44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 28, 2022 11:00AM
- Feb/28/22 11:13:43 a.m.
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moved:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should develop and publicly release within 120 days following the adoption of this motion a comprehensive plan to expand pathways to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers, including international students, with significant Canadian work experience in sectors with persistent labour shortages, and such plan should incorporate the following elements:
(a) amending eligibility criteria under economic immigration programs to give more weight to significant in-Canada work experience and expand the eligible occupational categories and work experience at various skills levels;
(b) examining evidence and data gathered from recent programs such as Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident Pathway, Atlantic Immigration Program (AIP), Rural and Northern Immigration Program (RNIP), and Agri-Food Pilot, and Provincial Nominee Process (PNP);
(c) incorporating data on labour market and skills shortages to align policy on immigrant-selection with persistent labour gaps;
(d) assessing ways to increase geographic distribution of immigration and encourage immigrant retention in smaller communities, as well as increase Francophone immigration outside Quebec;
(e) identifying mechanisms for ensuring flexibility in immigration-selection tools to react quicker to changes in labour market needs and regional economic priorities; and
(f) specifically considering occupations and essential sectors that are underrepresented in current economic immigration programs, such as health services, agriculture, manufacturing, service industry, trades, and transportation.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak to members today regarding my private member's motion, Motion No. 44, on expanded pathways to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers.
I have to say that it came as quite a surprise to be chosen first overall in the private members’ business lottery last fall. In fact, I was in the government lobby when the member of Parliament for Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne came in and said I was number one. Then everyone under the sun started yelling and calling my family to tell them that I won the lottery. Anyhow, my wife is still waiting for the cheque to arrive and I think she will be waiting for some time.
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all those individuals and organizations that reached out and shared their important ideas for possible bills and motions with me. I did not take this decision lightly, and I hope that this motion will make a meaningful impact in the lives of families and communities, not just in Surrey Centre, but across the country from coast to coast to coast.
Motion No. 44 would address ongoing challenges with our immigration system, filling critical gaps in our labour market by creating more accessible pathways to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers. Since I was elected in 2015, a constant theme in my office has been seeing employers in need of employees. Employers from a wide variety of sectors, including agriculture, transportation, manufacturing and more, are desperate for employees to fill persistent gaps in our labour market.
I wanted to do something that helps the Canadian economy and our small and medium-sized businesses fill employment gaps and live up to Canada’s reputation as a country with a nation-building immigration policy. The goal of our immigration system is to support economic growth by bringing people to Canada.
Canada’s population is aging and domestically we have a low birth rate. Some estimate that by 2030 our population growth will come exclusively from immigration. We are already seeing evidence of this with statistics from 2018 and 2019, which show that immigration was responsible for the employment growth across the country. Currently, immigration accounts for almost 100% of Canada’s labour force growth and 75% of Canada’s population growth, which is mostly in the economic category.
One thing is clear from my experience as a member of Parliament over the last six years: Canada needs workers and Canada needs immigration. By making permanent residency more accessible to more individuals who have devoted time and energy and made sacrifices for the benefit of our communities and our economy, we will help our country flourish and grow.
Our government, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and IRCC work hard to address the challenges faced in our immigration system. With the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, those challenges were exacerbated. However, despite the difficulties we faced and continue to face in this pandemic and rapidly changing world, we have seen improvements and increases in our immigration numbers.
Last December, IRCC announced that we had surpassed our target of welcoming 401,000 immigrants or new permanent residents in 2021 as part of the 2021–23 immigration levels plan. This is the highest number of newcomers welcomed to Canada, surpassing the previous record set in 1913.
What is the temporary foreign worker program? I am sure most members in this chamber are very familiar with the temporary foreign worker program through work in their constituency offices. The temporary foreign worker program is an important and essential part of Canada’s immigration system. It allows Canadian employers to open temporary jobs to foreign workers when Canadians are unable to fill the positions.
