I just want to briefly touch upon three points.
One is that I'm an organizer with the Immigrant Workers Center, and I'm speaking for Solidarity Across Borders.
I think originally this forum was meant to take place in Côte-des-Neiges. It's regretful that it isn't there, because I don't think many of the people we work with, whether they be the domestic workers themselves or whether they be Sri Lankan migrants in textile factories--the people whom this is actually going to affect--are actually able to be here to present. So it's really regretful that this hearing isn't taking place in Côte-des-Neiges, where it was originally meant to be held.
I want to speak about regularization. For Solidarity Across Borders, I think we see the temporary foreign worker program as well as what will start to take place--the low-skilled worker pilot project--as inherently flawed. Essentially you create a permanent two-tiered immigration system. Many people have already explained the situation of those who will be limited in terms of their rights, limited in where they can actually work, limited in their labour rights, and thus limited in actually being able to exercise the same full rights that people with permanent residency or citizenship actually are able to exercise.
I want to speak about the case of someone who flew all the way from Edmonton to Montreal because she couldn't find any help. She's here on the temporary foreign worker program working at a Super 8 motel in Edmonton with a group of other Filipino migrants. The abuse was so grave in their workplace that they left the workplace. She lost her status and had to apply for restoration and wasn't able to gain her restoration until she got another labour market opinion. If you're tying immigration to a labour market opinion, immigration is going to fall under the HRSDC, and this creates a permanent two-tiered system. Now she faces deportation back to the Philippines after she came here to seek a better life. When she came here, the only reason she was losing her status was because she no longer wanted to be abused in the workplace.
Full regularization is completely possible. We've seen it in Europe. We've recently seen it in Spain. I know a motion was tabled in Parliament last session to discuss full regularization. You are right now creating a system in which you have minimum 250,000 people without any rights who are non-status “illegal”, and on top of that you have 200,000 more people under temporary foreign worker programs.
This situation is similar to apartheid in South Africa. To create a situation where half a million people have different legal status from the rest of society, so that they can bear the brunt of the Canadian economy--