:
Good morning, and welcome to our meeting.
As you're aware, we're the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration of the House of Commons. We've been mandated to hold hearings on three very important matters: temporary and undocumented workers, immigration consultants, and Iraqi refugees.
We're going to meet in just about all the provinces. We have 52 panels that will be appearing before us. Already we've met in Vancouver, Edmonton, and Moose Jaw, and here we are now in Winnipeg.
Our committee is made up of representatives from all parties in the House of Commons, and we have a couple of people who can't be here today because they had duties back in the House of Commons.
However, we will be hearing testimony from witnesses all across the country on these matters, and at the end of it all, we will compile a report and make recommendations to the minister and to the House of Commons based on what we're hearing.
I'd like to welcome our witnesses here this morning. We have, from the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, Martin M. Dolin, who is the executive director; and from the Iraqi International Initiative, Hani Al-Ubeady.
The way we work it, of course, is that you have an opportunity to make an opening statement. So I'll leave it to you.
I'd like to welcome all the committee members to Winnipeg. You brought some nice weather with you, and we appreciate it.
We want to talk about the situation in Iraq and why we feel that Canada is really not taking its responsibilities. We would hope the committee would look a little more carefully at what is going on in Iraq.
Three momentous events have taken place in the last few days. One is that it's the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq; two, the American casualties have reached 4,000; three, the Iraqi civilian casualties that can be counted have reached 90,000. These numbers are probably one-tenth of the injuries and morbidity, rather than just deaths, happening in that country.
The interesting thing is, yesterday's New York Times reported that the number of civilian casualties in March had gone up 43% from casualties in February. Basically, the idea that Iraq is becoming a safer place seems to be belied by the facts.
Recently, more than a million Iraqis have crossed the border into Syria, and more than a million have crossed the border into Jordan. The Syrians, it is my understanding, and the Jordanians have now closed the borders. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is having a terrible time trying to screen the refugees in both these places.
Another thing they're finding, from my reports, from people I talk to in UNHCR, is that one in nine people who were being screened in Syria were found to have cancer and various kinds of leukemia, etc., which one could guess—and people in UNHCR are guessing—is attributable to depleted uranium bullets being used in Iraq.
The point I'm trying to make is that Iraq is not a safe place to return to. People in the Iraqi community here are very concerned about their relatives. One of the things that is happening is, because of the lawlessness in the country and the fact that there is no real government in control—the al-Maliki government is not in control, as a matter of fact—that Iraq has declined to a state worse than Yugoslavia was.
When Tito was in Yugoslavia, you had a unified nation, where Serbs, Bosnians, and Croatians all lived together and somehow managed. Prior to the U.S. invasion, you had a secular dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, where Shias, Sunnis, Christians, and the few Jews who were left managed to remain in that country and stay together. Since the Saddam dictatorship was overthrown and Saddam was killed, the country has broken into sectarian divisions, where it seems the Sunnis are being supported by the Americans and the al-Maliki government, and the Shia majority is being supported by the Mahdi army and by various other religious fanatics. You have a country in a different—and worse, probably—situation from Yugoslavia's. With Yugoslavia, at least you had some definitive borders. What you have in Iraq is the same kind of sectarian situation, but without any defined borders and without any control.
The people who have gone to Syria and to Jordan are now in a position where the Syrian government, it's my understanding, is telling people they can stay for six months. Then they have to pay to renew; otherwise they go back. They have no place to go back to. You have, basically, the Kurdish north, which is reasonably safe. You then have situations in Baghdad that are an absolute disaster, not only militarily, but because of the criminal element, kidnappings, etc.
One of the things that has also happened, as happens in many of these cases, is that the intelligensia—the college professors, the professionals—are the ones being targeted by both the sectarian militias and by the criminal elements, with kidnapping, etc., and they are the ones who very often have fled into Jordan and Syria. And the diaspora will continue.
To my understanding, the situation in Canada is that the government has said that Canada has a quota of 700. That is what Canada will take. The Iraqi community in Canada is appalled, and I think any Canadian who has any sense of morality should be appalled, by the minuscule number of 700. There are millions out there.
Canada has a role. Canada can take a role. I think the political decision...because the Americans are trying to convince the world--falsely--that the situation is turning around, that it's getting better, that it's going to be safe for people to return to Iraq. I think the facts belie that. The reality is that Canada should be doing more.
One thing Canada should be doing, very simply, is at least expediting the reuniting of families where there are Iraqi Canadians in this country. Throughout this country, people like Hani should be able to be reunited with their family members. We should expedite brothers and sisters, etc., being able to come to Canada rather than having them go through the private sponsorship program.
I would hope that the committee would recommend to the government the following: one, increase the quota; two, allow the Iraqi Canadian community in Canada to have some say and some input into who gets in; three, increase the resources in Damascus considerably to be able to expedite the movement of people who are now facing incredibly harsh situations in Syria and Jordan; and four, assist the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees with funds, and possibly even the seconding of staff, to be able to allow them to process the people more quickly, to be able to feed the people who are coming across the border, and also now to be able to look at the internally displaced within Iraq who are being rejected at the borders of Syria and Jordan and are being forced to stay in Iraq, to make it a country where you can have protection from inland displacement.
I would strongly urge the committee to give serious consideration to the situation there. Canada can take a role, and we believe Canada should take a role. It would be the moral thing to do. It would be the right thing to do. Also, the Iraqi Canadians in this country would bless this government and this country if it took a more expeditious role in protecting their relatives.
Thank you very much for allowing me this time. I would be open to any questions.
:
Thank you very much. I really appreciate your being in front of this committee, and of course, welcome.
Mr. Dolin, we have enjoyed very much having your son in front of us as well, as always. I remember the first time we met back here quite a few years ago. There you were presenting and your son was sitting here as our very able researcher. It is always good to see you.
The Iraqi situation is a real disaster. I agree with you. It is worse than the former Yugoslavia, but the cleansing is the same.
