Citizenship and Immigration committee  We do if we have access to them. But under the structure, we would be, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, exactly. I think that's probably because there's a federation in every region of the country.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, as part of the advocacy, but there have to be guidelines.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I see it as a major undercutting, and that's part of our concern. From the industry I come out of, what we call what the minister is talking about is “greasing the slip” for when we're doing a launch. It's to make things move a lot faster. Going faster in the same direction isn't

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the closed visa puts them in a very tight, controlled atmosphere. We don't have the huge numbers you have in Ontario or Alberta, but we do hear of verbal abuse that the workers are taking. They feel there's no place for them to go. I'm sure they're not aware of where th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the open visa obviously is a much better fit than what we're seeing right now, just for the reasons you gave, with the control the employer has, when it's a single employer, when that link is broken. Those workers are under extreme pressure when they come here to work. We

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They're generally in at minimum wage or above, the minimum wage being the benchmark wage.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That was one of the concerns, because doing that is keeping.... Almost every other province has what's called a working minimum wage, which is generally about a dollar or better above the actual minimum wage. Ours actually crept up to about 25¢ above the minimum wage in the last

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We're seeing them now. But initially we brought some in for some very highly skilled technical types of connections, probably about a year ago, and the related shipyards have brought in about 30 workers for a three-month period. But predominantly what we're seeing now is for eith

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. I've pretty well talked about the issues on Bill C-50 as it is, but I do want to point out that to date the determination of labour market needs as demonstrated within the list of occupations under pressure are being made without labour union partici

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Good morning. My name is Rick Clarke and I am the president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour. You've been in other provinces, so you know the structures of the federation. We're part of the Canadian Labour Cong