The Temporary Foreign Worker and Parallels to the Past

It was my pleasure discussing the plight of many temporary foreign workers at the Human Rights Forum a couple of years ago; my speech drawing parallels between the low skill (low wage) temporary foreign workers and those termed 'coolies' from the past is below.

 

 

Anoush Newman:	Hello and good afternoon, everyone. My name is Anoush Newman, and I'm the 2015 director for The Human Rights Forum at the GlobalFest. It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to our 2015 Human Rights Forum. This project was conceived by the GlobalFest Calgary shortly after the city of Calgary signed on as a cosignatory for the Canadian Municipalities Against Racism, Discrimination Declaration. And, since 2007 GlobalFest has been organizing these forums to promote civil liberty and equality, hopefully, leading to less discriminatory practices.
	We take great pride in the fact that our forum is very unique and unmatched locally and nationally. We believe that with these types of projects that we build liberal democratic society to protect the rights of all the members of the community. Although we live in one small corner of this great nation, but we are greatly affected by global issues, issues that might be considered too far and distant, yet they may have great implication in our lives.
Patricia G.:	I am very pleased to be here this afternoon. Of course, CCIS has long had a history of working with The Temporary Foreign Worker Program. We have a number of locations throughout Southern Alberta, and we're responsible for The Temporary Foreign Worker Support Program with many of those temporary foreign workers, so we have a long history and a great deal of experience. CCIS handles about 14,000 new Canadians every year and we have six locations throughout Southern Alberta. That's a little bit about us in case you don't know who we are.
	It does give me great pleasure to introduce our panel. We have two of our three. We're hoping that the third will be able to attend. But, I'll tell you just from having a conversation in the greenroom, you'll be very impressed with these gentlemen. To my immediate right is Devin Yeager and through his work as a secretary treasurer for The United Food & Commercial Workers of Canada Local 1118, Devin has been an advocate for temporary foreign workers, the TFW program, as well as those under The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program.
	Over the last 15 years, he has worked across the country assisting workers who would like to make improvements to their working conditions and achieve fair collective agreements. UFCW Local 1118 proudly represents workers from all over the province and has negotiated groundbreaking collective agreements, sorry, with employers regarding the TFW program that includes standardized recruitment, education and automatic nomination for residency.
	Since 2007, over 1,000 members of the UFCW Local 1118 have received their permanent residency and have been able to be reunited with their families as they continue their lives in Canada. Again, based on our experience, I can tell you how very important that is for the families to be reunited and how challenging and difficult that is when you're working so hard here in Canada and your family is still back in the home country. Devin and all members of the UFCW Local 1118 firmly believe that if a worker is good enough to work in Canada, they should be good enough to stay in Canada. Hear, hear.
	Also, on our panel is Raj Sharma. Raj is a lawyer and founding partner of Stewart Sharma and Harsanyi, one of Western Canada's largest dedicated immigration law firms. He is a former refugee protection officer with the Immigration and Refugee Board and frequently appears before all its divisions as well as the Federal Court of Canada. He has appeared before every level of court in Alberta. He received his Master of Laws from Osgoode Hall. Ooh, I'm impressed by that. I even know that. He regularly speaks on immigration matters in the media and has been a panelist at the CBA National Immigration Conference both in 2014 and '15 and writes on immigration matters. He is the recipient of Legal Aid of Alberta's Access to Justice Award and recognized by Avenue Magazine as one of Calgary's top 40 under 40.
	Impressive panel. We'll have a great discussion. Let's have a round of applause. Did you guys draw straws? Who's going to start? Okay, Raj is going to start. Ladies and gentleman, Raj Sharma.
Raj Sharma:	Thanks, Patricia and thank you to TD, the sponsor, and of course the organizers of this event. I am a Calgary immigration lawyer. My parents came to Canada in about 1970 and I was born here. I was lucky enough to be born in Canada. What that means is that I can't be deported under Bill C-24 by the conservatives. I've written a lot about this situation for immigrants particularly because of my father's experience and it is my profession.
	When you look at the online comments, there's a number of comments that I get and you should probably avoid reading the online comments if you want to preserve your faith in humanity. The number one comment that I read in relation to any article that I write regarding temporary foreign workers, or refugees, or immigrants, or diversity, or multiculturalism is ship so-and-so back to where they came from and send his lawyer, too, or send Sharma back to where he came from. Well, I came from Hamilton, Ontario and that unfortunately is not in the cards right now. I like Calgary.
	The second most common comment that I get is that my opinion or my advocacy for refugees, or temporary foreign workers, or other newcomers is somewhat less credible because somehow I'm self-interested, that I am lining my own pockets because of the individuals that I advocate. I always found this a little bit ridiculous. It's kind of like criticizing doctors who urge vaccination on children. My economic self-interest is for this government to stay in power and for this government to continue it's heavy handed policies and immigration law because frankly, under this government, my office went from 800 square feet to 6,000 square feet. My office went from one employee to 20 employees. What I do and when I advocate and when I do so, I do so against my economic self-interest and maybe, therefore, my opinion should carry more weight.
	I've got 15 minutes to offer my thoughts on The Temporary Foreign Worker Program. I want to leave with you two takeaways. Number one, the more things that change, the more they stay the same. Number two, we're playing politics with temporary foreign workers in Canada.
	A couple of definitions, The Temporary Foreign Worker Program, when we talk about it, it's a hodgepodge of programs. There's 30 different programs within this. This includes NAFTA. This includes higher-skilled temporary foreign workers. This includes the International Experience Class where tens of thousands of relatively young people can come from all over the world and work in Canada competing against Canadians and competing in the Canadian labor market.
	I want to talk about the low-skilled temporary foreign workers. Now, I don't call them low-skilled temporary foreign workers. The government calls them low-skilled temporary foreign workers. I call them low-wage temporary foreign workers and there's a difference. Now, the low-wage temporary foreign workers don't have a ready pathway to permanent residents, and the low-wage temporary foreign workers are typically the scapegoats or the individuals that are exploited and also have been sacrificed on the altar of public opinion.
