44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 10, 2022 10:00AM
- May/10/22 2:58:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that immigration is critical if we want to address labour shortages.
IRCC is fast-tracking work permits for occupations in demand, such as health care, agriculture, food and seafood production. In the last quarter, we processed over 100,000 work permit applications, nearly double the number processed in the same period last year.
We will continue to ensure that Canadian and Quebec employers have access to the workers they need to secure our economic recovery in Canada.
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- May/10/22 3:03:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is quite vague.
Small businesses suffered enormously during the pandemic. As everyone knows, many of them had to temporarily close. Now they are dealing with serious labour shortages and unacceptable delays thanks to Immigration Canada.
A landscaping company in my riding has to wait 10 to 12 weeks to get a work permit for temporary foreign workers. In 12 weeks, summer will be over. It will be pointless. What does this government intend to do to solve this issue?
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- May/10/22 6:14:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to this motion and its proposal to strengthen support for a pathway to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers and international students. I want to thank the member for Surrey Centre for bringing this motion forward and for helping to shine more light on such important issues in my home province of British Columbia as well as across Canada.
I will start my speech with a quote from Alex, a constituent in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith who came to Canada from Zimbabwe. Alex recently wrote to me, seeking support for his application for permanent residency. He said, “It has been six months since IRCC received my application and I'm still waiting. I would love to get back to work as soon as possible, mostly so I can provide for my family but also because I see how desperate employers are getting to find people and I want to do my part.” He continues, “I'm unsure if you have ever been in a position like this, but as a parent yourself I'm sure you can understand the stress I feel being unable to provide.” This is heartbreaking, and Alex is not alone in this experience.
New Democrats have recognized for years that individuals who are qualified to work or study in Canada should have an opportunity to stay here. We know that workers who are identified by the government to have what it determines to be low or medium skills are still making real and meaningful contributions to Canada. The value of the important roles being taken on by those entering Canada as temporary foreign workers became very evident to us all during the pandemic. From their roles in agriculture to their work in the care economy, it is clear that the skills temporary foreign workers bring with them to Canada are not only valuable, but essential to each of us.
When we talk about the temporary foreign worker program, we often ignore the human stories of these workers. When speaking to this motion, I think of Vrenalyn: a constituent who recently wrote to my office looking for assistance with her permanent residency application. Vrenalyn has been in Canada for 10 years. She first arrived in Canada as a temporary foreign worker. She is currently working three jobs in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith to support her family that she had to leave behind. Her daughter was 14 when she first applied for permanent residency. Her daughter is now 21. When Vrenalyn wrote to my office, she had just finished her 13th day in a row of working almost 16-hour days. To ensure that she could continue her path toward permanent residency, she has only been able to return home once in the past 10 years to visit her sick husband. Tragically, she was not even able to get home when he passed away.
Vrenalyn is someone who has worked tirelessly since she arrived in Canada. She has done everything right to create a life here, but instead of supporting that dream and recognizing her years of hard work, she has faced every delay and setback imaginable. We need to fundamentally rethink our approach to supporting hard-working individuals such as Vrenalyn who are committed to contributing to Canada and making Canada their home.
There are important reasons why all individuals who come to Canada to work should have access to a clear and timely pathway to permanent residency. For years, we have seen systemic abuses of the temporary foreign worker program. We have denied temporary foreign workers basic rights that should be afforded to anyone working and living in Canada. This has allowed predatory employers to exploit and abuse workers, with little fear of recourse.
Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have created a vacuum in the Canadian economy. It is one where jobs filled by the temporary foreign worker program are often filled by those most desperate and vulnerable to exploitation. Unsurprisingly, once these highly exploitable jobs are created, there is a vicious cycle that continues over and over. This is shameful in a country as wealthy as Canada. Canadians expect better, and the temporary foreign worker program needs to be designed to ensure that those working in Canada are treated with dignity and respect.
I think back to the Auditor General's report in 2021 on health and safety of agricultural temporary foreign workers in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report highlighted that Canada's inspections under the program provided little assurance of protection for workers during the pandemic. This was despite the current Liberal government's promise to address the blatant violations of workers' rights we saw during the beginning of the pandemic. Instead of ensuring that temporary workers were protected the next year, the government taxed the system even more without improving the inspection system. This under-resourced inspection system got even worse, and vulnerable foreign workers were the ones who suffered because of it.
The agriculture sector is not the only area where we have routinely seen abuses in Canada's foreign worker system. That is why I fully support my colleague from Vancouver East's amendment to this motion to include caregivers in this plan. Ensuring that individuals working in domestic spaces have access to the same level of protection from harassment and violence is vital. I am happy to hear that the mover of this motion supports this important addition.