I had a staff member for quite a few years, and he left me, as I couldn't pay enough. But when we were going through the crisis and they were hunting for Chemical Ali, they didn't get Chemical Ali, but they wiped out nine members of his family who were in a bunker; these were bunker-buster bombs.
I agree totally with your presentation, and I hope we can underline the urgency in the report we do.
The question I have is this. We have gone through a situation where this committee pushed hard and finally we're getting the leftover Vietnamese refugees, who are coming into the country from the Philippines. They were stuck there. What I am wondering about is to what extent can the Iraqi community be involved in sponsorship, or get other groups to be involved in sponsorship, to be able to increase the numbers to show there is support out there. When we did the Vietnamese boat people, a lot of folks across Canada came in as sponsors. I'm just wondering if you could address that.
:
By the way, I'd just like to comment that my son enjoyed his five years with the committee too, so I think there is a mutual love relationship here. Even though he is now with the IRB, I think he misses the committee. There are interesting things going on here all the time.
The Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council is the largest private sponsor in Canada, and we have about 50 constituent groups. We sponsor over 100 people a month. What Hani is saying is that one of the problems is that you need to expedite it. They will have to come through Damascus. It is now taking three to four years. People will not live that long to be able to go through that process. One of the problems has always been that government-sponsored refugees can only be considered if they are referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It has always bothered me that we, and our immigration people, insist on re-interviewing the people who have already been interviewed on the same criteria by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It slows up the process. It delays, and it strikes me that in most cases it is redundant.
What I would suspect, if the Iraqi community is willing to do this, is expediting it--have the UNHCR dossiers there, do a paper screening, and do the medical and the security check without the necessity for re-interviewing, unless there is something missing in the dossier so there is a need for re-interviewing. It strikes me that this is a very inefficient way of doing things.
There is the other possibility of having designated classes again, as we did with the eastern Europeans, but the key element, as Hani points out, is that the situation is urgent. The situation is dangerous for the people. The host governments in both Syria and Jordan are becoming less and less welcoming. The necessity is for speed, expeditiousness, and for the committee to recommend to the government, to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, some expedited way of dealing with the people, particularly those who have relatives here in Canada.
:
Very simply, what I would tell people is that the situation in Iraq is unique. There seems to be a government policy, which is re-articulated in Bill C-50, that the way to control the needs of refugees is to put caps on the numbers rather than increase the ability to deal with refugees, which to me is an outrage.
Canada won the Nansen Medal back in 1976. The Canadian people won the medal for their ability and their willingness to welcome refugees to Canada.
Putting lids on the number of refugees is going back to the “none is too many” scenario of the late 1930s to keep the Jews out, to keep them from coming to Canada to make refugee claims. Once again, it seems to be a “keep them out, and if they get here kick them out” scenario of the department that applies.
The situation in Iraq is somewhat unique. I don't think you can compare Iraq to Haiti or Sri Lanka. There is a war going on, an illegal war that was not sanctioned by Canada or the UN. There are millions of people who have been forced out of their country because of the breakdown of the state. Whatever it was before, there is nothing remaining, and there is a vacuum there.
The reality is that anybody who picks up a newspaper can understand the difference between what's going on in Iraq and what's going on in other places in the world. But also, to the question, “Why should we take these over any others?”, the answer I would give is, “We shouldn't.”
The fact is, when the department stops putting caps on it and the minister starts recognizing that you need to put the resources in there to process people quickly and expeditiously in all the posts around the world.... According to our policies, our laws, our humaneness, putting limits on refugees coming to Canada, putting lids on this, is not the response. The response is to put more resources into being able to do what we, as Canadians, want to do as peacekeepers and humanitarians.
:
It's hard for me to speak for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, but let me explain my understanding of what they have told us about the way they choose. Basically the signatories to the covenant on refugee protection in the United Nations.... Canada is a signatory. There are few receiving countries. They are now getting more. As I mentioned earlier, a refugee, by definition--and there are various little subheadings to this--is a person who has been persecuted in their country of origin, who has reasonable reason to fear being persecuted if they are returned to their country of origin, and who is outside of their country of origin. That is the basic definition.
The UN makes referrals to the refugee-accepting countries based on that definition. The major countries are the United States, Australia, the Scandinavian countries, Canada, etc. Canada, per capita, takes more than its share. One of the things the UN has told me is that it's based on posts. For example, we have only four posts in Africa that deal with refugees. Now, considering the scenario that's going on in Africa compared to the number of posts we have in Europe, it strikes one that there is an anomaly there. Why are there only those four posts that deal with refugees, in Nairobi, Cairo, Accra, and Pretoria, leaving a huge hole in the centre? Nairobi, in particular, is overwhelmed.
The United Nations tells me they will refer to various countries based on what they feel the expeditiousness of doing it will be. So, for example, what I have been told particularly by a UNHCR officer from the Horn of Africa is that they will refer to Australia or Scandinavia first for the most urgent cases. The reason they give is that it takes Canada so long to process. If they need to move people quickly, they need them processed quickly, so they'll go to the Australians, and they'll go to the Americans before they will go to Canada.
This embarrasses me as a Canadian. It should embarrass all of us. There is something wrong with our system if we can't process as quickly as the other receiving countries.
So when you're asking me how the UN determines, I think they determine the urgency of need, and then if it's really urgent they won't go to Canada; they'll go someplace else because our system is not effective.
On some of the questions you have been asking of the panel and the chair, I think we can do it if we want to. We have done it when we wanted to. We can really take a leadership role in this, and we will do immensely more in helping to stabilize the region than the Americans did in spending billions and billions and billions of dollars in creating the mess there. So we can definitely do it.
Whenever I deal with a conflict like this, it really haunts me. When I was in the former Yugoslavia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I saw unbelievable things. You fly in and see Mostar. When you're high up, it looks like a normal place; then you drop down and approach it, and you see that the roofs are gone in many cases. And when you go through the place, you find that the places where the minorities lived—the three groups, the Serbs, the Croatians, and the Muslims—have been ethnically cleansed.
