:
Dear honourable members of the committee, I want to begin my opening statement by thanking the committee for the opportunity to present on this very important topic of temporary foreign workers in the agricultural sector and the COVID-19 pandemic.
This topic is one which I have investigated as a researcher in immigration and refugee policy, and with which I have also had personal experience. My own father was a refugee from Chile, giving me the opportunity to improve and maintain my own fluency in Spanish, which led to summer jobs during my undergraduate career working in the orchards of B.C. with temporary foreign workers from Mexico.
Previous to my work with the School of Public Policy, I was also a client support worker in the temporary foreign worker program at the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, located in Calgary, Alberta. In that capacity, I made several trips to the Cargill meat packing plant in High River, Alberta, to meet with workers, and to provide them resources in relation to their immigration status and employment.
It is with that context I hope to provide the members of the committee with an overview of the temporary foreign worker program in relation to Canadian agriculture that combines both data on the topic as well as personal experience.
In addressing this committee, it is important to acknowledge the long history of agricultural-related immigration to Canada since Confederation in 1867. For roughly the first 100 years of our almost 153-year history as a country, one of the primary focuses of our immigration system was to secure and expand our agricultural productivity.
The Immigration Act of 1869 established the basic framework of Canadian immigration policy in relation to labour at the beginning of Confederation, with several provisions that may resonate with committee members today. First, it was designed to attract immigrants that would contribute to Canadian economic productivity, especially in agriculture. Second, it sought to ensure the “safety and protection of immigrants en route and upon arrival in Canada”. It sought to regulate abuses commonly perpetrated against new arrivals. Finally, it provided for government agents to assist immigrants in arranging lodging and making connections in their chosen destinations.
Following the Dominion Lands Act of 1872, Canada began to rapidly expand its immigration program and recruit millions of farmers and farm labourers from overseas, leading to a massive 1,000% increase in the population of the Prairies, and the founding of Alberta and Saskatchewan as provinces. This period came to be known as the wheat boom, a time in which Canada was the world’s fastest-growing economy. Many Canadians with Ukrainian, Polish, or other Eastern European ancestry can trace their roots to that period in which their grandparents and great-grandparents arrived to farm in Canada.
I will not go into detail with every act or decision in relation to Canadian agriculture and immigration, but for the purposes of this statement, I wish to reiterate that from the foundation of Canada until the signing of the first seasonal worker agreement in 1966, Canada made a concerted effort to expand, secure and protect its agricultural system through the recruitment and settlement of farmers and labourers on farms.
Shifting to today, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised questions with regard to the safety of workers, the security of our food supply chain and the appropriateness of the temporary foreign worker program when Canadians themselves are experiencing record high levels of unemployment.
In a forthcoming paper by the School of Public Policy, we find that the number of arriving workers in agriculture, food processing and transportation is 14% below the number that arrived last year, equal to a shortfall of approximately 3,800 workers during the onset of the primary agricultural season, including planting, calving and the Atlantic lobster season.
This shortfall, combined with the 14-day quarantine period, represents a significant loss in time, as well as workers, especially in consideration of purchases of seed, livestock and other equipment built around expectations for expanded production, and the necessary increase in workers to support it. It also has a human impact, which I will discuss further on. This loss may be most acutely felt in the primary work on farms, with a 14% reduction in relation to 2019, in meat and poultry plants, with a drop of 20%, and in seafood packing plants, with a loss of 60% of their foreign workers.
Calls to employ more Canadians in relation to the drop in arriving foreign workers may be well understood in current circumstances. I would caution, however, that this presents several difficulties.
First, producers and employers will need time and resources to train new employees during the onset of the full agricultural season. Second, Canadians may not actually respond to increased hiring incentives or initiatives by local farmers and producers in sufficient numbers to fill the labour gap. Data from Statistics Canada show that, adjusting for inflation, farmers actually have been willing to spend more on wages for employees. Work by the Conference Board of Canada, however, suggests that we may need to raise wages by upwards of 66% in order to completely offset an ongoing trend in declining domestic participation in agriculture.
