Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, it goes back to my earlier point. A lot of folks are in a situation where they're facing some abusive treatment by employers. They feel obliged.... In that scenario, as I've said, going home is not really an option for them. Not only is the money they earn in Canada needed

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The most urgent issue the government needs to take on right now is to take.... There's this acceptance that the only way to solve labour market challenges in Canada is to open the floodgates to temporary foreign workers who never have the opportunity to become full citizens of th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They are fundamental. You mentioned the exploitation of workers. I've already talked about it, in addition to nation building, growing our GDP, population growth is core to that. If the concern and priority of the federal government is to reduce well-documented worker abuse and

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The question is why did they lose their status? We know from our work in the heartland of Canadian agriculture, the UFCW, which for two decades has had a centre in Leamington, Ontario—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would just start by stating a fact that when the seasonal agricultural worker program was established in Canada in 1966, a decade before the year you mentioned, the grand total of temporary foreign workers in Canada was 256. Now it's upward of 400,000. The difference was, of c

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Do you mean in terms of permanent immigration?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. I think it's fundamental to address a lot of the concerns raised during the conversation so far, but also, as a trade union—and you touched on our work a bit, Ms. Kwan—we of course are focused on helping migrant workers, predominantly in the agricultural sector, to as

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For the program overall, as I said in my opening remarks, the government's recent announcement about allowing 30,000 low-skilled migrants to achieve PR is a good first step. We need those significant numbers annually. However, we have to be realistic too. Canada's whole story is

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would just add that I don't think it should be made easier, quite frankly. I think as long as the conversion numbers become a reality in the program, especially in the so-called low-skilled stream of the program where you have very low conversion numbers of migrants to permanen

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. On behalf of the United Food and Commercial Workers, I would like to thank the standing committee for the opportunity to share our perspective today and for the work of the committee on this important subject. Before I put forward some of our thoughts, p

Agriculture committee  The agri-food pilot was put into effect last year. I just recently asked for an update of data on the way it has been performing. I have yet to receive it, so I don't have any data on how it's rolling out. The commitment was 2,700 new opportunities for permanent residency for a

Agriculture committee  The resources the government has put forward are not just that; it's the money through the Future Skills Centre as well. There's some good stuff there, but certainly, in our sectors, just as important is a need to compel employers to come to the table. Back to my earlier point, h

Agriculture committee  They are, and historically we're very proud of the way that we have used our collective agreements to leverage provincial nominee programs in order to secure real pathways to citizenship, and that's something that we haven't touched enough on. To your point, Mr. Perron, TFWs hav

Agriculture committee  That's probably a good idea. On the immigration side, it's obviously important to evaluate what skills we're recruiting for when we allow newcomers to come to Canada. That's a key part. I would just reiterate my earlier point. I don't accept the notion that all underemployed or