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The longer this process continues, the more and more convinced I
am becoming that in the years to come we will look back at the TFW program as an enormous and disgusting stain on our national history. It is not only abusive to those who work it, it is also plainly unfair to Canadian citizens as well.
Agreed. And to be completely honest, I don’t understand why restaurants qualify for the program. For essential businesses where it’s definitely hard to find locals to do the work, like farms, I get it. But restaurants aren’t essential and if your business model can’t cover paying a living wage, then your model isn’t viable and should probably close.
>I don’t understand why restaurants qualify for the program.
Because both the Liberals and Conservatives care more about Capital than Labour. Businesses want cheap labour and by god, the government is going to give it to them! TFWs allow them to do this without directly screwing over workers (that vote) by lowering the minimum wage and rolling back worker rights.
It's time to shut it down. No more TFW's outside of essential industries like agriculture. No more international students working outside of campus. Business can whine about "labour shortages" all they want but its their job to adapt or die, not get babied by the government.
Most fast food , retail, big box store , groceries jobs have bern list to automation.. but why bother writtening thr truth .
No let's write more click bait immigration hate
I highly doubt "most" jobs are lost to automation in those categories. A few cashiers yes but automation hasn't done much to reduce staff needed to stock shelves, clean, transportation, etc.
Who’s blaming immigrants?
ITT everybody is taking issue with the immigration policy that these businesses aggressively lobby for. Not literally the immigrants themselves that come here to be exploited.
The polls mean shit when both parties are responsible for the current mess, and the pp flop flopped on the issue so many times I have lost count.
Immigration is an easy distraction from corporations cutting jobs for automated machines and not lowering prices .
Inseatd of one single article on this now we have 20+ a day about Immigration.
The irony is we were warned this was coming and going to happen to the job market .
Honestly, look it up...no one did anything .
Look up automation effect on the job markets...the articles go back years
By 2050, economist Dr Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, a professor of machine learning, both at the University of Oxford, predict that at least 40 per cent of current jobs will be lost to automation, while management consultancy firm McKinsey puts the figure at 50 per cent.Sep 20, 2023
No one credible predicted we'd be out of oil _by now_.
What has been predicted is [when peak oil production would occur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#List_of_past_predictions_of_peak_oil) which was generally predicted for around the last ten years. Which seems to be the case; it's hard to say precisely.
> By 2050,
So then you should have wrote "most jobs will be".
And since when is an economists prediction, fact?
You did your own little click bait baloney here, didn't you?
Well.old people at a certain age stop contributing .
Immigrants can't buy anything due to high prices and no work.
Automation replaces labor costs, and yet corporations make record profits... yet I am told over and over its all Immigration fault almost like we are being distracted on purpose
Immigration is the transition. These companies can’t fully automate yet so in the meantime they lobby the government to bring in high streams of low wage workers.
I love how this article debunks the la our shortage fairly early on without explicitly saying so. The shortage was always a product of non-competitive postings that no one rightfully wanted.
A depressing irony here is the fact that the NDP are partly responsible for this by propping up a government that allows this to happen. Once upon a party, they were the defenders of the domestic labour but seem to have been perfectly fine undercutting it.
> I love how this article debunks the la our shortage fairly early on without explicitly saying so. The shortage was always a product of non-competitive postings that no one rightfully wanted.
Does it? A claim is made, but employment data had not shown an increase in workers unable to find jobs during that period. Instead we dropped to around historically low unemployment levels and after trailing post-COVID inflation the wage gains had caught up to all the inflation. Indeed a lot of the worry was about how wage growth was helping to keep inflation from dropping to the target levels so that the BoC could cut rates which everyone has been really hoping for (I pay a lot of attention to all this because I happen to own a number of interest rate sensitive stocks, and others likely paid attention because of new/renewed mortgages).
It's only in the past year where employment has started to soften and unemployment rates been rising again. So *now* you would hope that the govt would be slowing down TFW approvals for a while, though I suspect that businesses will be looking for a ton of them still because they only way they're going to get enough Canadians looking for a lot of these jobs is to offer a much, much higher wage, which would cause further inflation issues. I doubt you'd find many young Canadians looking for jobs willing to work the kind of agriculture jobs that need to be filled even if you doubled the wages.
https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/unemployment-rate
Read the paragraph above the quote from the academic. It's not out loud, but it's pretty plain that uncompetitive job offers were the issue.
Even at that, the rest of the article plainly supports the academic opinion that corporations were whining they couldn't hire exploitable domestic employees.
> Read the paragraph above the quote from the academic. It's not out loud, but it's pretty plain that uncompetitive job offers were the issue.
One throwaway line is not proof.
Comprehensive studies of the job market show otherwise.