My constituency office in Surrey Centre receives a staggering number of these files each year. My team estimates that we work on an average of 250 to 300 temporary worker files annually. Many of these requests are from local businesses and employers who are desperate to fill persistent labour shortages in our community.
Employers wishing to hire temporary foreign workers go through a rigorous process of completing a labour market impact assessment, also known as an LMIA, to find out the potential impact that temporary foreign workers would have on the Canadian labour market. The LMIA consists of assessing the regional and occupational labour market information and the employers’ efforts to recruit and advertise for the position, as well as working conditions, wages, labour shortages and the transfer of skills and knowledge to Canada.
Canada approved 550,000 temporary foreign worker applications in 2017. Despite this seemly large number of individuals coming to Canada each year as TFWs, it is not enough, and we need to do more to find employees to fill job vacancies.
According to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration’s June 2021 report, “Immigration Programs to Meet Labour Market Needs”, there are several sectors and regions in Canada experiencing labour shortages. Immigration policy, as it stands, is not meeting the needs of the labour market. Health services, agriculture, manufacturing, service industries, trades and transportation are particularly vulnerable to being under-represented in our current economic immigration programs.
The COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the beginning months, exposed the delicate nature of our temporary foreign worker programs. Thousands of TFWs stepped up to make sure our seniors received care, trucks kept moving, grocery stores were stocked and restaurants stayed open. Many faced delays renewing their permits. They were uncertain of their status and uncertain if they would remain employed. However, they remained steadfast and helped to keep our country moving and functioning.
In its report, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration urged IRCC to make more accessible pathways to permanent residence available in order to prevent the abuse of foreign workers with the precarious status of out-of-status individuals.
Temporary foreign workers are hard-working individuals. They face the risk of exploitation and challenging work environments, and are important contributors to the communities they live in. Unfortunately, for all the risk they face, and the hard work and sacrifices they make for our community and economy, they do not receive adequate reward for their efforts, in my opinion.
Another persistent obstacle faced by temporary foreign workers and their employers includes the need to renew every two years. This means that employers and workers have to go through the process frequently. Employers must make new LMIA applications and advertise extensively. Once they receive approval, which can take months, they have to get the employees to apply for new work permits, which takes months again, adding to uncertainty and stress as many TFWs do not know if they have medical benefits or whether their children can attend school until their approvals are processed. This process is repeated several times, as those who this motion wishes to address have no pathway to permanent residency.
TFWs also face challenges to qualify for permanent residency. Despite their valuable contributions to our communities and economy, and great employment records over a number of years working in this country, obstacles like a lack of higher education and low language testing scores put TFWs at a disadvantage. This can be more frustrating for temporary foreign workers and their families as their language and skills are sufficient for the work they do, but not enough to grant them permanent residency. They may have working language skills, but not a high enough IELTS score. They may have a class one driver’s licence to drive long-haul trucking, but only a grade 12 education and therefore may not meet the requisite point score. Imagine the frustration of both the employee and employer when a person is good enough to do a job, but not good enough to become a permanent resident of this country.
Many of the industries I have mentioned today fall under NOC levels C and D. This is the national occupational classification system, which classifies jobs based on the type of job duties and the work a person does. NOC level C jobs are intermediate jobs that usually require high school and/or job-specific training, such as long-haul truck drivers or food and beverage servers. Level D consists of labour jobs that usually give on-the-job training, such as fruit pickers, cleaning staff and oil field workers.
NOC levels C and D provide some options for pathways to permanent residency. During the pandemic, our government introduced the temporary residence to permanent residence, TR to PR, pathways. These were created to help admit immigrants during the pandemic. Alternatively, NOC level C and D recipients can apply through the provincial nominee program, which allows Canadian provinces and territories to create their own immigration programs tailored to their economic and population growth strategies. There are also a variety of other regional and industry-specific programs, such as the agri-food pilot and the rural and northern immigration pilot program.