I remember going to an elementary school where there was wood, or uncut lumber, up against the windows. I asked the guide why it was there, whether it was for firewood. He said, no, it was to stop grenades from being thrown in the windows. It really is awful. I can't overstate enough the tragedies that are happening to all of these people, and we can do a whole lot by providing some leadership.
Now, Mr. Dolin, you mentioned that the bureaucracy created the problem doesn't want to fix the problem. I really have concerns, because we will be dealing with Bill C-50, which would have us give more power to the bureaucracy to make the decisions. I know it says it will be done by the minister, but legal guarantees will be replaced by the pleasure of the minister, which really comes down to bureaucratic discretion, because they're the ones who are doing it. We'll be dealing with that bill, but what you said clearly points to a problem.
I said to the members of the committee, because I've been on this committee for 10 years—and I'm not just picking on the ministers of today or the Conservative ministers, as I have said this to all of the ministers—that we really haven't had ministers who have known what is going on. Their dependence on the bureaucracy means that the bureaucracy is actually running the show, and what we need is some political accountability.
So if we want action, we have to send a very strong message as to what the goals are. There has to be the political will and there has to be solidarity on the political side of it, so that we're not playing political games but are working to solve these problems.
:
Maybe we can get going again.
I want to welcome our witness today from the Manitoba Federation of Labour, John Doyle—what a fine name.
Speaking as an individual is Kenneth Zaifman, lawyer, Zaifman Immigration Lawyers. Welcome.
From the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, we have John Ryan, acting chief executive officer, and Wenda Woodman, manager, complaints and discipline department. You have a hard department there, the complaints department.
From Maple Leaf Foods Inc., we have Rory McAlpine, vice-president, government and industry relations, and Nick Johnson, vice-president, human resources, commercial and business support, Maple Leaf consumer foods.
We also have some people added: Susan Yaeger, senior manager, international recruitment, Maple Leaf consumer foods, and Sandy Trudel, economic development officer, City of Brandon.
Welcome.
I know you have some opening remarks that you want to make.
Do I start with you, John?
Good morning. The issue of temporary foreign workers is very high on organized labour's radar right now for a number of reasons, but time limitations being what they are, I'll touch on a few key points and recommendations from the material I've prepared for other purposes. I hope it doesn't sound too choppy in the editing process.
The temporary foreign workers program has been greatly expanded since 2006. Now Canadian employers are able to import workers from other countries when they claim there is a labour shortage in Canada and that they are unable to fill jobs. Which of these cases is based on reality and which are instances of employers creating a low-wage environment that Canadian workers refuse to participate in deserves further exploration.
The changes to the temporary foreign workers program made since 2006 are focused on making the process easier for employers and not necessarily to protect working people. These changes have created lists of occupations that qualify for fast-track permits to import migrant labour. They've created a step-by-step guide in employer-friendly language on how to hire a foreign worker. They've assigned government staff to assist employers seeking to hire foreign workers in cases where a labour market opinion is not required.
The 2007 federal budget provided for an additional $50.5 million over two years to “reduce processing delays and more effectively respond to regional labour and skill shortages”. Employers are no longer required to advertise for six weeks to attract Canadian workers. Only a seven-day period is required before the employer is able to apply for a temporary foreign worker's import permit. There's a lack of effective compliance, monitoring, and enforcement mechanisms to ensure Canadian employers respect the rights of the guest workers they invite into the country, as well as the rights of any Canadian workers they may displace.
The Harper government is aware of these issues. They've heard repeatedly from human rights groups, the labour movement, immigrant settlement agencies, community-based migrant worker advocates, and faith groups, all of whom have been pointing out flaws in the program, such as: how guest workers are fleeced by unscrupulous labour brokers who charge exorbitant processing fees in exchange for work permits; how workers are misled with false promises about wages and working conditions; how they're exploited, intimidated, and threatened with deportation by some employers unless they accept terms akin to indentured servitude; how they're faced with social isolation and separation from their families and communities; and, additionally, how they're sometimes exposed to racism and discrimination in the communities in which they work.
It's our belief that many of the stories on the plight of foreign workers that have been carried by the nation's news media are just the tip of the iceberg. In many jurisdictions, action by government authorities is complaint-triggered with no third-party interventions allowed.
Many barriers are inherent in this process. We believe many temporary foreign workers are reluctant to complain about their problems for fear they will lose their Canadian employment and be returned to their country of origin. Many are unaware of their legal rights or don't know how to carry their complaint forward. In many cases, lack of proficiency in either of Canada's two official languages is a further barrier, and in far too many cases, their homeland experience discourages standing up for one's rights in the face of employer or government authority.
We urge this committee to recommend a number of steps in its report to the House of Commons to give the temporary foreign worker program a fresh and more effective start. It must be returned to its original pre-2002 purpose and process. The immigration system should be reformed to make permanent immigration more accessible and efficient.
Foreign workers coming to Canada should be afforded the rights of permanent immigrants. Canadian employers should turn to the training of existing Canadian workers, employment of underrepresented groups in the labour market, and permanent immigration to solve their labour market problems.
Temporary foreign workers, who have worked the equivalent of two years of employment within a three-year period, should be entitled to apply for permanent immigration status. I believe a similar system is already in place for domestic live-in caregivers.
Temporary foreign worker work permits should not state the employer name. Permits should be issued for a particular occupation and province so temporary foreign workers are not tied to a specific employer, allowing them to switch employers without penalty, if required.
The federal government should explicitly prohibit the charging of fees to skilled temporary foreign workers by brokers or by employers. It should establish a team with the resources to investigate and enforce the prohibitions.