Our own exploratory research into the matter, which I should emphasize is preliminary and subject to a more robust analysis, suggests that Canadians may not be as responsive to wage increases in the agricultural sector as foreign workers are. Therefore, increased hiring may offset the decline in domestic labourers, but may not actually fill the gap.
In the conclusion of my remarks, I wish to put a face to these numbers. Discussions of labour supply and productivity need to be contextualized in the humans they represent. Yesterday, it was reported on CBC News that a third worker has died from the coronavirus, located on a farm near Simcoe, Ontario. The worker joins Bonifacio Eugenio Romero and Rogelio Muñoz Santos, both Mexican workers who died from the virus while working on Canadian farms.
In considering reforms to the temporary foreign worker program, we must keep in mind that improving the conditions for workers on farms and in processing plants is not a zero-sum game where Canadians must lose if workers are to benefit. In fact, both sides can win in this case. To that end, the committee may wish to explore some of the following ideas in relation to foreign workers and agriculture.
First, reconsider the access that TFWs have to employment insurance, especially in periods of pandemic and job loss, which may encourage them to take time off rather than risk the spread of disease.
Second, consider adapting the Atlantic immigration pilot to an agricultural immigration pilot, and provide workers with the ability to gain permanent residency through the accumulation of hours or with the support of an employer. Upwards of 45% of TFWs return to farms after three years, 39% over five years, and after 10 years, still a quarter remain. This shows that, despite being called temporary foreign workers, many of them come back repeatedly year after year.
Third, consider allowing farmers to immediately deduct the capital costs for constructing new housing for TFWs, including sufficient space for workers, and make ongoing inspections part of the work of both IRCC and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. In fact, we may provide greater security to our food supply chain by addressing working conditions. We may also consider a retrospective, rather than innovative, look when we consider the permanency of foreign workers in agriculture. This means looking back on our history as a country that was built on a robust agricultural immigration program, and it is perhaps time to revisit that history with renewed understanding of the risks to our food supply chain and to workers themselves.
Thank you.
:
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today on behalf of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, a coalition of 27 migrant-led organizations and allies. I am also on the coordinating committee of the Migrant Rights Network, Canada’s national migrant justice alliance.
The truth is that a person’s ability to access health care, assert their rights at work, be with their families or protect themselves in a pandemic is directly linked to their citizenship. This is true because the law makes it so. Just as one example, migrant agricultural workers know that a single COVID-19 infection on a farm puts them all in immediate danger, but they cannot risk speaking out because doing so means termination, homelessness, loss of income and deportation.
On Saturday night, Juan Lopez Chaparro passed away. He is the third Mexican migrant farm worker to die in Ontario from COVID-19 following Bonifacio Eugenio-Romero and Rogelio Muñoz Santos. Their pictures are right here.
There are at least 1.6 million temporary or undocumented migrants in Canada, or one in every 23 people. Canada has failed to provide equal rights and support during COVID-19 to at least one in every 23 people. This includes over half a million people in the country with no immigration status, most of whom do not have access to Canada emergency response benefits or even health care.
Undocumented migrant women are forced to move in with abusive men. Families choose unassisted home birth over years of indebtedness to medical bills, and thousands have became homeless. Those who did not lose work faced dangerous conditions but without any essential worker wage top-up.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of migrant domestic workers are trapped by their employers who refuse to let them leave their homes even to buy groceries or send remittances home. These migrant care workers are forced to stay in these conditions to complete hours of work requirements toward permanent residency status. In addition, they must fulfill impossible language and educational assessments to have a chance to reunite with their families.
Over 850,000 people on study or postgraduate permits are unable to find work, have lost wages and are struggling. Many are only eating because of food banks, but post-secondary institutions have raised tuition fees, and existing immigration requirements mean that most will not qualify for permanent resident status.
Tens of thousands of migrant farm workers in Canada came here and are choosing to stay, despite fear of getting sick, because they cannot access income support. We released this report with complaints on behalf of over 1,000 migrant workers about increased racism, surveillance, wage theft, exploitation, labour intensification and inhumane housing.