These pathways exist, but we need to do more. We need to add immigration programs that are going to meet our present and future economic needs. Thinking about the pandemic and the challenges Canada faced to get workers into the agriculture industry in the early months, we need to work towards creating a more agile immigration system that can respond quickly to changing situations.
When we look more closely at individual industries, such as the agriculture industry, for example, we can see the real strain that labour shortages are creating. This year, I saw blueberry farmers who normally hand-picked a large portion of their berries forced to machine-pick their crops as there was a huge shortage of farm workers.
Similarly, the heat wave that swooped over B.C. ripened cherries from southern B.C. to the Okanagan at exactly the same time, causing a massive labour pinch. Everyone needed workers at the exact same time. Processors had to increase their workforce due to the increased demand, however with COVID travel restrictions, it became difficult to get much-needed workers in a timely manner.
The agri-food pilot was introduced more than three years ago. To be eligible, individuals require at least 12 months of full-time, non-seasonal Canadian work experience in an eligible occupation and an English or French language proficiency of at least a CLB level 4, as well as a high school education.
The agri-food industry is more than just food production. It includes all aspects of getting food from the field to our tables, and includes delivery and sales, which are a big part of this $111 billion a year industry. This is more than 6% of Canada’s GDP. It also creates 2.3 million jobs.
Keeping all of this in mind, with my private member’s motion No. M-44, expanded pathways to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers, I am asking that should this motion be adopted, our government develop and publicly release a comprehensive plan to expand pathways to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers within 120 days. This should include international students with significant work experience in sectors with persistent labour shortages.
I ask that the eligibility criteria be amended under the economic immigration programs to give more weight to significant in-Canada work experience and expand the eligible occupational categories and work experience at various levels. I am also asking that language requirements be relaxed. These workers have been able to conduct their work in a manner satisfactory to their employers and Canadian workplace safety standards; therefore, they should be considered sufficient to be permanent residents of Canada.
This plan should also examine evidence and data gathered from recent programs such as TRPR, the Atlantic immigration program, the rural and northern immigration pilot, the agri-food pilot and the provincial nominee program. It should also incorporate this data on labour markets and skills shortages to align policy on immigrant selection with persistent labour gaps. These programs and data will provide important region- and industry-specific data to align policy with the diverse needs across our country to ensure appropriate geographic distribution of immigration and encourage immigrant retention in smaller communities. We are a country of not only geographic diversity but also linguistic diversity. This plan should also find ways to increase francophone immigration across Canada.
While we continue to upgrade our immigration system, we have a lot of work to do keep up with the demand. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed shortcomings in our ability to adapt quickly to the rapidly changing world. That is why identifying mechanisms for ensuring flexibility in our immigration selection tools to react more quickly to labour market needs and regional economic priorities is important.
Finally, I am asking for our government to consider specific occupations and essential sectors that are under-represented in the current economic immigration programs, such as health services, agriculture, manufacturing, the service industry, trades and transportation.
We know the growth and stability of our communities and economy rely on the work and dedication of immigrants coming to this country. We need to continue to create mechanisms in our systems to ensure that Canada is an attractive and accessible place for temporary foreign workers to call home.
I hope I can count on members' support for Motion No. M-44, expanded pathways to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers. I look forward to the remainder of the debate today.
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- Feb/28/22 11:33:21 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon colleague from Surrey Centre, first and foremost for bringing forward this motion, and also to congratulate him on being number one on the list. It is a rare win, so I wish him big congratulations. Most importantly, I thank him for bringing such a thoughtful bill forward.
Even before the pandemic, essential sectors in Canada's economy faced a labour shortage crisis. The agriculture, transportation, food processing, and hospitality and tourism sectors are all still dealing with gaps in their workforces. These are vital industries for our recovery, and all of them have faced hit after hit: rising inflation, ongoing COVID restrictions and the historic Liberal-made backlog, with nearly two million people stuck and waiting to finally have their cases processed.