The federal government should set up internal worker advocate offices within both Human Resources Development Canada and Citizenship and Immigration Canada to handle complaints and to assist temporary foreign workers in trouble. This function should include assisting temporary foreign workers in finding jobs with employers with labour market opinions.
Advocate contact information should be provided to all temporary foreign workers when issued work permits. Advocates should be able to maintain confidentiality in the event that workers report that they are working illegally due to broker or employer arrangements.
A comprehensive education module must be developed to ensure that all stakeholders know the rules associated with the temporary foreign worker program, the rights that temporary foreign workers have, the remedies to problems, and how to get action.
Employers should be required to post a bond representing at least one month's wages and return airfare for all workers they hire. If the employer fails to provide a minimal level of employment, the bond would be released to the temporary foreign worker.
Employer obligations regarding housing should be clarified and strengthened. Accommodation standards should be explicit, and employers should be prohibited from earning excessive profits from accommodation of temporary foreign workers.
Employers importing workers into the certified trades should be required to provide proof of efforts to use and train domestic apprentices before being issued an LMO.
Employers seeking temporary foreign workers to fill certified trade occupations should be required as part of their LMO approval process to provide training, education support, and language assistance to temporary foreign workers, and to provide proof that such training is arranged before a worker is issued a work permit. Employers who fail to provide assistance should be barred from future LMOs.
Fines related to this program should be substantial. As well, violating those provisions should result in the violator being barred from future participation.
Of the themes contained in these recommendations, two are paramount: proactive enforcement by the federal and provincial governments, and education, both in the community and for the temporary foreign workers themselves. Having standards is one thing, but they're meaningless unless the workers, employers, and community are aware of them. Having built-in protections is another thing, but they're ineffective when they're complaint triggered and not actively enforced.
Thank you.
I come from the world of immigration law. I started as an immigration lawyer when a poor, hapless client walked into my office 20 years ago needing help to stay in Canada. That led to experience that has now brought us to the point where immigration is on the forefront of many people's agendas.
The temporary foreign worker movement has been around for many years. It is now becoming more important to the economic viability of Canada, and I'll leave it to others to determine whether it is essential or not.
The process itself involves a number of different actors. In terms of the approval of a labour market opinion, we have Service Canada. In terms of the application for a work permit, we have Immigration Canada. In terms of the issuance of the work permit, we have the Canada Border Services Agency. In terms of renewing the work permit, we have the inland operation of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. In terms of compliance, where there is a breakdown in the working relationship or the job offer is not legal or there have been excessive fees, we have a variety of agencies. The Canada Border Services Agency is responsible for enforcement; the RCMP is responsible for criminality; and local provincial agencies are responsible for breaches of the employment standards legislation.
We have a lot of people in the foreign recruitment business, leaving aside lawyers, consultants, and others.
From my experience, if we want to make the temporary foreign worker movement work, we need a single window; we need one repository responsible. I find that if you don't have one person or one agency responsible, then you have in effect no responsibility that can be effectively administered.
At the end of the day, the issue of temporary foreign workers is a function of corporate responsibility. We can legislate all you want, but if there is no corporate responsibility in the foreign worker recruitment process, it will break down.
I notice you have Maple Leaf Foods here. There is a model of foreign recruitment that works in certain countries, where they actively went out, examined, recruited, tested, assisted applicants with their work permit applications, and dealt with integration into the workforce. There is a model that works.
The difficulty I find, and I think what's important for this committee to focus on, is not with those companies who take the responsibility to administer what I consider an effective and responsible temporary foreign worker movement; it's with those people who do not. The people who do not take responsibility really have to be regulated, charged, and taken out of the business entirely.
We have so many different parts to the process, as I said. You have a labour market opinion that sets out a prevailing wage. In some cases, workers are told that's not what they're going to be paid, even though that's what the paper said. We have some places where people apply for work permits and their qualifications are put together to meet the requirements of the labour market opinion. In other cases, once they come here, that job isn't available on the basis that was set out. For example, some people are laid off because of seasonal demand issues and are told they can't apply for unemployment insurance, because if they do, the company will not be eligible to sponsor other foreign workers or renew their work permit.
I think it's very important for us to come to grips with what the various players are. The temporary foreign worker movement does work: we are recruiting foreign workers; they are working. There are instances where there are breakdowns, and where there is a breakdown, that's where the system collapses, because the worker has no particular place to go to get assistance.
We routinely represent workers who are in situations where the employer is not fulfilling his or her responsibility, where the job is not as described, or where the worker isn't qualified to do the job. It's very important for this committee to come to grips with those particular issues.
If I can leave you with one thought on the temporary foreign worker movement, it's this. Temporary foreign workers have been around for many years. They will continue to be a part of the immigration process. In many cases, provincial programs have accepted temporary foreign workers as immigrants, so in some cases, the selection process for immigration to Canada is being offloaded to the provinces. We're bringing in temporary foreign workers. The provinces select them and they allow them to remain in Canada. Many people may argue that we should maybe give the entire skilled worker movement selection process over to the provinces.
The point I'm making is that without some governmental responsibility for who can assist workers when they come here, who is responsible for compliance issues and who can take an employer to task, not simply saying, “You can't recruit again”, but to meet their responsibilities? Without that multi-department, multi-jurisdictional federal-provincial mechanism--it's got a little bit of everything--in place, the temporary foreign worker movement will not progress to the level where I think it can to provide the types of workers the Canadian economy needs.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank you and the committee for allowing us to appear before you today.
My name is John Ryan. I am the chair and also the acting CEO of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, which is the national regulator of immigration consultants that has come as a result of recommendations this committee made in 2003 to the minister and as a result of a Supreme Court decision and a number of other things.
I want to limit my remarks today to what we are seeing as a regulator in the foreign worker unit in terms of the actual complaints and problems we're seeing at the regulator level.
I will begin talking today about an initiative taken by the Government of Manitoba in which we're seeing great promise. The Minister of Labour and Immigration has announced a new initiative through which they're going to be changing their act, the Employment Services Act, to better regulate temporary worker recruitment agencies within the province.
