Good afternoon, everyone.
I'll briefly introduce the Centre des travailleurs et travailleuses immigrants. Our centre is located in Côte-des-neiges, in Montreal, and mostly does business with an immigrant population. Much of our work is advocating the labour rights of that population. At the centre, we see a lot of immigrants who are victims of poor working conditions, abuse and exploitation. It is not unusual to see workers who do not have any breaks, no vacation, unfair wages and are dismissed without reason. Most clients who appear at the centre do so once they have been dismissed, when it is too late. The reason they appear when it is too late is that their situation is precarious and they are afraid of not finding another job. It's worse for temporary workers, whose situation is even more precarious in view of the fact that their status depends on their employer and they have a closed working visa.
The new program will not only include agricultural workers and domestic workers, but, from what I've understood, will also extend to a number of other classes of workers.
That causes a problem for us, first because it's already very hard to reach the clientele. These people are not necessarily aware of their rights, and it's hard for us to go after them. If, in addition, they are put in a number of labour categories and are isolated, if they have no one to talk to about their problems with working conditions, I think that's a problem.
I'm also going to talk briefly about the family problem. Workers who enter Canada through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program experience family separations. That ranges from six months to two years, and they can't come with their families. When they are reunited with their families, there are often problems. It's hard for the family and for the worker. That's also one of the reasons why they don't complain more about violations of their rights: they don't want to lose their jobs because their families are still in their country and they have to send them money. These are all conditions that make it very hard, specifically for temporary workers, to defend their labour rights.