	First, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Earlier this year, I was representing an individual named Rohit Nand and his family members. Rohit Nand is married. He has four kids, two of which are in university. Two of which are in grade school. Rohit is 45 years old. He came to Canada from Fiji. He's Indo-Fijian. Before coming to Canada, Rohit was living in a one room house. By one room, I don't mean one bedroom. I mean one room. I mean four walls and a roof, and he was there with his four kids and his wife. He got a chance to come to Canada in 2007, so obviously he lapped up that chance and that's what we would have done or anyone individual in this room would have done given his circumstances in Fiji.
	His employer got the approval for him to work in Canada. That approval back then was called the Labor Market Opinion or the LMO. He started working in a landscape company. Remarkably, his wife managed to join him because she managed to find work somewhere else and she started working at A&W and their four kids came here. One of their kids was a toddler. I think he was two or three when he came here and the other one was six or seven, and his two elder daughters were obviously a few years younger. They're now in university.
	In any event, he started working. He worked his way up in the company. He managed to work in a skilled capacity, and him and his wife remarkably were able to buy a small townhouse in Canada. They were able to make 70, $80,000 a year and of course paid taxes on that. Of course, their two elder daughters went to university, so they paid international tuition rates for those two girls which is about double or triple the tuition for Canadians or Canadian permanent residents. In any event, this was fantastic. This is a far cry from living in one room shed that the family lived in in Fiji.
	Here's where irony or fate plays a hand. Rohit's ancestors went to Fiji as coolies. Now, coolie was the term for the 19th century bonded contract laborers. I want you to keep these two terms in your mind in terms of coolies and temporary foreign workers. We're going to look at how similar they are and how things have changed over the last 200 years.
	After the collapse of the slave trade, corporations needed a source of cheap labor, and so coolie was the answer. The British Raj managed to sign up a lot of these guys from ... There was a drought going on. There was famine going on in India, so these agents would go out to these drought stricken parts of India, for example, or China and that's where we got those thousands of Chinese laborers that worked on Canadian railways in BC, for example. These agents went out and they recruited these guys in India and a lot of these guys were illiterate, and they were presented with this contract. They were sold as bill of goods and the bill of goods was obviously false. They told them a number of different things. Suffice it to say for the Indians that ended up in Fiji, they were told that Fiji was close by. That they would make a lot of money. That they would work there for a couple of years, come back and be able to live off their spoils for the rest of their lives.
	At that time, it was bonded labor so these people would come. They'd be bonded and they'd be stuck with one particular employer. This is where the similarities begin. There's Rohit Nand's grandfather from, I don't know, generations ago who somehow got to Fiji probably thinking that it's going to result in a better life for his children, and then we've got Rohit Nand in the 21st century ending up going to Canada as a temporary foreign worker thinking he's going to give his family a better life as well.
	After a while, what happened is that these guys were just leaving these coolies in the country. They weren't able to make that much money in Fiji. They weren't able to make that much money in Guyana and these other places that they went to, so they ended up being effectively stuck there, strangers in a strange land. Eventually the British Raj said, "No, no, no. There's going to be a maximum time that these people can work abroad, and then the employer will have to bring them back to their country of origin." Sound familiar. This is exactly the same requirement in the low-skilled temporary foreign worker program. Anyway, those regulations were too late for tens of thousands of coolies and of course Rohit Nand's great, great, great grandfather and he was stuck in Fiji. What Rohit didn't know when he decided to come here was that things hadn't really changed from the times of how his ancestors came to Fiji.
	Bear in mind that low-skilled temporary foreign worker, it's only been around not that long ago and under the Liberals, under Paul Martin, just maybe a thousand, 2,000 came under that program. This government has been very, very responsive to the needs of businesses and corporations until it doesn't. What happened is that they made the process to bring over a low-skilled temporary foreign worker so simple, to fill out these Labor Market Opinion form so simple that an eight year old with a crayon could have filled these forms out and got an authorization to bring these individuals to Canada. But, there was no pathway for them to become permanent residents. Now, what we've got is we've got more temporary foreign workers in Canada than permanent residents, almost double. You got almost half a million temporary foreign workers in Canada, and I don't know if a lot of people know that. I don't know if a lot of people that we only settle about 250 or 260,000 permanent residents per year in Canada.
	In any event, then and now ... Then and now, these contract bonded laborers are brown. Then and now corporate interests are the same which is an emphasis on cheap, reliable, compliant workers with limited labor mobility. Then and now, more or less these laborers work alone. There's hurdles for them to bring their wives or husbands to Canada or their children to Canada. Then and now, like I said before, the companies are obliged to return the worker after the termination or expiration of their contracts. Then and now, there's no pathway to permanent residency for these temporary, contract, bonded laborers.
	Then and now, there is easy exploitation of these individuals and there have been haphazard efforts to limitation exploitation and abuse. But, if you look at it, there was no controversy back a few years ago even though exploitation of these low-skilled temporary foreign workers was rife. It was common place. That's not what hit the news and that's not what caused the reforms to The Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and I'll talk about that later in my speech. But, what caused the reforms to The Temporary Foreign Worker Program were outcries that these foreigners were actually taking jobs away from Canadians. The outcry wasn't caused by the employers that were exploiting these workers or these workers that were living in deplorable conditions. When Jason Kenney announced blacklist of employers, that blacklist was a blank list for three, four years. That blacklist was announced in 2009 and there was no name on that blacklist until 2012. 2013, 2014.
	All right. But, back to our man Rohit Nand. Rohit was determined to stay, so he worked his way up to a skilled job. He was lucky. He had his family here. He had an employer here. The employer was supportive but his luck ran out. When he applied under the Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program ... This is one of the few ways that a low-waged, low-skilled temporary foreign worker can become a permanent resident. He applied on the AINP. When he applied, processing time is like a month or two months. Then when he applied that program processing time skyrocketed. It's now taking like 18 months, 24 months to get a nomination under the Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program, and this is a big problem because when he applied, he only had seven months left on his work permit.