We think this model can be followed by other provincial jurisdictions, but we would like to call on the federal government to consider its role on a national level to ensure there is one standard, not a patchwork of standards, for controlling the activities of individuals who appear before the federal government's tribunals and in front of HRSDC and the various agencies involved with temporary workers.
The proposed provincial amendment will require all third-party recruiters to be licensed by the province and to be members in good standing of the law society of the province, or other law societies in Canada, and of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants.
We think this is a good thing, because essentially immigration consultants and immigration lawyers deal with foreign nationals who choose individuals to represent them before government for a fee.
We believe that the federal government, unfortunately, is hampered by a number of issues. First of all, the immigration refugee protection regulations stipulate in subsection 13.1(1) that if a person is going to represent someone for a fee--advise, represent, or consult for a fee--they must be a representative of one of three organizations: a provincial or territorial bar, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, or the Chambre des notaires du Québec, and they can only advise and represent and consult on applications before the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, which means there is a problem in that there is absolutely no control on employment agents, human recruiting agents, who are representing people on the LMO process. It's a loophole that needs to be closed.
I share my colleague Mr. Zaifman's concern that there needs to be a coagulation of efforts among government departments to deal with this.
Section 124 is the penalty provision under the IRPA, the general provisions, which is the only provision the Government of Canada can use to enforce unauthorized practice against unscrupulous agents. It's severely limited. It's handicapped. To date, to our knowledge, it has not been enforced. We're concerned about that.
Recommendation 31 of the minister's advisory committee on the regulation of immigration consultants--which is also in keeping with the recommendation of this committee to the minister in its last report on immigration consultants--recommended a specific provision to include a penalty provision within the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to specifically deal with unauthorized practice.
What we're seeing at the regulator is a problem between CIC and CBSA in determining who is actually charged with the enforcement and what measures they can bring to bear to actually control criminally the acts of unauthorized representatives.
We are seeing increasing numbers of temporary workers being abused. They are vulnerable and unsophisticated. We need to have the government look at its HRSDC process and we need the minister to see what can be done in that regard.
I will turn it over to my colleague Wenda Woodman, our manager for complaints and discipline, who can give you more accurate statistics.
I'll speak to the issue of temporary foreign workers within the framework of my experience as a manager of the complaints and discipline department. We have engaged with the issue on the basis of allegations against our members for breaches of the rules of professional conduct and also in the context of information that we received concerning individuals who are not society members and who are acting as unregulated labour agents.
I've provided a chart setting out the number of complaints about both members and unregulated labour agents that we've received between 2006 and the present that relate to the issue of the temporary foreign worker.
The society has a strict view on what constitutes employment activity. We are coordinating our efforts with provincial governments to receive and act on complaints from the provincial departments concerning the activities of any of our members who are acting inappropriately or outside their scope as authorized representatives. As a regulator, we act in the public interest, and as such, have implemented errors and omissions insurance and a hearings and discipline process, and we are in the process of establishing a compensation fund.
Our first hearing took place in March 2007 and related to a member who was found to have breached the rules of professional conduct when she failed in her professional obligation to inform 24 Korean truck drivers about the English language requirement related to the job offers that she had obtained. The company withdrew the job offers on the basis that the majority of the truck drivers' language skills were not up to the business standard. The full decision can be found on our website, if you'd like to look at it further, and we're just now going to return to argue penalty.
One of the problems we've identified in the administration of the disciplinary process relating to temporary workers is the potential for deportation of the complainant or witness prior to the conclusion of the matter. Consequently, we respectfully request that the minister enact a provision to allow for a delay in the deportation of temporary skilled workers in circumstances where disciplinary proceedings have commenced and they are required as primary witnesses.
I'm going to turn now to the issue of unregulated labour agents. A number of the complaints that we've received from temporary foreign worker applicants relate to individuals and organizations who are not our members. These rogue agents act contrary to provincial employment regulations and file applications before the minister by circumventing the regulations. The information that we have been provided concerns groups of unskilled workers being guaranteed employment in Canada at enticing wage rates and being guaranteed permanent resident status within a year or two. They're required to pay fees of up to $20,000 and have also had to pay expenses for travel documents. In some situations, the applicants have had to pay for what have been termed “anti-terrorism documents” and for what were called “United Nations travel documents”. The labour agents offer their services online and are located outside Canada.
A membership list is posted on our website. I've received telephone calls from Gambia, e-mails from the Philippines, Morocco, Nigeria, and Pakistan, from individuals trying to locate the person they hired to assist them in achieving this lifetime opportunity. The promises are inviting and appear so legitimate that it's not until they've experienced a problem that they contact the society for assistance. While we do not have jurisdiction to act against the rogue agents, we do ensure that matters are referred to the appropriate authorities for follow-up.
Therefore, we respectfully request that the committee recommend to the minister that the government regulate labour agents on a national basis. While protection is provided on applications before the minister, labour agents have been able to circumvent these provisions.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the committee for inviting Maple Leaf Foods to participate this morning.
Maple Leaf Foods, as you may know, is a large—I believe the largest—food processor and exporter in Canada. We have 23,000 employees in the country and globally, and we have leading market shares in a range of products—in pork, poultry, bakery, packaged consumer foods. We were recently named one of Canada's ten most admired corporate cultures.
On the business front, we're facing intense competitive pressures, mostly due to the appreciation of the dollar and the rapid rise of input prices, but we're driving a new business model to improve our competitiveness and drive out costs and move up the innovation scale for more consumer value creation.
[Translation]
Our operations in western Canada, especially in Manitoba, are essential to our future. The primary processing of pork as well as many of our secondary processing operations are based in Brandon. We will create 800 to 900 new jobs in Brandon by the end of 2009.
Like most employers in Western Canada, we are facing a major labor shortage. As a large employer, we also have sophisticated and finely tuned strategies to hire and train our employees.
