CIMM Committee Report

Bloc Québécois Supplementary Report

The Bloc Québécois played an active part in the drawing up of the report.  We applaud the work of all the Committee’s members, who cooperated to reach consensus on a number of issues.  While the report does not entirely reflect the Bloc Québécois’s position, we are generally satisfied with it.

However, the Bloc Québécois is disappointed that the report does not contain a recommendation that temporary foreign workers be exempted from the employment insurance plan.  This exemption was called for repeatedly during the Committee’s cross-Canada hearings.  The reason is very simple:  the plan is simply not designed for temporary foreign workers.  The results can be unfair and irrational.

Unfair, because the great majority of temporary foreign workers cannot benefit from the plan’s income protection provisions.  Once their jobs end, they return to their country of origin and are thus not available for employment in Canada.  To collect employment insurance premiums for these workers is thus nothing but a disguised tax.

Irrational, because the payment of employment insurance premiums opens access to parental benefits, even from outside Canada.  For example, increasing numbers of farm labourers work in Canada for a short time and then, on returning home, receive parental benefits from the federal employment insurance plan.  These workers are doing nothing illegal:  they are simply taking advantage of benefits to which they are entitled.  But it is irrational to allow temporary foreign workers who leave the country after a few months’ work to benefit from its social safety net while Canadian citizens, for example seniors who spend winters in the south, are obliged to be in Canada for six months and a day before they can receive benefits.  Exempting temporary foreign workers from employment insurance premiums is fair and rational for all residents of this country.

In our opinion, the only logical thing to do is to stop collecting employment insurance premiums for temporary foreign workers so that they will cease to be entitled to parental benefits, especially as the report already contains a recommendation (#21) that provides for an emergency support program for temporary foreign workers who find themselves unemployed while in Canada.