	Then he tried to apply under a different class. This is called The Canadian Experience Class. It's gone now but he had to pass a language test. He was half a point short on one component of the language test so he was out of luck. The luck ran out and of course this was a different time. There was controversy over The Temporary Foreign Worker Program. His employer couldn't get another authorization for him. He was past his time in Canada anyway. Things were looking bad.
	If he and his family went back, if his older girls stayed in Canada on those study permits studying in the universities, there's no way Rohit would be able to afford their tuition, their education making 400, 500 bucks a month in Fiji.
	This particular story has a happy ending. We filed a humanitarian compassionate application for Rohit. In support of that application, he attached 26 detailed letters of support from members of his community by Calgarians. He included a petition signed by hundreds of individuals from Calgary. One officer looked at those circumstances, his eight years of establishment, his involvement in the community, his employment, the hardship that he would face returning to Fiji where the indigenous population still has an issue with these Indians that the British Raj brought to them 150 years ago.
	In any event, they also granted Rohit and his family permanent residency or first stage approval for a permanent residency a couple of months ago. But, it was touch and go for a little while because another officer or a different officer might have come to a different result. For every one Rohit Nand, there are many, many, many more temporary foreign workers that are dining on ashes as a result of their time and their treatment in Canada.
	The second takeaway that I like to leave you with is the fact that we're playing politics with temporary foreign workers, especially low-wage temporary foreign workers in Canada. Like I said before, despite ample evidence of exploitation of these individuals in Canada, the only outcry happened after some news media reported that they were being preferred for jobs over Canadians.
	What were these media stories? You had one McDonald's franchise in Victoria that indicated that some temporary foreign workers were being preferred for shifts over Canadians. You had two waitresses out of jobs in Weyburn, Saskatchewan allegedly because of temporary foreign workers. Those were the two stories in April 2014 that started this firestorm. As a result of that firestorm, Jason Kenney immediately suspended the low-wage temporary foreign worker program. He immediately suspended it and after that he put in place some changes, and we're going to talk about those changes in a moment.
	I want you to remember one thing and because facts are important. April 2013, I'm happy that a different bank, not our sponsor, had some issues in terms of displacing Canadians in favor of temporary foreign workers. That was for dozens of individuals, higher paying individuals, individuals that are in their 50s and 60s and there was an outcry at that time as well. But, that outcry over RBC's treatment of Canadians did not result in any changes to immigration law or policy. What changed it? McDonald's and two waitresses out of Weyburn, Saskatchewan.
	When we suspended this program, when he said, "While there's abuse of this program and Canadians' jobs are at risk as a result of this program," it was under his government that tens of thousands of these temporary foreign workers were brought in. It was under his government that an eight year old with a crayon could have filled out the authorization necessary to hire one of these temporary foreign workers. Because of this outcry, the low-skilled temporary foreign worker became the sacrificial lamb on the altar of public opinion. Most of the restrictions that have been announced affect only them.
	How many are we talking about and what changes are we talking about? The changes, the four by four rule that started April 1, 2015. If you're a low-wage temporary foreign worker you can be here for four years and that's it, and you've got to leave, and then you got to stay out for another four years. Then you can apply to come back into Canada. This year, thousands of our neighbors, our members of our community will be leaving because they are coolies and somehow they're unfit to remain here permanently but they're perfectly fit to work here, and pay taxes, and contribute to our social support networks that they themselves will never be eligible to access.
	Let's examine the sacrifice of the low-skilled temporary foreign workers on the altar of public opinion. Let's examine that. Kenney says that you'll go from 31,000 low-skilled, low-wage temporary foreign workers down to 16,000 by 2016 or so. Do Canadians know, Canadians that are concerned about foreigners or immigrants taking our jobs, do Canadians know that 10,000 Irish can come to Canada every single year without a Labor Market Impact Assessment? 10,000 Irish nationals can come to Canada and work without obtaining authorization and compete against Canadians? But, no, we got to talk about the low-wage temporary foreign workers. Those International Experience Category or International Experience Class, no one is talking about that, and no one is talking about the fact that Jason Kenney is quite proud of his Irish ancestry, and no one is talking about the fact that Jason Kenney was on a late night talk show in Ireland talking and urging Irish individuals to come to Canada to work and stay permanently.
	It's pure cynical politics. Absolutely cynical and one that is done hoping that Canadians are ignorant of basic facts. Now, remember, they were more than happy to assist the companies and the corporations to get cheap labor until some time last year at which point it was decided that because of the media outcry and because of the public outcry, no, we're going to appease the certain [SWATS 00:25:04] of the Canadian populace that is concerned about these immigrants that are "taking their jobs."
	What's the takeaway? Number one, we have to learn from the lessons of our history of exclusion. Number two, we've got to be vigilant and we can't fall prey to cynical politics and politicians that are pandering to the gallery. The other thing, and this is why I'm grateful and I'm thankful that I was asked to speak here, this important topic, it's because Canada historically has been a country that brings in permanent residents and expects those individuals to work and take part in Canadian society and become citizens. When did Canada become a country where its temporary foreign workers, these transient workers, these workers that are treated like disposable Kleenexes outnumber our permanent residents? When did we have that discussion? When was that discussed? When did we agree on this as Canadians? We did not.
	I think if you want to take a look around at countries that use a lot of temporary foreign workers, you won't like those countries, and you won't want Canada to be like those countries. Those countries include Kuwait where we have temporary foreign workers in Kuwait that are dying as the result of unsafe working conditions and will never ever take part in the fabric of those societies because those workers are truly disposable. I think it's time for us to stop treating temporary foreign workers as disposable commodities. Thank you again to TD and the organizers. It was my pleasure. Thank you.