[English]
We employ many aboriginal Canadians in western Canada but we want to do better. We have been actively working to establish a role for a first nations coordinator to improve our relations with the first nations community and to develop a more effective recruitment model.
But foreign workers are key. We need them in our plants across Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. They're essential to our operations and to the future of the communities that depend on our plants.
We began using the temporary foreign worker program about three years ago. We now employ 1,373 skilled and unskilled workers in these operations.
On the skilled side, we have about 150 workers, particularly in our hog production operations. Across all these operations, we have workers from the U.K., Philippines, and Germany. We will add another 900 foreign workers before the end of 2008.
On the unskilled side, we have about 1,000 workers at our operation in Brandon. These foreign workers come from El Salvador, China, Ukraine, Colombia, and Mauritius. We will shortly receive a group from Honduras.
The recruitment and settlement of these workers present some enormous challenges. We work very closely in collaboration with three levels of government, particularly the City of Brandon. I'm very pleased that my colleague Sandy Trudel is here from the city. She can answer questions in relation to settlement of the workers in Brandon.
In Brandon virtually all of our foreign workers qualify for the provincial nominee program, thereby achieving permanent residency such that they can bring their family members to join them. We invest in these new Canadians with the hope that they will become our long-term employees and successful new residents of Brandon.
Now, our initial recruitment efforts did face some challenges and problems. We made some mistakes and we learned some things. We made some mistakes in China in terms of our dealings with third-party recruiters--exactly some of the issues that were mentioned here this morning. Some of these recruits were charged fees of which we were unaware. But we are now much better organized. We understand the program much better. We have strong working relationships with third parties, particularly the International Organization for Migration. We also understand the program and the requirements for a strong labour market opinion.
As well, we've become better organized ourselves. My colleague Susan Yaeger is here. She is our manager for international recruitment, and has a team of people to support her in all aspects of this process. We have established excellent relationships with HRSDC, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Service Canada, Canadian embassies abroad, provincial ministries of labour and immigration, as well as many union leaders and community stakeholders.
Before going to questions, I want to outline what we see as the challenges and opportunities with respect to the program. We've certainly seen some important improvements, particularly allowing the temporary work permit to be extended to two years from one year. Under the program, there's also been a greater acceptance of unskilled workers, who are very much needed by our industry. But we still find an inconsistent approach to the treatment or the acceptability of unskilled workers when we deal with the provinces under their provincial nominee programs.
I will list some areas of improvement, which we can elaborate on later.
First, we would like the LMO requirements to be more clear and consistent across the provinces, across the Service Canada staff who are processing these LMOs. A standard template would help.
The definition of “occupations under pressure” and the availability of the recently announced fast-track, or electronic, LMO process are not consistent across the provinces. In particular, we face the fact that while in Alberta and B.C. there's now a fast-track LMO for most of the job categories we employ, this is still not the case in Saskatchewan or Manitoba. In Saskatchewan, for example, meat cutter is not deemed an occupation under pressure, and yet the labour issues we face there are no different from those in Alberta or Manitoba.
There ought to be pre-published wage rates for different occupations to avoid the judgments that are made rather arbitrarily with respect to adequacy of wages. While we do not employ foreign workers in Quebec, the Quebec government has decided the meat industry simply doesn't pay adequate wages and therefore has denied the meat industry in Quebec any opportunity to participate in the program, even though it pays wages that are among the highest levels in North America for the meat industry. We've had similar challenges with respect to this in Alberta.
An employer should have the ability to move workers between plants to accommodate different requirements in different plants, if the employee is willing to move. The program should not allow one employer with an approved LMO to poach foreign workers from another employer that has incurred all the effort and expense to recruit them. We're starting to see evidence of that.
At the provincial level there should be more consistency and transparency in the definition of minimum language, education, and work experience requirements--again, this varies across the provincial nominee programs. There should be a consistent national policy on third-party recruiters, exactly the point that's been raised here. We welcome the initiative in Manitoba--it's more tightly regulated--but we're concerned about a patchwork of standards across the country on this that should be harmonized.
Finally, with respect to program administration, again we've seen improvements. We've seen the officials managing the program grow and learn and become more effective. At the same time, there are some significant problems--again, more consistency, transparency, and timeliness in the review and approval processes by Service Canada and HRSDC across the provinces. We need to see clear service standards and performance measures.
For a large, responsible employer like Maple Leaf Foods, we'd like to see an opportunity for concurrent processing of LMOs and work permits. This was announced by in February 2007, and yet we subsequently learned it is not being applied to unskilled workers for fear there could be exploitation of workers who have to pay for a work visa only to find out their employer has been denied their LMO. We don't think this is at all appropriate in our case. We pay all these fees. There is never a chance that a potential recruit is going to be out of pocket.
After waiting for four months, yesterday we received a letter from HRSDC asking for clarification. The answer points the issue over to CIC. Again, the issue is that nobody's in charge of the file and everybody's denying accountability for an answer. Again, we'll wait to see CIC's answers.
We haven't observed improvement in communications between program managers and the embassies abroad, but this could still be improved. We find there's inconsistent understanding on the part of visa officers as to the parameters of program announcements. Again, there are no consistent service standards and processing.
Finally, we face a major problem in Alberta. The time delay we're facing on LMO approvals has become unacceptable and very difficult for us. We are facing significant plant shortages in labour. We're facing serious questions about the viability of plant operations, and yet the time it's taking to get any answers is far too long. Applications we submitted last November and December have yet to be responded to, and this problem continues to grow.
Good morning.
In my role as economic development officer for the City of Brandon, I've worked closely with Maple Leaf Foods for the past ten years. I am pleased to be able to speak to the collaborative relationship that has developed over time between Maple Leaf Foods, the municipal government, and the community as a whole and how this has benefited Brandon and area.