Canada's system to facilitate the transition from temporary to permanent status is also broken, unfortunately, for companies trying to do right by their workers. I think about Maria, the owner of Pro Stitch Alterations in my constituency of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, who recently reached out to my office to get assistance for one of her staff members.
Maria has a qualified seamstress working with her, but because the seamstress is still working on her language skills, she cannot secure permanent residency. Moreover, because this profession is not considered a priority of the government, the path to permanent residency is lengthy and unclear. Maria's only solution to keep her valuable employee is to apply through the temporary foreign worker program over and over again.
One of the great ironies of Maria's situation is that she herself is a proud immigrant, having moved from Romania to Canada many years ago. It speaks volumes that someone who was able to move to Canada and start a successful small business is unable to pass along those opportunities to others because of Canada's broken immigration system.
I also want to give a special mention to the Central Vancouver Island Multicultural Society, also known as CVIMS, in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, which does incredible work to support new Canadians and temporary foreign workers.
Last year, CVIMS provided services to over 300 temporary foreign workers and international students, helping to make Nanaimo—Ladysmith a more welcoming and supportive place for newcomers to Canada.
Every day, CVIMS is working to help individuals, but its work is made so much harder because of the systemic challenges built into our temporary foreign worker program.
Individuals it is working with struggle to meet language goals for permanent residency because they are being forced to work impossibly long hours. CVIMS also struggles to help report abuse, because temporary foreign workers are often too fearful to come forward with stories of mistreatment. These workers understand that any misstep could mean no longer having an opportunity to stay and work in Canada.
I have seen first-hand the incredible work that CVIMS is doing, and I truly believe that we need to create a system in which groups like CVIMS can focus on the work of welcoming and supporting individuals who are new to Canada with less concern that the people they are trying to help are being exploited.
Canada is facing a labour shortage. Welcoming people to Canada to help meet the full range of our labour needs is vital. As we move forward, it is also important that we have a compassionate approach that takes into consideration the unique stories of people like Alex, Vrenalyn and Maria.
We need to make sure that jobs filled by temporary foreign workers are not excuses for abuse and exploitation. As we move forward, we need to make sure that people are excited to work in Canada and that they have a clear pathway set out for them. We all benefit when Canada is welcoming and supportive.
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- May/10/22 6:44:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this motion, which outlines ways to increase avenues for temporary foreign workers to obtain permanent residence. This motion focuses on occupations in key sectors that are under-represented in existing economic immigration programs.
I am sure many members in the House are wondering if there is a way to compel a department like Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, to provide timely and predictable services to small- and medium-sized businesses.
I am also convinced that the immigration process needs to be streamlined to help mitigate the devastating effects of this labour shortage. There are steps the government can take to make immigration to Canada attractive for employment in sectors that are vital to our economy.
I want to give the credit to Richard Kurland, a lawyer and policy analyst with Lexbase, who appeared last week before the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.
As a first step, he stated that the issuance of work permits should be subject to the Service Fees Act, and IRCC should be responsible not only for delivering work permits within the set processing times but also for refunding applicants if it misses the deadline.
The second item is something called the labour market impact assessment, or LMIA. There is no need for this in the province of Quebec, as Quebec is already doing it. We have an ecosystem that is doing it. This is a classic example of government duplication and waste. Where Quebec is already providing the service, why do it again? Quebec has paved the road once, so why do it twice? The LMIAs are a useless duplication.
With today's technologies, we have the means to ensure that small and medium-sized businesses do not duplicate their time and effort by sending the same information to two levels of government, and that governments do not simultaneously share information common to both levels of government.
The IRCC has always been reluctant to relinquish power and control over its processing times. It is therefore time it was held responsible for upholding service standards that meet businesses' needs, particularly in the context of a labour shortage. There is no reason why the processing times for applications from Quebec should be different than those coming from other places in Canada.
The federal government needs to modernize the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to reflect the labour needs, objectives and strategies established by the provinces, such as the regionalization of immigration in Quebec. There is no reason why we cannot think outside the box and take risks, particularly when it comes to immigration.
There is so much global competition for the same people, so I do not understand why we need to make it so difficult for the candidates selected by Quebec to come to the country. Qualified young workers will want to immigrate to countries that require less paperwork. It is time to be effective because many communities in the various regions of Quebec depend on these workers coming here.
The motion moved by the member for Surrey Centre is perfectly legitimate and humane. It proposes a pathway to permanent residency for these workers and supports their integration in the communities where they came to work.
The temporary foreign worker program is a very costly and complex solution to the labour shortage at this point, but small and medium-sized businesses have no choice but to go with this time-consuming immigration program. We need a better solution fast.