Patricia G.:	Well, that was very thought-provoking. Nicely done. Hamilton, Ontario, eh? Ontario boy. Okay. I'm from Saskatchewan so we always have a little competition with those guys from the east. All right. Devin is choosing to speak from the stage. I'm sure everybody can see him very well. Devin Yeager, over to you.
Devin Yeager:	Thank you, everyone, for coming. Again, my name is Devin Yeager. I'm secretary treasurer with United Food & Commercial Workers Local 1118. One of the things that's the main topic of today is immigration be it temporary, be it permanent, be it transitory, be it migrant. One of the things we all need to remember in this room, well, 99% of us in this room is that we're all immigrants. Unless you're from the First Nations community, unless your ancestors go back thousands and thousands of years here, we're all immigrants. We are on their land and we are immigrants in their nation.
	Canada has a long history of immigration and Canada was built on immigrants. My ancestors came ... My father side from Germany. My mother side the Heinz 57 of the UK, the English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and whatever else would fit in there, but we're all immigrants. We all came here whether our forefathers, whether they were first generation or eighth generation. We've all come here at some point to make a better life. Unfortunately, Canada, the United States and a lot of countries have a history of exploiting immigrants, exploiting and creating multiple classes of immigration.
	As my co-panelist had mentioned, back to the Chinese railway. We had a way of exploiting immigrants and creating a second class of immigrants that didn't have the same rights as the rest of us. Now, they weren't ... If you listened to what's happened in Canada, what's happened in North America, they weren't allowed to have property. They weren't allowed to have the same rights. Even after the Second World War when we had the Japanese internship camps, we were treating different groups of people based on where they come from and how they got here differently. That's unfortunately the history of the nation that we live in and that is not the history I'm proud of. I'm proud of the fact that Canadian people, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, daughters, grandmothers, we all love each other. We all help each other and we're all there to give each other a helping hand, and that's the history I want to be proud of, not the history of exploitation that unfortunately has been created that we and other organizations that we partner with fight and strive against.
	That's the first part I want us to all remember is we're all immigrants, so everyone should be treated fairly regardless of where they were born. It's the human rights form, regardless of who they love, where they live, anything else. We're all human beings. The same blood runs through all our veins and that's the thing we have to remember. I think far too often we've forgotten that.
	Some of the things that ... I'll go back in history a little bit but not as far as Raj here. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program in Canada was started in the '50s and '60s. Where it really started in the agriculture program in Ontario through the tobacco through fruit. There was a lot of Caribbean workers. That's where they got their start was on the fields, in the farms in Ontario. That has been in existence since now, today, called the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and that's where it started in Canada. The difference in that program is purely a recyclable worker program. They have zero rights to immigrate. They have zero rights for permanent residency. They come for a period of nine to 10 months a year and then they're gone.
	We worked through our union and through our sister organization, the Agriculture Workers Alliance, work with workers that have been on the same farm for 35 years and have helped raised the farmer's kids and have been there through thick and thin with all the families but have zero rights to immigrate. They have zero rights for permanent residency. They pay taxes every year. They spend more time in Canada than they ever have in their own country, but they're temporary foreign workers and they have zero rights.
	That program was in existence and it spread across the country and that was since about the '60s. In early 2000s, they looked at this program and with the demand of a lot of employers saying, "There's a labor shortage, there's a labor shortage," decided let's expand it. One of the topics we've heard before is low-skilled, low-wage. Whatever it was there was a number of different programs created that allowed employers to bring in a different class of workers that had different sets of rights than an immigrant.
	Now, one of the things that has already been mentioned is Canada has been steady in their natural migration, immigration of about 250,000 workers, people, immigrants over the last 10 years. It's about steady, about 250,000. When the TFW program, as it somewhat exist today, was created in the early 2000s, it started off as a couple of thousand workers and then it increased to 10,000 workers, then 20,000, 30,000 and then somewhere around the mid 2000s there was a huge skyrocket. For the first time ever Canada started accepting more or allowing more temporary foreign workers than natural immigrants to the country. While the number has remained 250,000 for the last 10 years, the number skyrocketed to today or before the outcry in 2014 to over 500,000 migrants that did not have the same rights as the 250,000 that came in.
	If you learn in economics when you're talking about supply and demand and whatnot, if there's a need for workers, it should be through immigration. If there's a need for more immigrants, it should be through immigration and we should not be creating a second class of citizens that have different rights than others.
	One of the things that when the TFW program was created is it created, not only a second class of citizens, but it also created an indentured servitude situation where it was the modern day slave trade. It was you come here. You work for this employer. You're not allowed to change employers. You're not allowed to do anything else. When that employer is done with you, you can leave. Or, even when that employer is done with you, they're going to send you home even if you have the legal right to stay here. It's created a number of problems.
	Most of us in the room are passionate about this subject, so I'm not going to bore you with horror stories because we all know them. I can sit here for the next two weeks going straight. I've worked, as I said, with workers under the TFW program and The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. We've had exposes on CBC with migrant farm workers in Medicine Hat, the 23 of them in a three-bedroom house. We've had different situations in Edmonton, same thing. You hear it in McDonald's. You hear it in Tim Hortons, in RBC and a lot of different places.
	I think the thing is that a lot of us in this room are advocates for and try to help and protect those workers. When this program started being more frequently used amongst the industrialized companies in Canada, specifically in Alberta, our union, UFCW Local 1118, was at the forefront of the conversation with the employers that wanted to bring in temporary foreign workers. One of the things that we negotiated in our collective agreements with those employers, and we represent some of the largest meat manufacturing, meat processing employers in Alberta, is that not only did they have to go and abide by all of the rules, they have to anyway with the TFW program, but also not ... There must be mandatory nomination within six months of the TFW landing here so there's no ifs, ands or buts. They must be nominated.