When Maple Leaf Foods confirmed Brandon would be home to a new state-of-the-art pork processing facility in late 1997, company and city officials promised to work closely to ensure maximum benefit and minimum impact of the new facility. Within two months of Maple Leaf Foods' selecting Brandon, a series of jointly hosted regional town hall meetings were organized and underway.
This early and continued commitment to community engagement has minimized negative impacts often associated with growth and cultural diversification. Community engagement has been achieved through a variety of methods.
Recognizing time limitations, I will only touch on a few ways in which we have maintained open dialogue and involvement with the community. It is critical, though, to understand that none of the items referenced hereafter would be possible without the open and collaborative relationship that exists between the City of Brandon, Maple Leaf, and community participation.
A socio-economic impact model was commissioned to help the community understand and prepare for the impact of Maple Leaf Foods. Regular updates have been completed over the years, and ail reports are available online.
The need for labour from outside our region and likely from outside the country was identified very early in the process. A housing supply-and-demand analysis based on Maple Leaf projections is conducted annually and is available online.
The City of Brandon maintains a chronological accounting of the Maple Leaf project online, including important projections related to foreign worker recruitment. In 2006, the City of Brandon and Maple Leaf Foods met personally with well over 40 local organizations to gain an understanding of the impacts created by the arrival of foreign workers to date and to seek input on solutions to mitigate future impacts.
The information gleaned was used to proactively plan for the addition of the second shift and the arrival of additional foreign workers.
In 2007, a committee focused on the proactive planning and coordination of immigrant settlement services was established, of which I am the chairperson. The committee is fortunate to comprise diverse community members, including immigrants who have recently arrived and those who have been in the area for multiple years.
A database of organizations and individuals who wish to receive regular updates on the foreign workers destined for Brandon and the second shift expansion was established by the City of Brandon. This distribution list continues to grow. At a minimum, quarterly updates, including statistics, projections, and educational pieces, are distributed.
Maple Leaf established and dedicated staff to community liaison committees around the topics of transportation, child care, housing, education, health, language, and community settlement. This ensures community engagement at the service delivery level and assists with identifying trends and planning for and resolving situations before they become issues.
Maple Leaf has welcomed community participation and input into their foreign worker orientation sessions, and Maple Leaf has also been kind enough to share their orientation package, so that it can serve as a template for a community-wide orientation package.
The City of Brandon actively participates in service provider meetings throughout the community to ensure regular and timely sharing of information. In this capacity, city staff often act as a neutral communication bridge between Maple Leaf and the community.
Maple Leaf and the City of Brandon are actively participating in a Rural Development Institute research project around the topic of temporary foreign workers. The project is proving to be an extremely valuable stakeholder educational tool.
As Rory mentioned earlier, the settlement of foreign workers and their family members over the past three years has brought challenges and learnings to Maple Leaf, the municipal government, and the community. It has also brought great rewards; thus I would be remiss in not briefly touching on a few of the benefits.
Maple Leaf Pork has been ranked the most important economic development project for Brandon for the past three years in an annual business leader survey.
Maple Leaf has acted as the catalyst for population growth in Brandon. For the first time in years, and bucking the national trend, Brandon's school enrolment numbers increased in 2007.
In a recent statistically representative survey of local residents, 68% of Brandon's residents felt that the increase in immigrants arriving in Brandon in the past few years has made Brandon a more interesting and culturally enriched community, and 22% felt that there had been no impact. I believe this speaks clearly to the efforts that have gone into community engagement on the topic of foreign workers.
The increased number of immigrants arriving in Brandon have finally provided the critical mass to enable Brandon to be funded as a true immigrant settlement centre.
I thank you for the opportunity to share the Brandon perspective and strongly encourage you to develop policy that enables rather than hinders industry's ability to utilize foreign labour. The area has benefited greatly from the enriched cultural fabric, additions to the labour pool through the arrival of family members, increased school enrolment, and of course the resulting economic growth. Brandon and area would suffer irreparable harm should Maple Leaf Foods be unable to source the necessary labour pool, thus jeopardizing the continuation of their Brandon operations.
Thank you.
While you were listening to the interpreters, and since this will be my last series of questions for this week, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate some people who will not be back with the committee next week.
I want to mention first of all our interpreters, Karine, Cécilia and David, who do tremendous work and who are the voices you hear when I speak. I also want to mention Lynne, Sharron and Nardia who work mostly behind the scenes. All the members of the committee are aware of their fantastic work, and we all know how important it is, but I want everyone to know that the Citizenship and Immigration Committee is much more than the few MPs you see before you. It is also those persons who work very hard and do a superb job for us.
I also want to thank Mr. MacAlpine for having said a few sentences in French. He is the first witness to have done so since the beginning of those hearings. I will probably remember that the next time I have to buy groceries.
Let us now deal with your statements about the situation in Québec because I think it would have been important to mention that there have been numerous layoffs in the meat industry. I must say that I find it very difficult to accept the claims that foreign workers are needed to fill labor shortages when in fact some plants are simply being shut down. The only possible explanation for employers wanting to bring foreign workers in this industry in Québec is that they want to put pressure on salaries, which is absolutely contrary to the spirit of the program. I wanted that to be very clear.
Let us now go to questions.
I have been listening closely to your statement, Mr. Ryan, and you probably know that it is very important for us to hear from an organization representing all the immigration consultants in Canada.
How did you validate the position you have expressed today before the committee to make sure that it really reflects what your members think of your organization in Canada?
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So, it is because of the logistics of the committee that everything could not be done in Toronto. The committee will deal with that issue later on.
I would like to take advantage of the fact that we have representatives both of the workers and of the industry. The committee will have to make some recommendations on how to reconcile the protection of workers with the needs of employers. One of the major problems that we have heard about relates to the fact that the temporary visa given to the worker is associated to a specific employer.
Let us say that someone comes to work for Maple Leaf Foods or for another employer. If that employer is unscrupulous, he can have some incredible power on that worker and he can take advantage of him by telling him that, if he's unhappy, he just has to go back to his country. That is a problem.