Looking forward, attracting new and skilled workers to come to Canada and eventually become permanent residents is key to recovery and growth for Canada. In the fall of 2020 I, along with witness Raj Sharma, an immigration lawyer, recommended at the citizenship and immigration committee that the government create a pathway for temporary residents to become permanent residents. With too many people stuck in the immigration backlog, providing this pathway would be a more efficient way of processing cases.
Temporary residents are already 50% of the way through the bureaucratic maze of Canadian immigration. This is also a very key Conservative principle, which is that since these people are already 50% processed, it would take fewer resources to make them permanent. Another reason this makes sense is that temporary residents have experienced living and working in Canada, and they are adjusting to the diverse experiences and opportunities our country offers.
I also want to note that the temporary residents here on work permits are also the ones who were transporting goods and medical supplies throughout the pandemic. They worked on farms and processing plants to help keep food on our tables. They work tough jobs and often get little thanks for what they do.
During the first wave, I remember hearing about truckers who drove across the country with almost nowhere to stop to use the bathroom, yet they kept rolling to deliver supplies, and that kept our economy running, our hospitals stocked and our plates full. The positive impact of temporary foreign workers on our economy is immense. They mostly do the jobs everyday Canadians do not want to do.
We have seen that even with high unemployment throughout the last couple of years, many sectors that rely on temporary foreign workers were left with massive labour shortages. This motion is a step in the right direction, but we need a concrete plan now. Hotels, tourism companies, restaurants and Canadian communities are already preparing for the summer. They need to know if they will have the workers they need to meet the tourism demand in Canada. This is a significant concern, not just because of the historic Liberal-made backlog at IRCC but also because of the collapse of the LMIA process for temporary foreign workers.
Employment and Social Development Canada is also failing to modernize, adapt and prepare for the future of immigration in Canada. Just like IRCC, ESDC continues to be stuck in its ways. At the immigration committee last spring, we made recommendations for those departments to reform the LMIA process. Unfortunately, so far none of those recommendations has been acted upon. We heard testimony about agriculture operations submitting LMIA applications 18 months before they needed the workers. Unfortunately, those businesses would not have the labour that they needed.
My colleagues and I have seen first-hand how the LMIA process and the IRCC backlog have affected temporary foreign workers and Canadian employers. Across Canada, TFWs, temporary foreign workers, who had applied for extensions to work permits have had their LMIAs stuck in processing. Instead of IRCC communicating with ESDC, asking if workers and employees had ongoing applications, immigration officials gave 90-day notices telling workers to leave the country.
Today, many jobs TFWs work are not seasonal. Food processing plants need workers year-round; greenhouses and livestock operations are 12-month operations; and even some hospitality jobs require workers to be here throughout the winter. In a time when we are facing a labour shortage crisis in Canada, we cannot allow ourselves to think about temporary solutions.
That is why we need a pathway, a way to end the cycle of bureaucratic mix-ups and massive backlogs. If temporary residents are given a step-by-step program, they can plan their lives accordingly, and so can businesses. Canada needs to attract labour to this country. We need the skill. We need the talent.
I quickly want to address the TR to PR pathway the government created in response to the recommendations witnesses and I made in the fall of 2020. I want to make it clear that any pathway to PR for temporary foreign workers should not follow that example. We heard from many applicants about how much of a mess the process was.
IRCC did not release the application instructions in advance when the portal opened up last spring, which left people scrambling to get their documents in order and book a language test at the last minute. Those language tests booked up extremely fast, and most English classes could not handle the load put on them. What is worse is that immigration consultants and lawyers could not submit applications on behalf of temporary residents, which meant that those workers had to take time off to fill out an application without assistance from an immigration expert and hope they got it right.
The truth is that we know that many applicants unknowingly made mistakes. For example, English-speaking people who applied to full streams automatically went into the French-speaking streams. However, instead of IRCC making that mistake known to temporary residents who applied, it denied those applications. I had business owners calling me, upset that their employees had to take time away from work only to get rejected from this pathway because of unnecessary clerical errors. I agree that it was a failure by this government.