	The other thing was is to allow what we hoped for a more speedy process through the system. They must either recruit or hire and give the workers the skills to be able to achieve residency so be it the language, be it the knowledge, the written, the verbal, all that stuff. But, we didn't want anything to hamper a TFW or a worker's ability to achieve residency once they came to Canada. Now, I can't say the same for the non-union employers and I can't say ... I know frankly that there's a lot of workers out there that don't have the same experience because unfortunately they don't have someone standing in their corner helping them. I can say that since 2007, as I said in my intro, over 1,000 workers in our various employers in Alberta have achieved residency because they were automatically nominated. There was no if you work hard enough, if you work long enough, if you just work more, I'll nominate you. It was automatic. It was done.
	Prior to the change of the [foreign-foreign 00:36:23] now to a two and two, prior to the change, we were seeing about 97 to 98% of all of our workers that have come under the TFW program achieve residency. Of those small variances, those were some of the people that chose not to stay and that's great. Everyone has that right. If they didn't want to stay, they legitimately wanted to earn a living and then go back to their families. That's great. We had a very high success rate in being able to help workers achieve residency and that's something that we're very proud of and we have a number of success stories.
	One of our staff reps that works out of High River right now, Eduardo Basa, he came from the Philippines under The Temporary Foreign Worker Program. He was a TFW. He, through his will and work with the union, was able to achieve residency. Then he became, while he was a TFW, a steward to help fight for the rights of all the workers around him. And since then, not only was he a strong and active member in his community, but not only now is he the president of the Southern Alberta Filipino Association of High River, but he is also a full-time staff representative for our union working to better the lives of all the TFWs not only at the plant in High River but all across Alberta working with us, and that's one of our success stories that we're very proud of.
	One of the things or a number of things, I keep saying one of the things, is this program is a broken program. There was a lot of media attention. There was a lot of outcry in 2014. With the changes to the program, it's made it even harder for workers to achieve residency. As you heard previously, the processing time when a number of workers would be nominated and put their papers in and maybe they would achieve their response in a month, six months, a year.
	Now, when the government made the change and said that now there must be a cap system. We're going to reduce the amount of temporary foreign workers that any employer can have, what that's done is created where in Alberta there is 5,500 spots for permanent residents so slots for the permanent residents to apply for so like a lottery or a game that was about 6,000 people getting nominated across the province for those 5,500 spots prior to the change in the TFW program. It was very highly competitive and there was only a small number that weren't getting residency.
	When the government made the change in the TFW program what it did was all of these employers that had temporary foreign workers that they've been exploiting for a long time were going, "Oh, I'm going to lose all my workers," so then everyone started applying and nominating their workers. What happened is there was an influx of 15,000 to 20,000 people applying now for 5,000 spots. Not only did it create such a backlog in the processing time to ... It's so much more competition. They didn't have enough people to process the applications. Now, we're sitting in the situation where they're lessening the amount of temporary foreign workers that an employer can have, 10% every year. It's 30%. Now it's 20%. Then it'll be 10%. We have temporary foreign workers that have achieved their levels, that have their papers, that have their nominations and everything else. They're now having to be sent home because the employers don't have any spots to keep them and so they're ready to get their residency. They're weeks away from getting their residency in the mail, but they're having to be sent on a plane and being sent home.
	I think while there was a knee-jerk reaction from the government as to how to fix this problem, it created even more problems. I would love to say and we've been advocating for that all TFWs that are in Canada whether they're under any stream, they should be the term grandfathered. Let them all apply for residency. But, if we're saying the program is broken, which we believe it is, let's bring anyone that we need as natural immigrants as all of us came in and all of us had the same rights as everyone else.
	This program of now we're just recycling workers and we're going to change the name of the program. We're going to bring in workers under different programs. We're just going to change the name. It's going to be the same program. It's going to be workers with different rights than everyone else. I'm very happy to say with the work that we have done with the employers that we represent that we've been very successful in helping temporary foreign workers achieve residency.
	But, even today, even this morning, I got a call from a worker from the Ukraine that works in Red Deer. Right now, Ukraine is in what some would say a civil war, what some would say an invasion, what some would say an occupation. Regardless of the politics of that, I have workers calling me everyday that have applied for their residency, that are waiting for their papers and their work permits are expiring in a month, in two months and they don't know what's going on. Their wives and their kids are in these war-torn villages that the bombs are falling and they want to bring their families over but they don't have anything to do. They're waiting, and they're waiting, and they're waiting. Right now, there's not much anyone can do about it because we're waiting on someone to process the papers.
	Now, thankfully and regardless of whether you agree or disagree, in my opinion, we've had a change in government in Alberta that, in my mind, is going to fight for the rights of workers and the rights of the regular people, and we've been in conversations with them, but their hands are tied, too, because they can only process the paperwork as fast as the people that are there. It's been a bit of a problem. I would love to see the program change and everyone that's here be able to immigrate and everyone to have the same rights as everyone else. I think that the changes to the program have hurt the workers and I think ... Back to my original point, I think that we all have to remember that regardless of who we are and why we're here and what we came under, we're all human beings and the same blood runs through our veins, so I don't believe that anyone should have different rights in Canada.
	Canada is a country that I'm very proud of. I've traveled the world and I've spoken in different countries about Canada and the things that we do here and the rights that we have as Canadians. But, then there's the dark side of Canada and that's the part that I'm not proud of. I don't want my kids, and my girlfriend's kids, and your kids to be raised in a country where we're exploiting people. Listen, I would love to say that Canada is better than Qatar right now with their foreign workers working under the FIFA program but I don't think we are. I think we got a lot of work to do before we get there. I think the number one thing is remembering that we're all human beings and we all have families and we all have people that we love and care for and that's the number one thing that we should all remember.