A multi-tiered system of immigration, where some have permanent residency and therefore rights to health care, family unity and freedom from reprisals while others are temporary or without status, engenders exploitation. That inequality and exploitation have been exacerbated during COVID-19. Not only migrants are saying it. Consider an op-ed published on May 5, 2014, in the Toronto Star which said that this is a “basic issue of fairness” and “Canada needs to re-commit itself to bringing permanent immigrants here who have a path to citizenship”, authored by then MP, now Prime Minister, .
Recommendation 16 from this very committee’s report in September 2016 called on Canada to “review the current pathways to permanent residency for all temporary foreign workers, with a view to facilitating access to permanent residency for migrant workers”.
Recommendation 19 from this committee’s study in December 2012, under the previous Conservative government, recommended that Canada should consider “offering better opportunities for temporary foreign workers to eventually become permanent immigrants”.
The reason that permanent immigration has always been a central component of any review on vulnerability and exploitation of non-permanent residents is simple. As Minister said just three days ago, “There’s a power imbalance that exists in this system.” The power imbalance exists wherever there is temporary migration or people are undocumented. By denying them the rights that come with citizenship, laws and lawmakers are tipping the scale in favour of abuse, exploitation, exclusion and death.
We are going to provide this committee with detailed recommendations, but the solution is very simple. Ensure full immigration status for all migrants immediately without exclusion, without exemption, and ensure everyone arrives with full immigration status in the future. This is a matter of life and death.
I have a few final words. First, a path to citizenship or permanent residency is not the solution. A pathway, like the recently launched agri-food immigration pilot, is a promise of future security for some workers if they can jump through impossible hoops, leaving them more at the mercy of employers.
Second, increased inspections, while also necessary, will not solve the problem. Inspections ensure that employers are not breaking the law, but most of what employers are doing is legal. The law does not mandate social distancing, does not create national housing standards and is not a mechanism through which workers can complain.
Third, this is not just about being good enough to work, good enough to stay or guardian angels. Yes, migrants are in jobs that are essential during a public health pandemic, but whether migrants are disabled, homeless or unable to work, they must have the ability to take care of themselves and their families. Whether it is migrant sex workers or migrants working in warehouses, in construction or delivering food, every person is essential. No one deserves to be exploited. Everyone deserves to live.
We need a single-tier system of immigration. That means full immigration status for all in the country, and full immigration status for everyone who arrives in the future. This is essential. It's necessary. It must happen now. People are dying.
Thank you.
:
Yes, I can absolutely touch on that as well.
What we found in preparing the research—and this is specific to immigrant physicians working in Canada but can be generalized to many other health care workers, including nurses, lab technologists, other front-line workers and workers involved in testing—is that it is taking an exorbitantly long time for a newcomer to recertify. When I say “newcomer”, it might sound odd. Maybe the more appropriate term I should be using is “international medical graduate”, which would include those who may be Canadian citizens or permanent residents but who studied abroad for their medical degree.
We found that it is taking upwards of five to 10 years for a newcomer or an international medical graduate to recertify within Canada. It is also costing a considerable amount, upwards of 42% of an IMG's or newcomer's median income during the period. This doesn't just involve the costs of recertification itself, which include things like fees and licensing requirements. This also includes the foregone benefits, like the income they could be earning during that time, the costs of buying textbooks to recertify, and the costs of transportation associated with travelling to various interviews. For some, especially those in more vulnerable parts of the population, this might mean that it's simply impossible to practise in Canada.
I will use a real-life example. I was speaking with an immigration lawyer who recently helped a refugee gain protected person status in Canada. The refugee was a very well-regarded heart surgeon from Colombia who was fluent in both official languages, English and French. However, because of the manner in which this refugee came to Canada, the individual came without a lot of assets and income and was working for Uber. This means that even with the knowledge the person has, he or she is very unlikely to recertify due to the financial barriers.
Some of this is due to a limitation on the residency seats available for IMGs, international medical graduates, at the provincial level, but it's not exclusively that. Immigrants often arrive in Canada with the unfounded expectation that because they qualified under the federal immigration streams, they are qualified to work. They are sadly disappointed when they're unable to help.