Red tape and miscommunication seem to be a theme the Liberal immigration system has encompassed, and so is racism. The Pollara report on racism at IRCC was disturbing. Employees heard department managers calling some African countries the “dirty 30”. It made me sad to hear this, and I am embarrassed for the immigration officers who try to do a good job.
Recently, the citizenship and immigration committee undertook a study to look at the alarmingly high student visa refusal rates, particularly in Francophonie African countries. In some west African countries, the refusal rate is 90%. A lot of that has to do with discrimination and bias. The committee heard from witnesses that many international students were being turned away because of dual intent. IRCC officers were not satisfied that those students would return to their home countries in Africa. This is after the Liberals promised to bring in more international students and provide them with a pathway to permanent residency.
The Minister of Immigration needs to take this issue seriously. Francophone and African international students are studying in all parts of this country. In my home province of Alberta, we see vibrant and strong Francophonie and African communities, and they contribute to the success of our province and country.
The truth is that the dual intent issue is not just a problem for international students but also for temporary foreign workers and other temporary residents. Moreover, it is often an issue for immigrants from developing countries. How can Canada build a pathway to permanent residency if our system will turn around and discriminate and refuse the very people we are recruiting to come here?
It is no secret that I am for smart, responsible and transparent immigration, but I am also in favour of red tape reduction, being efficient and showing compassion. I support a pathway to permanent residence to temporary residents already living and working in Canada. Those people work hard, contribute to the growth and productivity of our country and strengthen our democracy. This pathway makes sense. Why would Canada attract the best and brightest, provide them with opportunities and training and knowledge, and then force them to leave?
While I will be voting for the motion before us, I want to make my concerns clear to my hon. colleague across the way and to the Minister of Immigration. We must develop a fair and compassionate pathway that addresses the labour and economic needs of every province and industry in Canada and helps to reduce the historic backlog. We need real action to end racism at IRCC, and the department needs to be open about its mistakes.
We also need to address this massive backlog, because families are being separated and kept apart from each other. There are families who cannot see their children's first steps, birthdays and other milestones. Canadian businesses are not able to fill the shortages they have for labour and, more importantly, our economy is suffering. We need to clear up this backlog, and this government needs to take that issue very seriously.
This is an opportunity for the government to fix its mistakes and help our businesses and communities grow and thrive. I hope to see a pathway that will help end the labour shortages and grow the economy from coast to coast.
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- Feb/28/22 11:53:43 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the House today regarding Motion No. 44. From our time together at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration during previous sessions, it is clear to me that the member for Surrey Centre is passionate about improving Canada's immigration system. This motion highlights that well. I congratulation the member on being number one.
My colleagues in the NDP and I have long viewed Canada's immigration system as an exercise in nation building. Individuals and families from all corners of the world, for generations, have come to Canada. They have contributed to our communities, our social fabric, our culture and our economy.
In the past, Canada's immigration system offered landed status on arrival for a full range of workers. Unfortunately, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have shifted our system over time to include just what IRCC deems as high-skilled workers. As a result, Canadian employers have struggled to find the full range of workers needed to meet the labour demand, and increasingly, Canada has turned to the temporary foreign worker program. On an annual basis, there are now more temporary foreign workers in the country than there are new landed immigrants.
Twenty years ago, there were 60,000 temporary work permits in Canada. Today, there are over 400,000. As we have witnessed, precarious status immigration streams lead to severe power imbalances, abuse and a fear to speak out. Whether they are the rampant exploitation of live-in caregivers and stories of threats to deport them, which forced program reforms, or the countless stories of workplace rights violations, including wage theft and illegal housing of temporary foreign workers, many of these issues stem from the precarious nature of the immigrant workers community.
The pandemic has really highlighted the fact that temporary foreign workers have been mistreated, and there are two issues I would like to talk about.