Some people have suggested that we should allow workers to change employers, like any Canadian can, in order to avoid this type of abuse. On the other hand, some employers have told us that they have had to bear some costs to bring those workers in the country, related to hiring, to airfares, etc.
As a committee, we will have to find a position reconciling the two. For example, if we allowed the worker to move from an employer to another, in the same field of work, the expenses paid by the first employer could be transferred to the new one.
Do you think this could be a satisfactory solution for workers as well as for employers?
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The point I want to make, and I have been making this point time and time again, is we have created an immigration act whereby the bureaucrats pulled a fast one on the minister and the committee members saw what was happening. If you care to go back into the debates, we said this was not going to work, but they put it through, because unfortunately the minister was about as knowledgeable about the issue as most ministers are in citizenship and immigration, which isn't very.
The bureaucrats run the department. Because they eliminated the ability of a lot of a people to get in that the economy needs, they created a whole underground undocumented workers class because that's the only way employers could hire them. If you got rid of the undocumented workers--I think there would be 200,000 to 500,000 in the country, those are the estimates--we probably would be in a much bigger mess than we are now and we'd probably quickly go into a recession in Ontario.
What I'm trying to get at is the response of the bureaucrats in regularizing the undocumented worker is that we can't allow people to get in here by cheating. The demand for workers drove the workers underground. It's the demand, and we have to confront that mindset.
Unfortunately, whenever you get ministers to the point where they start understanding things, as we did with the last one, , we had legislation that was going to come forward that was going to regularize these people.... If you contribute and if you don't get into trouble and if you're of good character, we'll give you a permit for a number of years, at which point you can apply for permanent residence.
I want to thank you for that.
That's the problem. We have to have political oversight on what's happening in the department. It has a very bad mindset, not a very good record.
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I think that's more than enough time.
I've been an immigration lawyer for over twenty years, and it has never been as bad as it is today in the area of immigration consultants.
Let me define what I mean by immigration consultants. We have licensed immigration consultants who are licensed by the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, but they not the primary focus of my comments.
The primary focus of my comments are those consultants who are unlicensed and unregulated. They primarily operate in a variety of ethnic communities and are the ones committing the most serious and flagrant abuses.
It is epidemic. It is not getting better. I think that if anything comes out of these hearings, it is the recognition that it is a problem that must be addressed.
To understand how someone who is not licensed can become an immigration consultant, one merely has to look at any local ethnic newspaper. People are advertising services they are not qualified to provide, and that's in Canada. Outside of Canada the problem is even more endemic, because there is really no effective policing mechanism.
I want to say a few words about the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants. I'll leave it to them in their hearings to explain to you what their role is, but clearly their role, as they've said in their earlier presentation, is not to deal with unlicensed consultants. That's not within their jurisdiction; they can't deal with this group of people.
Even with licensed consultants they do not have the authority--as, for example, a law society does--to come in and shut a member down. If a lawyer is committing breaches of the code of professional conduct or if complaints are made against that lawyer, the law societies--and this is, I think, in any jurisdiction--can step in and can immediately revoke that lawyer's licence. In fact, they've done it on several occasions in Manitoba, and at least on one occasion with an immigration lawyer.
As far as I understand it, CSIC does not have that power. They have a regulatory power and they have a complaint mechanism. Either they have to be given the tools to do it or that tool must reside someplace else.
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When CSIC started licensing consultants, those consultants who couldn't get licensed became foreign recruiters. They migrated from a regulated area to an unregulated area. Now some of the provincial governments are trying to deal with that.
I'm not here to address everything, but I'd like to tell you a brief story that perhaps makes the point. Maybe it's a typical story.
We were retained by a client who came to Canada on a work permit. He was promised a job for a certain period of time, was promised a certain salary, was promised that his family could join him. Of course, none of that happened.
What made it worse is that when the consultant tried to take him to the border to correct the problem that he had created, the immigration authorities detained him and threatened to deport him from Canada. It is only with the cooperation of CBSA, CIC, Service Canada, and the provincial nominee program that the individual is now a permanent resident and was able to have his family join him.
The tragedy of this particular case is that while this was going on, his wife, in their home country, contracted cancer and was literally dying. He could not leave the country. Finally, we were able to get, with the cooperation of the immigration authorities, the necessary authorization for him to go back and at least spend a month with his wife and then bring his children to Canada. This was a real, visceral injustice.
What could we do against this rogue agent? The only thing we could do was sue him in court for the fees he charged. We were successful, but now he has appealed that.
So this self-help remedy is very arbitrary, because it just doesn't work. How do you correct that?
These people are known. It's not as though they're hiding; they're known. Immigration authorities know who they are, provincial regulators know who they are, Service Canada knows who they are. It's a question of putting some....
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You're talking about the world, right? You're talking about the world.
I don't want John Ryan to tell me I'm exaggerating, but it's just the nature of the traffic you see, of the inquiries and complaints you get. You probably get them in your own constituency offices. It's not as if members of Parliament work in isolation; they have clients. They hear these stories on a day-to-day basis, and I think the time to act is now.
I am firmly convinced that with the correct message.... I don't want to venture into the world of politics, but this is an issue common to all political parties. Every minister of immigration, whether Conservative or Liberal, has always recognized that this is an issue. They haven't always been able to give it the attention it deserves, but look at the committee reports over the years; the committee, regardless of its membership, has been fairly attuned to this issue, and it goes back many years. It's not as if we operate in isolation; we operate in the real world, and in the real world, people have these issues come up.
I think it's very important that the licensed participants, whether lawyers or consultants, be held to a perhaps higher standard, and that the regulatory tools be expanded to allow them to do what they need to do. CSIC has a daunting task. It's a national regulator. We can't even get the securities commissions to agree on a national regulator, but they're a national regulator. They have to have the ability to deal with members across the country. Law societies can't do that.