I noticed that recently the Province of Quebec decided it wanted to increase the number of what it calls essential workers coming to Quebec. However, I noted that many of them would need access to a licence in order to practise. Even if they arrived next month, it's likely that they would not be able to actually help out in the COVID-19 pandemic until much further down the road.
I know there are plenty of questions for the other panellists here, who can provide valuable insight as well, so I'll finish by saying that this pandemic is helping us to consider what barriers to entry are actually necessary. I can understand our concerns about public health and safety with regard to licensure of newcomers, but others, such as Ireland, France, the U.K., New York, New Jersey and several other states in the U.S. have decided to arrange everything to allow immigrants to practise under an associate model, meaning they practise under the supervision of a fully licensed medical professional.
New York, for example, will be completely waiving the requirement that they have a licence in order to practise. I wouldn't necessarily suggest that, but I do think that this pandemic is an opportunity to reassess how exactly we license newcomers and how we can work with the provinces and the federal government to ensure that part of their immigration streams involve a licensing stream as well.
:
Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to both witnesses.
Mr. Falconer, I agree very much. As a mayor and now as an MP, I have been working to try to get Quebec to change the requirements with respect to foreign medical personnel and international graduates. Unfortunately, most of this is really provincial and in the college of physicians, but I'd be interested in chatting about that offline at a future date.
I wanted to ask both you guys about language requirements. One of the things that I worked on as chairman of the justice committee in the last Parliament was a study on human trafficking. What we recommended was that temporary foreign workers needed to receive documentation, including health documentation, in their actual language, their own language, not only in English and French.
Given the fact that many documents are still not available in Spanish, for example, with respect to many of the workers who are now in our farms, or in Tagalog or other languages, I think there may be a breakdown in communication, where temporary foreign workers do not know all the rights they have and are then not able to exercise their rights.
I'm wondering if either of you have any recommendations in regard to languages.
:
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the committee for the opportunity to appear before you today.
I am joining you from Toronto, the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. It's now home to many diverse first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
I will speak to you about three priorities that must be considered by the government in its COVID response: regularization of immigration status, access to benefits and supports for all, and immigration selection.
First is regularization of immigration status, and I know that you heard from Mr. Hassan before me.
Canada has a large and growing population with precarious immigration status living and working here. That includes refused refugee claimants from Haiti working in long-term care and other essential services in the greater Montreal area, and undocumented people working in the food supply chain, in personal care work, cleaning and more. They pay taxes and fees, and some even pay personal income tax, but they cannot access government benefits or programs.
Because of their precarious immigration status, undocumented workers are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Given the nature of our temporary worker programs, the majority of such workers are racialized. In these COVID times, many are working in unsafe conditions, feeling they cannot say or do anything for fear they would lose their jobs. Clearly, they're needed because employers continue to employ them, and most likely also pay them lower wages.
Undocumented women are among those most vulnerable to exploitation, including domestic and intimate-partner violence. These women are also predominantly racialized.
We think these unprecedented times present Canada with an opportunity to seriously consider a broad immigration status regularization program to allow people with precarious immigration status to gain permanent residence. Canada already has at least two pilot programs of this kind: one in the GTA that is focused on workers in the construction sector, and another more recent program for certain agricultural workers.
While there are only estimates of how many people are here with precarious immigration status, we know those numbers have grown over time, particularly when there are changes to various immigration programs and people have fallen through the gaps. A number of such residents have been living and working in Canada, sometimes for many years. They are already established. They have networks and likely even family members who may be permanent residents or Canadian citizens.
There are families with mixed citizenship, and Canadian children with undocumented parents. This is not unusual in Canada. These Canadian children are often denied benefits.
Refugee claimants, migrant workers, international students and people who are undocumented or have otherwise precarious status present a good pool of candidates to draw from to meet the immigration targets already set by government, which we know we will not meet this year and most likely will not meet next year either because of the pandemic.
People with less than full residency status or citizenship are members of our communities and contribute to our economy. We gain far more from their presence here than they get back. Let's do the right thing, and let them gain full permanent resident status.