	I'm happy to say that, as we've said, we've worked with a lot of employers that have done some good things. I'm not the union rep that's going to say all employers are bad. I think there's a lot of good employers out there doing a lot of good things. We've worked with them both non-union and union. Our sister local and other locals across the country, they try to improve the lives of workers be it temporary foreign workers, be it seasonal agricultural worker or be it an immigrant because, as we all must remember, we're all immigrants sometime. Thank you very much for being here.
Patricia G.:	Great. Thanks a lot, Devin. Great insights from both of you. We're now going to turn this over to the floor. I believe we have some people taking microphones around. Yes? If you have any questions that you would like to direct to the panel, they're ready. If you don't have any, I've got a few. Yes? Question up in the front.
Speaker 5:	Actually I have a whole bunch of questions but I thought I'll start with this, Raj. You said that the temporary foreign workers pay taxes. Is it the same rate as a Canadian pays taxes or there's a separate category for taxes for people who are temporary foreign workers? I don't know. I'm just asking for it.
Raj Sharma:	It's the same rate.
Speaker 5:	Same rate. Oh, thank you. Yet, their children had to pay double or triple for their education?
Raj Sharma:	That's right.
Speaker 5:	Wow. Wow. Thank you.
Patricia G.:	Third row, yeah.
Speaker 6:	Hello, I'd like to recognize we're in Treaty 7 land. I wanted to ask Devin, I think it was, from the union. Should we be encouraging people or employers specifically who ... As you said, you work with non-union. Should we just be encouraging them to consult with you anyway from here on end? Second of all, what federal legislation would you like to see, it's election time, for change that would help our provincial counterpart?
Devin Yeager:	Let me try to think here. I would love to work with anyone that will listen, that anyone that needs help. I think that, as I said, there's a lot of employers we work with that want to help. Their hands are tied as well because right now ... We have an employer we're working with right now that was not ... They start about 90% temporary foreign workers when they were in operation. Through the last five or six years, a number of them achieved residency but they have about 50% temporary foreign workers right now. The problem that they had is they didn't recruit based on the provincial standards or the federal standards for anyone to achieve residency. While they thought that they were helping people come to Canada and helping them potentially to achieve better lives, it really set them up to fail because they could not achieve the standards for the federal and provincial governments to achieve residency. That's hindsight 20/20. You can't really go back and change who you've created.
	One thing I would is that right now if there's employers out there that have temporary foreign workers that haven't nominated their workers, I think the first thing they need to do is nominate their workers, and then they need to provide them with the tools to be able to achieve residency be it English classes, be it additional tutoring or whatnot because there's a lot of people and a lot of employers that say, "These workers have been working for me for three, four years." Prior to the April 2015 when the change was the maximum you could stay was four years, six years, seven years, they're an integral part of their process. They've been there. They train other workers and, now, those workers are gone. I think that anything that employers can do to help their workers achieve residency is the first thing and primarily because of the federal standards, it's usually getting their English up there and getting their nomination in there.
	The other thing that we work with is, as I said, union on union is a lot of lobbying efforts to try to allow the government to change the rules to allow these workers to stay. It hasn't been as successful. There has been some exemptions here and there. I think that when there's public outcry, that's when things change. We've been crying wolf from the beginning but no one was really listening because it wasn't getting great media coverage, or it wasn't important enough, or it wasn't good enough to go on the news that night. I think that right now it's in the ether. It's in the air. The more light that we can shine on it, the better off we are.
	I think that there was a worker from the Philippines in Edmonton that was hit by car that was just granted leniency to stay. I think that there are a lot more people like her out there, and I think the more light that we can shine, the better off we are. I'll work with anyone that is willing to listen, union, non-union. As far as the federal rules, I would love to see the people there currently here be allowed to stay regardless of how many workers. I'm not advocating for employers to be able to have, again, all temporary foreign workers. But, the ones that they already have should be able to achieve the same rights as everyone and that's what I would advocate for.
Speaker 7:	My question is to Devin. You were talking about bringing the temporary foreign workers as a permanent resident. If you look at the economic cycle, the demand for employees spikes suddenly and then it goes down. In 2005 to 2007, the economy was booming and in a situation like that when there's a big demand for workers, is it possible to bring as a permanent resident with the processing time for permanent resident ... I think it takes two to three years. How do we solve this problem when you have a globalization economic cycle like this? All countries needs employees suddenly and then the economy goes down like how it is now. How do we face this problem?
Devin Yeager:	In my opinion, I think not having them temporarily as here. I think that our country has ... There's ebbs and flows with the economy, with the need for workers, with the unemployment rate. There's always going to be this but I think the way that we solve that is by not bringing in people for a period of time and then sending them home. Everyone is an immigrant. Everyone migrates here. As there's a need, let's have more people immigrate. As there's less of a need, if the government needs to cut down the numbers for immigration, that's their decision. I'm not going to advocate for that but I think that if we are going to be bringing in more people than we're currently bringing, which we are doubling like 500,000 versus the 250,000, those 250,000 have more rights than the 500,000. I think that as our parents, ourselves or our ancestors came here to build a better life, they are, too, and I think the should have the same rights. Through immigration and through migration I think is the way that we need to fix that.
Patricia G.:	If I could just add something from our experience at CCIS. One of the things that happened when the changes transpired with The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is that, as you know, lots of the tourism industry used a lot of temporary foreign workers so a lot of hotels and of course the retail, Tim Hortons and A&Ws and all of that. A lot of those places are actually closing or some of those places are closing because they cannot get enough employees. A lot of the organizations that were running 24/7 are now going to a 9 to 10 kind of thing because they can't get the workers. That was really the premise of what they were saying is, "You know what? We want 'Canadians' to take these jobs," I put Canadians in quotation marks, "except that they weren't taking them. Those weren't the jobs that they wanted."
	I spend a fair bit of time in Brooks. It's one of the areas that I'm responsible for. I have to tell you that 90% of the employees there are either temporary foreign workers or refugees. Why is that? Because nobody wants to work in a meat packing plant or it's difficult to work in a meat packing plant. The Canadians that are supposedly unemployed and looking for jobs are not taking those jobs. Yeah.
