Citizenship and Immigration committee  I did not intend to represent anyone or anything when I came here. I answered a call last Friday asking me to come and speak about occupational health and safety. I am not representing any institution or government; I am merely presenting the results of my research, that is all.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Listen, I worked in the healthcare system for 22 years. If there are two groups I want to represent, it's immigrant workers who have suffered occupational injuries and the health care systems having to deal with these cases. They don't know what to do with them, because all of a sudden, they are not, administratively speaking, under anyone's jurisdiction, and they don't have the full protection a workers is entitled to.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In fact, there are few countries that are in a position to systematically document workers' occupational injuries based on their status. In the Canadian provinces' files, there are no variables we can use to describe the workers' country of birth, mother tongue, origin or status.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would prefer not to answer. My specialty is occupational health and safety, not immigration. I think it is very bad manners, particularly with regard to this gentleman, to ask a question relating to people who have come here in circumstances which may be unfortunate, but do not meet the legal concepts explained in the Geneva Convention.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I have never worked on studies about seasonal workers. My work dealt with people who had made compensation claims, for example. We did very detailed studies of their progress from when they made a claim to the CSST. Our samples of workers came from medical clinics, lawyers' offices and the FATA, an organization that provides advocacy services for workers injured on the job.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our ethics committee refused to allow us to ask the people any questions at all about their status.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In doing research, ethics committees are very stringent. In this case, the committee believed that it was not relevant to collect that information for the purposes of the study, that it could be harmful to the individuals involved. I am bound by the ethics committee, which governs our work.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It wasn't relevant. The purpose of my research was to determine what happened over the 12 months after the occupational injury, from the point at which the people were injured. I did not have to look at what their status was before the injury occurred. We simply wanted to know whether people were born in Canada or outside Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's true. For that reason, I think that the situation of temporary workers is going to become oddly complex. The federal government is going to admit the temporary workers, but each province is going to manage the aspect covered by its own occupational health and safety system.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think that if the federal government is going to authorize and promote programs to admit temporary workers it should sign specific agreements with the occupational health and safety commissions in the provinces that are most affected by the admission of a large temporary workforce.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think that the occupational health and safety commissions are partially responsible for ensuring that all workers have access to information and are aware of their rights. There should be more oversight in industries where the workers are largely immigrants, whether temporary or permanent.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are a number of players when it comes to occupational health and safety: the company, the union, the [Editor's note: technical difficulties] when there are [Editor's note: technical difficulties] and the CSST. Each one is partially responsible for providing a worker with information.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would first like to note that a majority of the studies I refer to and the studies I have done myself relate to documented workers. We are not talking about undocumented workers. Our sample included very few undocumented workers. The workers are very reluctant and suspicious about the idea of participating in studies dealing with occupational injuries, because even with papers they are in a precarious situation.