Message from Irene Mathyssen
Dear Friends,
My name is Irene Mathyssen and I am the federally elected representative for London-Fanshawe. It has been my honour and privilege to represent this riding since 2006. I am the New Democrat critic for the Status of Women and the deputy critic for Public Safety.
Over the years I have been involved in and supported many community events and campaigns including the Women’s Community House, the Coalition of Canadian Immigrants, housing advocates, the friends of Meadowlily Woods, RE-Forest London, the London Coalition Against Pesticides, First Nations and the multi-cultural community. As a former English teacher I am also very supportive of student clubs and activities designed to educate and motivate students about multicultural, anti-racism and equity issues.
I am very proud to represent the New Democratic Party here in London. New Democrats are committed to ensuring ordinary Canadians are treated fairly. We are very much concerned that good jobs are disappearing, and many of our jobs are being shipped overseas. Thousands of hard-working Canadians are struggling to pay the bills and support their families because they are forced to rely on a succession of insecure, low-wage jobs. We can do better. Every worker deserves a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, respect in the workplace, and a secure pension. New Democrats are committed to provide leadership to keep jobs in Canada, encourage innovation, and help you balance your budget by putting a stop to consumer gouging by banks and credit card companies. We will invest in new energy solutions, security for seniors, affordable housing, and education and training for workers and young people. We will ensure that opportunities are shared with working families and individuals, not taken away through tax giveaways to those who need them least.
After a decade of limiting family reunification in favour of professional skilled labour, Canada is mired in mediocre productivity. With the declining birth rate and an aging population, it would be logical for Canada to increase annual immigration targets from the current goal of one percent of its population. The focus of Canada’s immigration policy should be to bring in young families and their relatives. Instead, Canada has been bringing in fewer immigrants and family class applications, which now makes up only 24 percent of new immigrants each year.
Huge backlogs at Embassies, Consulates, and High Commissions overseas are creating unnecessary and excessive delays, particularly for family sponsorships. Sponsoring your spouse or partner overseas can take over two years to process, while sponsorships of parents and grandparents can take more than five years. The Harper Conservatives continue to demonstrate that family reunification is simply not a priority for this government.
New Democrats are committed to implementing an effective and efficient process for family reunification. In 2006, the NDP introduced the Once in a Lifetime Bill in the House of Commons that would allow any Canadian citizen or landed immigrant the opportunity to sponsor, once in their lifetime, a family member who does not fall under the family class as defined by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This would include a son or daughter over the age of 22, an aunt or uncle, a sibling, a niece or nephew, or a first cousin. This bill would reunite families that, in many cases, have spent years apart.
Big corporations looking to cut labour costs are winning the fight to expand the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. This program allows these corporations to bring individuals from abroad to work in Canada for a short time. These workers come to Canada and often work for lower wages and under hazardous conditions that Canadian workers are unwilling to accept. In Alberta alone, there has been a 300% increase in the number of temporary foreign workers. In 2007, employers brought over 200,000 temporary workers to Canada to be used and sometimes abused and then sent home.
These workers have limited rights and are not eligible to bring their families to Canada when they finish their work. Once a contract is over, workers are sent home. For example, farm workers, even those working in Canada every year for ten years, still have no rights or the opportunity to raise their families in Canada. Poor working conditions, low wages and abuse are well documented; because workers who leave their employers are deported, they often remain silent. The Experience Class is a new program that allows workers who have significant educational credentials to stay in Canada permanently. However manual labourers, such as farm workers and kitchen helpers, will not qualify even though they constitute the largest need in our labour market. New Democrats are committed to stopping the expansion of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and changing the new Experience Class program so foreign workers in Canada have a chance to become citizens and bring their families to Canada.
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) which is responsible for deportations spends $34 million every year to track down Canadian residents and deport them. Whether you’re an undocumented construction worker who has lived, worked, and raised a family in Canada, or a spouse being sponsored by your partner awaiting a decision, the Harper Conservatives aren’t interested in fixing the system. The Auditor General recently reported that the CBSA makes arbitrary decisions, obtains incomplete information and is not very efficient or effective.
Only 10% of removal orders are against criminals living in Canada. However, the Harper Conservatives spend millions deporting skilled labourers and spouses with families. This is the case even though their employers or their loved ones spend thousands of dollars to bring them back into Canada, mostly successfully.
My colleague Olivia Chow passed two important motions through the House of Commons that the Harper government should respect. First, Parliament voted to support her motion to put a moratorium on deportations of undocumented workers and their families while a new policy is created. More recently, her motion to immediately stop any deportations against spouses living in Canada who have outstanding applications for permanent residency passed in the House of Commons.
As New Democrats we are committed to regularizing the status of those who have been in Canada for years and are fully employed, stopping the deportation of spouses of Canadians while they wait for their immigration applications to be processed and cleaning up the Border Services Agency according to the Auditor General’s recommendations.
I am so proud to be a New Democrat. In all of the issues, truly important to my community, it is New Democrats who are on the side of the people I serve. It was the NDP caucus that said no our involvement in Afghanistan, put forward concrete proposals to help unemployed Canadians, maintain our universal health care system, help impoverished seniors, help families needing affordable child care, provide access to affordable housing and assist students who deserve affordable post secondary education. It is New Democrats who have proposed the jobs strategy we need to build the environmentally sustainable and prosperous economy of the twenty-first century. These are the commitments to community in which I believe and for which all New Democrats will always work.