The debate over "food counter attendants", specifically "Team Members" in Mcdonalds/Tims.
A questions was raised by an MP, towards Marian Campbell Jarvis "Assistant Deputy Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada."
Read below,
Mr. Sukh Dhaliwal (Surrey—Newton, Lib.):
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank the officials for their great work. This announcement on the pathway was made well in advance, but it wasn't clear what documents and information the applicants were required to be prepared to submit, which may have led to small errors and omissions in their applications.
Even today we can see that those two categories are not full, so I would suggest to the officials that instead of just rejecting those applications, they should be given a fair chance and sent a procedural fairness letter to address those concerns, instead of just taking that application out. That is my suggestion.
Secondly, Madam Campbell Jarvis was talking about essential work. When you go to many small restaurants, you see those NOC code 6513 and NOC code 6711 food and beverage servers, food counter attendants and kitchen helpers. I go to a small restaurant. Those food servers are the ones who greet people and seat them. They take the orders, serve the food and then at the end clean up the table. They work as cashiers.
I personally feel that category should be part of that essential workers stream. I request that you, the officials—and also, through you, the
minister—see if we can include those NOC codes in those categories. Those essential positions are still at 7,637 out of the 30,000.
Many people have expressed frustration and confusion regarding the eligible NOC codes. There is conflicting information around that. Could officials please provide to this committee, in writing, the list of all eligible NOC codes for the six separate streams and also the ones they can include?
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Ms. Marian Campbell Jarvis:
Thank you, Madam Chair. There are some really excellent questions there.
Just to take them in turn, with respect to the disparity in how quickly some of the applications are coming in, I think it really does come back to that client behaviour. We know that international graduates often seek that pathway. A number have made the transition before, so it wasn't surprising to us that they were first out of the gate, but it's still really early days on the other ones.
We have put forward that six-month runway to really allow time for other essential workers and health care workers and francophone speakers to have that time to apply. I think we're going to see some changes over the next couple of months, and there's still time left, so I don't think we need to worry yet.
With respect to the question and comment about small restaurant owners, one thing in putting this together is that the
minister had a lot of things to consider and a lot of priorities to balance. By selecting particular NOC codes for “essential”, it certainly doesn't mean that other positions aren't essential, but we did hear from stakeholders, and when we look at employment data—in particular, that provided by the labour council—we know that there are certain areas where there are a number of Canadians who are ready to work, so we weren't looking at codes where there would already be high unemployment rates. Certainly, the contributions of restaurant workers are really important in Canada and to Canada's economy, but there was a lot of thought put behind the balance of that.
One of the other points I wanted to mention is that all of the other pathways still exist: the provincial nominee program, the rural and northern immigration pilot and the Atlantic immigration pilot. All of those pathways still exist alongside this special temporary public policy that was put in place, so there will be opportunities above and beyond this pathway.
I think I heard that the last question was on an undertaking in writing for the NOC codes that are part of this, as well as the ones that aren't. Certainly, we've made note of that. I would warn, Madam Chair, that the NOC code list is fairly extensive, but we'd certainly do our best with that.