The other issue, which is related, is access to benefits for everyone. Building on my earlier point, people with precarious immigration status pay taxes and fees, and some even pay personal income tax, but they cannot access government benefits or programs. Research shows that they put far more into our economy than they use in publicly funded services.
During the COVID crisis, many have lost their jobs in the informal economy, and thus their incomes. They have no financial support or access to any benefits. Recently, OCASI, my organization, collaborated with some of our member agencies and others across the province, Toronto and southern Ontario in particular. Working with two private foundations, we were able to secure some dollars to provide some support to those without any income. It wasn't a lot of money, so you can imagine it went very quickly.
Agencies have also privately fundraised to address the urgent need they are seeing for financial support and basic resources, but these efforts are small and highly localized. They don't reach all those who need help, and of course, they're not sufficient.
We appreciate the fact that the government has given a boost to the Canada child benefit. This is welcome for many low-income families with minor children, but it is a benefit that is not available to people with precarious immigration status, even if they have Canadian-born children, as I mentioned earlier.
We also welcome the one-time top-up to the old age security and guaranteed income supplement. These benefits, however, are not available to permanent residents who have lived here for less than 10 years, even if they have lived and worked here for, say, nine and a half years. At this time, when even their own family members may have suffered a loss of income, there may be literally no one they can rely on for income support.
These are very difficult times for so many residents, but especially for people with precarious immigration status. I urge you to call for an extension of government benefits and programs to all residents, regardless of immigration status, until we can weather this crisis. Government can do this by issuing a temporary social insurance number that people can use to apply. We will come out stronger as a society and be in a better place to start rebuilding the economy, working safely and together.
My final point is to urge you to open up economic immigration selection. If there is one thing we have learned during this pandemic, it is how much of what we consider essential work is unseen. We notice it only when it is missing, when there is no food on our tables, when there is no one taking care of elderly Canadians in long-term care homes—cooking for them and cleaning up after them—when there is no one to package and deliver the food, medicine, toilet paper and other essential supplies that we need.
However, these are not the jobs in our immigration selection program, which is skewed to highly skilled workers and highly educated students in certain sectors. Don't get me wrong. Yes, we need those people with those skills. We also need those who grow and harvest our food; work in our meat and fish plants; build our homes; work as caregivers, cleaners and general labourers; and work in our call centres. Let us learn from the experience and open up immigration selection to match the reality of what we are seeing on the ground in labour markets across Canada.
In the interim, we should start giving people who are already here an opportunity to become permanent residents if that is what they're interested in doing. Some may not be interested. They may prefer to return to their home countries, but there are many others who want to stay and have already started taking the steps towards that by working and building a life here.
Mr. Chair, in the time that I have left, I want to acknowledge the positive work relationship that has been happening in the sector in collaboration with the federal government. This, I believe, underlines the importance of consistent relationship building and joint work, as happens through our sector's national settlement and integration council, NSIC.
As you know, OCASI, my organization, is the umbrella for over 230 agencies across Ontario that provide services and programs to newcomers to Canada. The sector—and I know I can speak for my sister umbrella organizations across the country—was relieved and encouraged that the federal government declared it an essential service. We have two primary reasons for absolutely seeing this as good policy. The primary role of immigrant and refugee-serving agencies is to support newcomers in the process of building a new life in Canada.
Honourable members of the committee, good afternoon.
I appear before you today to talk about the situation facing workers in seasonal industries who live in regions that revolve around those industries.
Seasonal industries have always played an important role in Canada's economy. In certain regions of the country, those industries are paramount, generating the bulk of available jobs. Unfortunately, because of this dependence on seasonal industries in a growing number of regions, workers can no longer live on the combination of seasonal work and employment insurance, or EI.
Even if workers take every available job during the busy season, they can't get through the off-season. In a good year, a seasonal worker will work for 14 weeks, or the equivalent of 525 hours. Even in regions where the unemployment rate is over 16%, workers are eligible for only 33 weeks of benefits, leaving them with no income for five weeks. The problem is that few jobs are available in the off-season. The lack of economic diversity means that workers have to rely on EI.