Devin Yeager:	One thing I want to quickly add to the Brooks situation. When there was a dire need for workers in Brooks, the initial push was filled with immigrants and refugees. It was not filled with temporary foreign workers. There's always the availability to find workers if you need, if "Canadians" are not willing to do the jobs or whatever the reason that employers are saying. There are other ways to find workers and it doesn't have to be on a temporary basis because those refugees will still have more rights than a temporary foreign worker and those new immigrants will still have more rights than the temporary foreign worker.
Patricia G.:	Absolutely. Raj.
Raj Sharma:	I think the gentleman's point is valid though in terms of the low unemployment rate. Now, there are some studies that indicate that the labor shortage cannot be justified. The labor shortage resulting in the massive increase to temporary foreign workers cannot be justified. Those studies are coming in now. Theoretically, if there was such a labor shortage, you would see a wage increase in specific industries and we did not see that either. To some extent, this could be just companies that wanting cheaper labor. The labor shortage that we've all heard about may not in fact have occurred at that time.
Speaker 8:	Thank you so much for your discussions so far today. I was here last year when temporary foreign workers was a discussion on the Friday event but conditions changed. Last year, we had Alberta MLA is [holding 00:53:30] the hallway who are going to come in here. [inaudible 00:53:33] was here and I don't know who else he brought with him but they left. If you remember correctly Jason Kenney made changes at the federal level but the provincial government was against those changes. They wanted to make an Alberta solution. I think a lot of what we've seen in the last years with the price of oil being depressed has caused an upheaval in the labor market. I think the demands, the need for temporary foreign workers has disappeared as more and more people find themselves being laid off and looking for employment.
	I don't have so much as a question but I wanted to followup with what Raj had mentioned. When did Canadians decide on this new labor policy? There's one thing in terms of having a landed immigrants policy bringing over regular immigrants. Countries also need a program where there's an economic short-term need to bring over workers. Every other country has got that in the world. Ours wasn't perfect and a bunch of changes needed to be made.
	Raj, you raised the point. When did we have a say on this? This say happens on October 19th with the election we're facing. That's where you get to speak up and select the government that you support. Just so you guys know, I've been on Jason Kenney's board for over 23 years. All right. I come from a different perspective in terms of employer's perspective. But, election is the time when you have a chance to voice your issue and bring these things out in the forefront. These issues need to be drawn up during this election. Questions need to be posed to the federal candidates. I just wanted to put that forward but I'm respectful. I like to remain open-minded and listen to what everyone has to say. My heart goes out to those temporary foreign workers who find themselves leaving.
	Last year, we had a representative if I remember correctly from the Delta, Kananaskis. We had a temporary foreign worker who is looking at getting help. It was an excellent discussion up on the stage as this year as well. I don't know if you invited someone from the federal government's perspective. It would be nice to hear their position as well. I would understand why they're not here during the middle of the campaign but I've appreciate what we've heard today. Thank you for letting me speak.
Raj Sharma:	Immigration policy is too important to be left or to be dealt with during election time. Don't mistake that for being cynicism. Last year, you mentioned that we had an Alberta election. If you recall in that Alberta election, you had Mr. Lukaszuk, Mr. McIver and Mr. Prentice all talking about a Alberta immigration program on the same footing as Quebec, that we would do this, the we would do that. This was absolutely disingenuous. Mr. Prentice should have at least known better. He sat at the same table as Jason Kenney for years and Jason Kenney would never turn over or cede control over immigration to any province other than Quebec. That was absolutely disingenuous.
	Mr. Lukaszuk called Mr. Kenney an epithet. He swore at him in private communication. Mr. Kenney detests Mr. Lukaszuk. That was disingenuous that he could somehow broker a deal with Jason Kenney if you were to be the premier of this province which, as it turns out, was never going to be in the cards anyway. In any event, elections and politics, this is not the source of information regarding immigration policy. You got to do a bit of your own homework and look at everything in a critical eye.
Speaker 9:	I'd also like to comment that I don't think the temporary foreign workers are gone or have lessened. I can say that they have gone into hiding because for most of the foreign workers that don't have any LMOs or LMIAs right now, they don't want to go home. They rather stay here illegally rather than go home to their places. I guess for my question. I work with a Filipino community. I work with the reunification of Filipino families, but I've been dealing everyday with a lot of Filipino temporary foreign workers who are currently illegal here in Calgary. My question is: Is there anything that I, myself, can do right now? I don't know. Where can I send them? There are individuals who are literally penniless right now because they don't have work permits or they're not able to work and they can't even apply for an EI though they have paid for it because they don't have the valid work permits. They have families.
	A family that I have been looking after, his wife had cancer and there's no healthcare available for them or at least it's the most expensive thing that they could afford right now. Literally, they are seeking for financial help, emotional help. Where, at the moment, can we send those or where, at the moment, can they seek help?
Raj Sharma:	When did we have this discussion? Let's go back to first causes because I think it's important. With no pathway to permanent residency, knowing that this is a resource economy. Canada goes through these cycles. It was a foreseeable consequence that bringing in tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers with no pathway to permanent residents that those individuals would obviously go underground rather than go back to Third World countries.
	Now, bear in mind, Canada does not have exit controls. We actually don't know who leaves this country so add that to the mix. What you've got is an absolute failure on the part of our political leadership. No exit controls, hundreds of thousands of individuals here, low-skilled, no permanent residency, no pathway to permanent residency. Obviously, individuals are going to go underground.
	The first part of your question is that this was a foreseeable, preventable problem. This is going to be huge because these policies are going to drive individuals underground. Now, the only way back for these individuals to get status back is to actually stop going underground. You'd actually have to come out into the, so to speak, sunlight and ask. There's different ways. You can ask for a humanitarian or compassionate relief. You can ask for something called a temporary resident permit. There may be a way back but unless someone is going to do a blanket amnesty for people that are underground, individuals that are underground will have to come out in the open and approach CSC with clean hands and say, "Look, I didn't ... " I mean, legally, they are obliged to go back. They did have a work permit with an expiry date on it.
