Human Resources committee  When someone applies for a labour market opinion now, we put everyone through the same basic test. We have a series of labour market factors that we're required to test on, and we do that. There are differences in verifying the history and the identity of an employer we know abo

Human Resources committee  That's at least two questions. Under the structure for the limited amount of service we have now, an employer registers to use the system and has an account. When they apply for labour market opinions, from that point on they apply through the same account. That gets away from a

Human Resources committee  Thank you. Without drifting too far from where we are, I would say that the issue of foreign pilots is something that has been in the news. It's always something that's out there. I would say that we have worked very closely with various companies. Obviously I can't get into t

Human Resources committee  As we talked about a bit before, as far as the processing goes, what it does is reduce a step in the current process by which an employer sends in a labour market opinion application. Someone has to literally take it off the fax machine, verify that it's complete, take the info

Human Resources committee  It certainly does. It saves the time used when someone has to take paper off a fax machine or from the mailroom, verify that it's complete, and manually enter a lot of that information in the foreign worker system. Because the system, as it currently is set up and as we enhance i

Human Resources committee  As I said, from a simple perspective where there is reduced error, or we always have the same information from an employer, it's an important tool for compliance. We can actually make sure that all the information is consistent. The large part of this effort is around the front

Human Resources committee  At this point, we haven't actually quantified what the savings are. To be honest, from a processing perspective, a lot of the time the savings are in time and the number of applications we can process in a given year, or that one officer can, rather than a quantified savings.

Human Resources committee  These amendments are strictly about transitioning the program from a very paper-based system to online. That's the scope of what they are. I'm not going to say that it's otherwise. I will say, though, that as far as program integrity and compliance go, when an employer is regis

Human Resources committee  The process itself and the tools that the department uses to assess the labour market impact of a temporary foreign worker coming to the country, and whether Canadians are available who could and should be available to do the work, won't change. It's a transition from a very, ver

Human Resources committee  I can't speak to the EI side of things. I can say that we have looked at this proposal around the electronic administration of the program largely from an efficiency perspective. There are any number of inefficiencies in the current processing, including, for example, employers w

Human Resources committee  Our focus has been strictly on finding efficiencies to streamline the processing system so that we can get the same or better outcomes with a faster process.

Human Resources committee  Yes, definitely. We've heard from employers for months and months that they like an online system we were piloting. We have issues now because there are some parts of the application process that we can't put online, such as electronic payment, for example. Employers struggle wh

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I would to thank the committee for the opportunity to appear here today. I've had the opportunity to appear before the committee previously, and I appreciate your inviting me back. You have already introduced my colleagues, but I will add their titl

Human Resources committee  I would say the government did announce the suspension of the accelerated labour market opinion process, and the decision on that is obviously pending.

Human Resources committee  The question is first of all, if it does come back, will it come back in exactly the same form as it was before. I can't speak to that now. I can finish the other part of your question. I think it's important to note that we do compliance reviews on both the applications that co