The black hole or spring gap, in other words, the weeks without income, exacerbates regional decline. People are fed up with always having to live on the brink, so they move to urban centres. The government's response—a pilot project to provide five additional weeks of benefits—was certainly a welcome boost, but it's not enough. As I've just shown, even in regions with the highest unemployment rates, the spring gap persists. It's always existed, but for many of us, it's gotten worse in recent years. It has to do with the fact that a number of affected communities are in EI economic regions with lower unemployment rates that do not reflect the local economies.
For instance, in the Restigouche-Albert region, where I'm from, our small communities depend on the seasonal industry, but they are lumped together with the Moncton suburban area, and that brings down the unemployment rate. Let's look at another example. On the upper north shore, the local unemployment rate is 9% higher than the rate of the EI economic region it belongs to. In order to qualify for benefits, workers have to accumulate nearly 700 hours, which is very hard to do. What's more, even if they do qualify, all they are entitled to is 18 weeks of benefits.
I'd like to draw your attention to another problem. The unemployment rate is dropping in a number of affected communities, but the reason isn't that there are more jobs. It's that the population is getting older, so fewer people are applying for the same number of jobs—hence, why the pilot project needs to be enhanced. We suggested that to the minister, but to no avail, unfortunately.
Here's what we are recommending. First, the government should raise the number of additional weeks of benefits in the designated regions to 10. Those additional weeks would be subject to the current maximum number of benefit weeks, 45 and more. Next, the government should expand access to the pilot project by changing the eligibility criteria for seasonal workers. Right now, the rules are complicated and arbitrary, so much so that genuine seasonal workers don't qualify for benefits. We recommend making employers indicate on the record of employment whether the layoff was seasonal, so workers are judged less harshly. In addition, we recommend that the government revisit the EI economic regions map to bring it more in line with labour market conditions. The map hasn't changed in 20 years. Can you believe that? It's time to brush off the dust and bring it up to date.
I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize the people who work at the Canada Employment Insurance Commission and all the committees who have worked so hard on employment insurance issues. I'd also like to thank the Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses, because the EI offices are closed and we are the ones having to help those workers.
Lastly, there is another option: redesigning the parameters of the EI program for all Canadians. That means making 420 the number of hours required to qualify, providing 35 or even 40 additional weeks of benefits, and using the best 12 weeks to determine the benefit rate. That formula has a dual advantage: simplicity and fairness.
To those who worry that such changes could lead to abuse of the system, I have two things to say. First, even full EI benefits do not provide the equivalent of minimum wage, which, in and of itself, is not enough to meet the government's low-income cut-off.
Second, according to the Employment Insurance Monitoring and Assessment Report, on average, claimants access benefits for just 20 of the 35 weeks they are entitled to. That means the vast majority of Canadians use the EI program reasonably. Conversely, 33% of claimants exhaust their benefits before they are able to find work. Those are the people we worry about, and I hope you do too.
In closing, I hope you take two things away from my presentation. Number one, regions need revitalization support. Number two, EI will not fix every problem, to be sure, but it's an essential part of the solution. The government needs to make changes to EI to better support seasonal workers in affected regions. As I see it, there's a serious problem. EI failed people during the COVID-19 crisis, so the government had to invent a whole new program, the Canada emergency response benefit.
Thank you.
:
We were very pleased when CERB was announced, especially with how flexible and easy it was for those who qualified. We were also glad that the government listened and then brought more and more international students into it.
The concern that we have is that there are a significant numbers of folks—we were talking about folks with precarious immigration status and those who are undocumented—who have not been able to access CERB.
As you know, OCASI has been having this conversation with every minister we can find, to talk about that and talk about the folks who have been here for many years, folks who have fallen through the gaps for whatever reason and are now undocumented. They've been working in the informal economy, have lost their jobs and have no access to provincial benefits or to income supports like CERB.
As I said in my presentation, there are very many community-based organizations that are trying to raise funds. OCASI itself worked with two foundations—the Atkinson Foundation and the new Mariam Assefa Fund, through World Education Services—to provide some relief to a number of families, particularly in southern Ontario and here in Toronto. Those folks continue to need support.