I would like to share part of an April 29 article by Romain Schué on Radio-Canada:
Right now, a skilled worker selected by the Government of Quebec has to wait an average of 31 months for permanent residence. That wait time used to be six months in the branch serving other Canadian provinces, but it recently rose to 27 months according to data on immigration Canada's website.
That is a huge disparity. Do you know the difference between my riding and yours, Madam Speaker? A worker in my riding has to wait 25 to 30 months, but a worker in yours, which is just a few kilometres away from mine, might get through the process in a year. That disparity is unacceptable.
Also, there is a backlog of more than 29,000 files. In a brief submitted to the Federal Court on April 19 and obtained by Radio-Canada, IRCC discloses that there are currently more than 29,000 permanent resident applications from skilled workers in Quebec waiting to be processed. Nearly 10,000 of these files were sent to Ottawa before 2020. Some of these workers have been waiting for a federal decision for more than 10 years.
The department says that the delays could be due to a security or criminal risk or a lack of co-operation. This is unacceptable. The real cause is the lack of consistency from the federal government and perhaps a lack of resources. This may be a result of the labour shortage that is hitting Service Canada so hard.
Another way that our regions have shown creativity in attracting workers and addressing the labour shortage by hiring foreign workers is through universities and colleges. An article by Lisa‑Marie Gervais published in the February 18, 2022, edition of Le Devoir indicated that the regions are most affected by the rejection of international students, and the data are rather shocking.
For example, the rejection rate at the Université du Québec à Trois‑Rivières is 79%. At the college level, international students are being rejected because they come from Africa, because they are francophone students, or for other reasons. It may simply be because they want to settle here in the long term and that goes against the current mandate of the international student program. That has to change. There is also the Chinook system, which Minister Fraser already talked about.
The rejection rate is 73% at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, 71% at the Université du Québec à Rimouski and 68% at the École nationale de l'administration publique. That is not working. It is the same thing for CEGEPs, such as the Cégep de l'Abitibi—Témiscamingue, which has a rejection rate of 75%.
These are all educational institutions that want to take matters into their own hands and that are spending large amounts of money to attract students from all over the world, only for those students to be systematically turned down. This is a problem, because part of our strategy for combatting the labour shortage in Abitibi—Témiscamingue is to attract people with the promise of good living conditions and training programs that meet the needs of our business owners and businesses.
Motion No. 44 can go much further. It would be interesting to consider, but Ottawa must act quickly.
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- May/10/22 6:50:53 p.m.
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I think that the hon. member named the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, which he must not do.
Resuming debate with the right of reply, the hon. member for Surrey Centre has five minutes.
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- May/10/22 6:58:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to follow up on the questions that I had brought to the government's attention and my concerns with its lack of action in ensuring that Afghans who are fleeing and hiding from the Taliban would be able to get to safety. I also raised with the government during this period that there are over 300 former Afghan interpreters whose families have been left behind. They have made an application and done a tremendous amount of work in guiding the government in bringing forward the necessary immigration measures to support their loved ones so that they can get to safety. Unfortunately, even with all of that guidance, the government has not been able to move forward in bringing their loved ones to Canada.
The problem rests with the government's inability to process these applications in an effective and efficient manner. The government is requiring individuals to provide documents that many of them would not have because they have had to burn them, because if they are found to have documentation that they are supporting or working with the Canadian military or have any links to the west, the minute the Taliban finds such documentation on them or in their residence, they would be targeted. This cannot be allowed to happen.
The Afghan interpreters have made these applications following the government's rules, and of those 300 applications, only 35% have been processed and 65% have yet to receive a G number. They have not received acknowledgement from the government. This is the reality. The urgency is getting grave. In fact, we found out yesterday at the Special Committee on Afghanistan that the Department of National Defence has submitted 3,800 applications that it has approved and vetted to Immigration, yet of those 3,800, only 900 have been processed. Some 2,900 are sitting somewhere and nobody knows where they are or what is happening with them.
In the meantime, we are getting media reports that Afghans who have supported the Canadian military are being hunted down by the Taliban. They have been tortured by the Taliban. That is the reality. There is such urgency in this situation that I really do not get what the government is doing. Liberals can get up every day and say what a great job they are doing, but the reality is that they are not doing a great job. There are so many family members who have been left behind and their lives are in danger every minute of the day as we speak. This cannot be allowed to happen.
I want know from the Minister of Immigration what is happening to those files. Why can IRCC not find them in the system? Global Affairs Canada has also made referrals to IRCC, and I am learning that those referrals that have been sent to IRCC have also vanished into thin air. In fact, IRCC is now asking the families of the representatives here in Canada to go back to GAC and ask it to resubmit those referrals. What on earth is going on with IRCC? Has it lost these files? Does it not realize that every minute of the day matters in the lives of these individuals and that we as Canadians owe these families to bring them to safety?
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