Madam Speaker, not all people with a visa who are here in Canada want to claim refugee status. Some of them are actually seeking permanent resident status. Some of them are having their permits extended.
What has happened with our immigration system is the mismanagement of the system by the Liberal government. In fact, I remember that both the Liberals and Conservatives called for an expansion of temporary foreign workers. The NDP members were the only ones who said, “No, wait a minute; we should not be doing that.” The NDP members were the only ones who actually said that if we need more workers here in Canada, we should make sure we go through the proper process, which includes allowing them to get permanent resident status on arrival.
Let us meet our labour demands for the full range of workers, the low-skilled, medium-skilled and high-skilled, and not just what the government has right now, targeting the high-skilled workers and then pushing the rest of them through the temporary foreign workers process.
This needs to be looked at in a serious way, and it should be dealt with in a fair way so that all workers are valued here in Canada and are not subject to exploitation.