In terms of the rapid response to CERB, the expansion to ensure that international students were able to get in, the flow of information, although at the front end we had some concerns about the lack of translated information, agencies really stepped up to ensure that the message was being pushed out to communities in whichever way, through various first-language media and those kinds of things, so the uptake for those who qualified was very positive. The folks we're concerned about are those who are continuing, even now, to fall through the cracks because they're not eligible for provincial social assistance and not eligible for federal income supports. Something has to happen there.
:
With the onset of COVID, we saw sharp increases. Not that anti-Asian racism didn't always exist, but we remember the nipper-tipping nonsense, and hatred that was happening here in Ontario not too long ago. We saw a significant increase in anti-Asian racism, whether people were being physically attacked or called names. Some of our political world leaders have absolutely encouraged those kinds of things, and Canada is not immune to it.
We've also seen a rise in anti-Black racism, and just very blatantly, both in terms of individuals who threaten Black lives all the time, including our security forces, like the police, and in terms of unarmed folks being killed, especially those at the intersection of race and mental health.
As a country, we really need to take this seriously. As the pandemic continues and we begin to slowly reopen and begin to look at some of the economic numbers, especially employment numbers, we know historically that racialized folks, and particularly those who are immigrants and refugees, will begin to be blamed. That's why it is so important for governments at all levels to be proactive in terms of putting out public messages around issues of anti-racism and what that really looks like.
Even more important, what this pandemic has shown is the huge gap that exists because of race and systemic racism. This is a time for governments to be bold, to look at policies that will shift, and move how racialized folks are participating economically and socially. I'm here talking about regularization of status. When we talk about those who are undocumented, the vast majority are racialized folks. When we respond in terms of a regularization program, it is also an anti-racism response.
Good afternoon, Ms. Douglas and Mr. Thibodeau.
My questions are for you, Mr. Thibodeau. Thank you for your presentation. As you said at the outset, seasonal workers are an important part of Canada's economy. Before we talk about pilot projects and ways to make things better, I have a question for you.
Clearly, COVID-19 gave rise to uncertainty. Seasonal workers, who were in the spring gap, had no hope of earning enough income to qualify for another benefit period. Consequently, they were given access to the Canada emergency response benefit, or CERB. It took a lot of work to make that happen, but in the end, they were allowed to apply.
What do you think the solution is? Normally, at this time of the year, workers are filling up on hours, so to speak, leading up to next year. We think the time during which workers didn't go back to work and were receiving the CERB should count towards their EI eligibility. After all, they weren't able to return to their jobs.
Do you think that's a good idea? Are there other things you would recommend?
:
That's a very good solution.
Certainly the seasonal workers were in a black hole. A provincial government pilot project ended in late March. At that point, I received many calls, over 300 in one week. People were calling me because many of them were in a black hole and had no income. These people had to turn to the Canada emergency response benefit for help. They were then able to return to work.
I think that it's necessary to look at the employment insurance system as a whole to be able to meet the needs of seasonal workers. Can we fish in the winter? Can we make a living from tourism in the winter? Can we pick blueberries in the winter? Can we harvest peat in the winter? Can we cut wood in the winter? The answer to each of these questions is no.
We must avoid judging seasonal workers. These people work 70 to 80 hours a week on cement, in the heat and with sweat running down their foreheads. The reason is not that they don't want to work, but that it's all they have.
We mustn't forget the economic importance of seasonal workers, who constitute the backbone of 60% of Canada's economy. Today, stores are open. Who's running them? Retired people and seasonal workers.
Full-time workers—I have nothing against them—work in offices until 5 p.m. or later. From 9 a. m. to 5 p. m., who keeps the businesses running? Seasonal workers. They're very important to the economy.
It's important, if not essential, to study the employment insurance system and the current situation as a whole. The COVID-19 pandemic has given us momentum and the opportunity to change things. I think that it's necessary to change the areas and hours and to look at the employment insurance needs of all workers.
The COVID-19 pandemic is sending us a message. We need change. We need to dust off the furniture.