Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's very simple. The people already there, who are in some cases staying for decades, don't have permanent residency rights. They can't bring their families and can't put down roots. The simplest thing to do is to give permanent resident status to people who are already there on

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. Let's start from the beginning. With regard to doing an English language test, your employer won't give you time off. We are trying to prepare farm workers across the country to do these exams. We have to ship them IELTS practice books, because they don't have comput

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. I think we have to understand that permanent resident status is the mechanism through which people access rights. If people's access rights are being denied, we simply can't have a fair society. It's not possible to have a fair society in which 1.6 million people, o

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's already happening to dozens of people. There are no bridging work permits. You apply for the program. You're waiting. I told the story about the worker—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  —whose employer rescinded their nomination, and the worker wasn't able to maintain their status. We're seeing this across the country already. More people are going to become undocumented, and undocumented people are being excluded from rights and protections. That is not the wa

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. I want to reiterate that we do have migration to rural communities by temporary migrants. We need to understand the whole picture and not just part of it. The fundamental issue is that people are unable to assert or access their labour rights, health care, education

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today on behalf of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, which serves as the secretariat for the Migrant Rights Network, Canada's only national migrant-led coalition. Cumulatively, Migrant Rights Network member organization

Citizenship and Immigration committee  A report was issued in June 2020 looking at the conditions during March, April and May. It followed the work we had done previously. I can tell you that a year later we are in not the same crisis but a much deeper crisis. The housing conditions are bad, if not worse. The labour c

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. I think labour mobility is key, but it's very important that labour mobility programs, like sectoral programs, do not use the LMIA. For the last two years, ESDC has been pushing for LMIA-specific sectoral permits, which is to say that you can only change jobs if some

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I mentioned, just over 40 years ago, most people who were entering the country—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Oh yes, sorry, I forgot. Most—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can provide that in writing. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Maybe I'll just give you two examples. First, we did a survey of our membership: care workers, farm workers, international students and work permit holders. On average, we found that they were having $10,000 every year stolen in wages. That is to say, they were working overtime

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our report “Behind Closed Doors” was the one referred to, in which we document that, in fact—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Perhaps I'll start with one key thing. We just saw Stats Canada release its report showing that international students had their tuition raised 7.1% during COVID-19, while regular domestic students had their tuition raised by 1.6%. At a time when people were struggling and people