI is that you're allowed to collect EI premiums if you're available for work in Canada, but of course the temporary foreign workers you mentioned leave the country and theref

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Exactly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are benefits available, but those benefits are limited. So it further complicates the situation.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There is one additional piece of information, though. They are eligible to collect, for instance, sickness and maternity benefits.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One of our main tasks in assessing an employer request is insisting that an employer provide proof that they have undertaken extensive advertising in local newspapers, on the national job bank, and other sources, depending on the type of occupation and the region in which they're

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's interesting. There are a variety of different types of labour disputes, of course, and we have to look at each one on a case-by-case basis. If there are negotiations under way for a new collective agreement, for instance, we want to make sure there's no impact on the outcome

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again you've hit on a very interesting question and one that preoccupies me as well as my minister. Our ability to do investigations or verification of employers after we issue an LMO is quite limited at this point under current regulations, and we realize that this is an issue.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The legal advice we're receiving on this at this point is a bit mixed. But to the best of my knowledge, at this point we don't have the authority to assess past performance when we're checking on new labour market opinions. This is again one of the issues we have to address in fu

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If an employer is asking for an extension of a labour market opinion, we can check on their compliance with measures. But up to that point, there's very little we can do. Another interesting development is under the expedited labour market opinion process that I mentioned in my

Citizenship and Immigration committee  To determine whether there is a shortage of workers, one of the key places we look is whether there are a number of Canadians currently receiving employment insurance because they are unable to find jobs in their occupation. If the number of Canadians on employment insurance in a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for your question. What we call the “prevailing wage”, the wage that Canadians would be paid in that occupation, is an average based on a variety of data sources. We draw data from EI databases to identify wages that Canadians are paid in that occupation. We look at em