	I understand and I'm sympathetic. At the same time, our immigration system can't be undermined either by an underground economy. Unfortunately, I guess with the only caveat is that this was a problem caused by, precipitated by either gross negligence or complete incompetence.
Speaker 10:	Given The Foreign Temporary Worker Program is federal, do the feds have any desirable countries that they would rather people come from temporarily or is it an open stage?
Raj Sharma:	It's not an open stage. As I mentioned in my speech, you've got Ireland. Ireland alone is 10,000 IEC. Open work candidates can come from Ireland compare that to 5,000 to all of the UK. You've got Ireland which is this tiny, tiny country and all of UK which is 80 million plus people with less than half of the IEC spots and Ireland is more than, for example, Germany or more than Australia or more than New Zealand. The IEC program is interesting. No one is making a big deal out of the 10,000 Irish individuals that can come here on open work permits. Everyone is talking about the 30,000 low-wage temporary foreign workers that they're going to slice and dice down to 15,000.
Speaker 11:	My question is really about foreign worker program. If an employer breaks labor laws, who do they go to? My first question. Second question is it seems that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms don't apply to The Foreign Worker Program. My third question is how is the foreign worker program affecting our foreign policy today?
Raj Sharma:	I think if it's in a non-union setting, and I'll leave it to Devin in terms of the union setting, in a non-union setting, then such breaches would have to be taken up with the Employment Standards Officer so that's down at the Elveden Center on 7th Avenue.
Devin Yeager:	There's a couple of things. When the government changed their program, they had brought in all these hypothetical punishments for employers that would breach the program, break the rules, all these other things. They created what they called the blacklist that was empty for a long period of time that now today has five employers on it that can't get temporary foreign workers for the longest time. It only had two with all the breaches across the board.
	I think with the unionized company, we're going right to arbitration. It's going to cost them some money. If they're going to break the rules, then we're going to enforce it. It's not just us. It's all the other unionized unions out there as well. We also work with other agencies out there, not only CCIS but also the Calgary Workers' Resource Center and others that ... There are resources for workers to be able to go to when they have a problem, if they haven't been paid their overtime, if they haven't been paid properly, if they're withheld money. I sit on the board of directors for the Calgary Workers' Resource Center. Brochures are in the foyer.
	They are a nonprofit organization that's free of charge for the workers rather foreign or domestic if they haven't been paid their overtime, if they felt they haven't been treated fairly or if they have applied for EI and can get EI, have been denied EI. They want to make an appeal or even just file EI originally. They can go to Calgary Workers' Resource Center free. Last year, it was over $4 million brought back into the hands of workers that was money owed to them not only from the government but also from employers. That's an organization that not a lot of people know about in Calgary alone. That only serves the Calgary area.
	There's a lot of groups out there that do some great work. There are resources for it. But, unfortunately, they have to come to light and they have to go. My cards are in the lobby. If people have problems, there's mine right beside the Workers' Resource Center so call anytime.
Patricia G.:	That's also part of what we do as part of our Temporary Foreign Worker Program is provide that kind of support service for the temporary foreign workers.
Raj Sharma:	In terms of the charter applying or not applying to temporary foreign workers, the charter does apply. It applies to everyone inside Canada and that's the same decision since 1987. Every country has the right to determine who enters the country, and so the laws that we have, obviously that's the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. There's been a number of constitutional challenges to specific parts of that, and so what we've got more or less is a law that is in compliance with our charter.
	People may have a different sort of perspective on the charter and what the charter can do. The charter governs the relationship between the government and individuals. If laws are enacted with the charter in mind, which is section seven or section eight, individuals can certainly come here. They can work here but they do not have an unfettered or absolute right to remain here permanently. They must do so in accordance with the laws that our legislators, our representatives have enacted. I don't believe that there's this charter right for anyone to obtain status in Canada. For example, criminals. You could come here as a foreign national or permanent resident. You could be a criminal or inadmissible to Canada, for example. That individual does not have some sort of overarching right to remain here not withstanding that he's seriously breached our laws.
Devin Yeager:	I just want to touch on the charter aspect that you brought up. With UFCW for one and the Workers' Resource Center worked with the University of Calgary and their law students to look at charter challenges potentially on the agricultural side for the exclusion on their occupational health and safety. It hit the news last year and  the Foreign Workers Union of Alberta was working quite heavily with the results of it and doing some lobbying. We were looking at some of the charter arguments specifically around the health and safety solutions for foreign workers and status was one of the charter things that we're looking at.
Speaker 12:	I just had a question about information. Where is a good place to go for simple, accurate information about The Temporary Foreign Worker Program or immigration requirements that could be shared? It seems that during election time and during times of the downturn in the economy the misinformation and subsequently discriminatory information seems to increase. Do you have suggestions for where to go to get good, accurate, simple information?
Patricia G.:	Good question. Who wants to take that one on?
Raj Sharma:	I think you just have to research. You have to understand where a particular writer is coming from and you'd have to use a number of different sources to arrive at "the truth." Everyone has a bias so you'll just have to sift. But, there is a lot of information out there and a lot of credible information out there from credible writers.
Devin Yeager:	I think one of the problems is everyone is looking for the simple answer, and I think that a lot of times there isn't a simple answer. I think that's part of the problem. I've been doing this for 15 years. You've been doing it for a long time and there's loopholes. There's things. There's this and that. Nothing is ever as clear as it seems. It's never as simple as we'd love it to be.
Patricia G.:	Again, at this time, I'd like to thank our sponsor, TD. I love to thank our amazing panelists who managed to fill this time without even a blink. Raj Sharma and Devin Yeager, thank you so much and it's been a great afternoon. Thank you.