Citizenship and Immigration committee  You'd need to change the regulations to remove some of the requirements that employers must meet to be able to access the program. The thing to remember is that the program's purpose is yes, to provide access to employers, but it also must be balanced against ensuring that Canad

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the basic regulations would have come in at the time IRPA was written. I don't know exactly what year that was. There were significant reforms brought to the program in 2001.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Of course.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I understand. The labour shortage aspect is only one aspect we look at during the application process. We must assess the genuineness of the employer or whether they may be involved in a labour dispute.... There are some things we need to verify, regardless of what the labour mar

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The truth is that we want to make it shorter and more efficient for everyone. In particular in agriculture, we know they have a recurring need every year. This year has been particularly an eventful one given the introduction of biometrics. We've taken steps to facilitate that pr

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's something that we are looking at. The idea would be sort of a NEXUS-like program for recurring employers who we know are in compliance with the program. That's how we could facilitate the processing there.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly, we're highly sensitive to the impact inspections can have on employer operations. The goal of the inspections is to ensure that employers are complying, that the rules are being followed and that workers are being treated well. That being said, these are new processes

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We're looking to improve the processes. The reality is that we're funded to a certain level and we don't have more people to bring to the—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's well known that the program is a recurring source of labour to ensure that employers have access to labour. Certainly their reports to us in terms of the program requirements, the advertising that they must do and the recruitment that they do demonstrate that they have diffi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It depends on the type of data you're looking at and the type of analysis that you're looking at. If you're looking at some of the projections that the department just produced, these are 10-year projections, so they look over a very long time at what the expected shortage would

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to present on the temporary foreign worker program. I'm the director general for the program at ESDC. With me is Katie Alexander. She's the executive director for program operations at Service Canada. The objective of the program is to p

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't know if I can answer that directly. It's a demand-driven program, so the employers need to apply to the program and meet the conditions—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, so over the years there have been changes to the program to restrict access.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Currently the most restrictions are on those seeking workers in lower-wage positions. In 2014 a number of reforms were put in place over concerns that the program wasn't being used as intended. This included a $1,000 fee on all employers outside of agriculture. In the low-wage sp

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can say that inside the program, one of the principles is that we require employers to demonstrate efforts to recruit Canadians first. At the beginning they must advertise positions to Canadians at the median wage. In the low-wage space in particular, we require employers to r