The first is that Canadians and our economy heavily rely on access to temporary foreign workers, many of whom are essential workers, even though IRCC defines these workers as low or medium skilled. They work at grocery stores, put food on our tables, care for our loved ones and so much more. Across the board, their value should be recognized with livable wages, secure employment benefits and, as COVID has demonstrated, paid sick leave. However, too often, these essential workers are paid minimum wages. They can only come to Canada as temporary foreign workers and not as immigrants.
This needs to change. That is why the NDP is putting forward an amendment to the motion to expand the economic immigration stream beyond what IRCC deems as high-skilled workers to include the full range of workers. I will be moving that motion at the end of my speech.
The second issue is the continued lack of enforcement of the rules that prevent exploitation and harm to temporary foreign workers. The recent Auditor General's report found that the government assessed almost all employers as compliant with COVID-19 regulations, even though it had “gathered little or no evidence to demonstrate this”. The continuous failure to act to enforce the basic standards, rules and principles of the program tips the scale further in favour of abuse, exploitation, exclusion, and tragically, death.
I do not say that lightly. Whether it is a failure to follow COVID guidelines leading to COVID deaths, or the unsafe work practices that result in the workplace deaths of agriculture workers, the mistreatment of these precarious migrants leads to tragedy each and every year. Many, myself included, have argued for a very long time that the temporary foreign worker program is a complete misnomer.
While it aims to be for filling in labour or skills shortages on a temporary basis, we all know that is not the case. Instead, the program is used to fill permanent jobs with temporary people. The NDP has long agreed with migrant workers organizations that, if one is good enough to work here, one is good enough to stay. That means landed status on arrival and the recognition that the term “low-skilled” does not reflect the value of the work being done. Instead, it is just a term that justifies poor working conditions and low wages.
Eliminating the precarity of status for newcomers and removing the power imbalance created by tying a migrant worker to a specific employer would have an enormous positive impact on the lives of migrant workers overnight, and in the long term, a positive impact for our economy.
As just one example, COVID-19 has exposed a shortage of frontline health care workers in this country. In my years of work advocating for better treatment, the end to forced family separation, and landed status on arrival for migrants arriving through the caregiver stream, I have heard countless stories of how many of these women are trained nurses and caregivers who could not practice because of immigration laws.
It makes no sense that they are not able to practise their profession, even if they have passed all the tests and meet all the credentials. The only thing preventing them from working in their profession is immigration rules. Credential recognition does not help them because they are tied to the job and the employer that got them here. There is no flexibility. That is wrong and should be changed.
I am also happy to see the member included international students in the motion. The best and brightest young people from around the world come to Canada to study. For some, they want to take the skills they learn here and bring them home to improve their communities, and that is incredible.
However, we also must realize that for some, coming to Canada, obtaining an education here and being immersed in our communities is done with the goal of making Canada their home. While pathways exist, for many, the difficulty of navigating the system and delays for application approvals become serious hindrances to their ability to stay here and work in their field.
For reasons that have never been explained to me, students applying through express entry score lower than they should because any work experience they gain in Canada while studying does not count. This artificially lowers their score and makes it less likely for them to be selected. That too should change.
I would also be remiss if I did not speak to the lack of options that individuals without status have to regularize and obtain valid status. People can be in this country without status for a wide range of reasons. Some are out of their control; some are instances where they believed they were following the rules but were misled and exploited; some have lost status because of delays in the system. The reasons are many. For example, I am aware of caregivers who have lost status due to delays related to COVID in application processing.
There are an estimated 500,000 people already here in Canada without status. Many of them, due to this very precarious situation, are working under the table, not having their rights respected and are being exploited. They are also, in countless cases, working in positions well below the fullest of their abilities because they cannot come forward for positions they are qualified for without status.
We need to change all of that. I will therefore move the following amendment.
I move:
That the motion be amended:
(a) by adding after the words “comprehensive plan to expand” the following: “the economic immigration stream to allow workers of all skill levels to meet the full range of labour needs”; and
(b) in paragraph (f), by adding the word “caregivers” after the words “health services”.
I thank the member for Surrey Centre for accepting these amendments. I look forward to the plan from the government when the motion passes.
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