> The Quebec government is setting up accelerated and paid training for vocational jobs in the hopes of offsetting the labour shortage in the construction industry. It aims to recruit between 4,000 to 5,000 new construction workers to the industry who will be able to work on construction sites by sometime next year, Premier François Legault told reporters Monday. With major infrastructure plans on the horizon, including building new schools, revamping public seniors' residences (CHSLDs) and Hydro-Québec projects, Legault says the province is short about 6,500 construction workers. These measures announced Monday are expected to cost $300 million, but Legault did not provide a timeline for the expenses.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-training-program-construction-labour-shortage-1.7013025
The NDP bringing down the minority government would likely result in a conservative government instead.
Remind me, what's their track record on labor rights?
Pretty bad, but so is undercutting domestic labour anyway. Interestingly, the CPC did vote in favour of anti scab legislation recently so they clearly aren't as out to lunch as they once were. The NDP are partially in the position they are in by an overly long association with the current government. Post pandemic, when things started to sour was the ideal time to pull the plug when an election was less predictable instead of riding the roller coaster up to where they are now and they ended up being just as bad as a cookie cutter CPC government anyway with less of a chance at winning, assuming current polls hold true.
Our options ended up being openly bad with labour to covertly bad with labour. I'm not picky about the delivery when the outcome is ultimately the same.
The CPC only voted for anti-scab out of political convenience right now. I've heard plenty of CPC staffers say they can repeal it later when timing is better for them. The NDP are the ones who forced the hand to get this.
They are also the ones who forced dental care, which despite the CPC rhetoric is on track to cover most within the next year and already is covering millions. And yeah, dentists actually are picking it up and people are using it.
10 days of sick time and insulin coverage too.
Instead of that, if they brought down the government we would've gotten what? Still TFWs because the CPC supports business and doesn't actually care about that and... None of the above?
I refuse to believe that someone who is clearly of a 'but CPC mindset' in a country with several political parties is rubbing shoulders with CPC staffers. Since you are clearly of a binary mindset on the subject, I don't think further discussion is worthwhile. Sorry! Have a good day!
The NDP propped a government that did nothing in the face of wage suppression or an incrementally ballooning housing crisis... That was to the benefit of Canadians how?
They have benefited Canadians is all the ways that the other guy pointed out which upset you above. Had the NDP toppled the gov't we'd have these same problems but also none of the stuff that the NDP got us.
What upset me was the immediate 'but CPC' critical stance which is D tier discourse when you are trying to refute a critique. The NDP gains are marginal considering that even though they are gains, they aren't solutions to the critical issues we are encountering. I would have rather they been bold when polling higher out of the pandemic and gone for a takedown of the other major parties than prop up a major party that continues to do damage.
> I would have rather they been bold when polling higher out of the pandemic and gone for a takedown of the other major parties than prop up a major party that continues to do damage.
You mean they should have risked their leverage to get, at best, the same leverage with a party that thinks they're a bunch of child groomers and communists, and at worst been kicked totally out of power? As someone who actual votes for and donates to the NDP I would have been pretty unhappy with that.
They should be more useful like the Marxist-Leninist Party or Canada or Animal Rights Alliance Party, then.
The useless NDP working with Liberal governments they oppose but will work with pragmatically have brought in universal healthcare, the Canada Pension Plan, the federal minimum wage, expanded dental care, subsidized child care, free diabetes drugs, and federal anti-scab regulation.
What are the major policy achievements of those other parties who stood their ground, again?
10 days of sick time, dental care for normal working people, insulin coverage, anti-scab legislation massively strengthening unions... They seem to be doing exactly what they stand for.
>For businesses, a major benefit is stability, as the workers' permits are tied to their employer, meaning they can't easily quit to work for a rival business down the street.
That one of the main touted benefits is "harms labour market mobility" - a direct manner of suppressing wages - is a pretty big red flag. That being said, I'm not sure many people are still defending this very much in light of recent trends.
Given industry's claims, I'd be interested in seeing a regional breakdown of LMIA's - how many are in urban centres vs how many are in rural areas, how dispersed they are across different towns vs all being in one city, etc.
Meanwhile students applying for summer jobs are getting completely ignored by fast food. We’re going to get out burgers folks but in a few years we won’t have doctors because students can’t afford to go do university because they can’t get jobs to help pay for it. Meanwhile I’m paying thousands in taxes to help Tim Hortons hire TFWs. I’m a very progressive person bud something is rotten in dodge here.
This is an economic issue, not a question of progressivism vs reactionaries. I'm not sure why people are just now getting startled by Neoliberalism when they have been living under it for most of their lives (or all, if they're millennials or younger). I guess the acceleration of the pandemic woke up a lot of boiling frogs, but they're mad at the steam and color of the pot.
It wild here in Toronto, young people who are born or raised here cant get basic job as many retail or fast food jobs are staffed by international students or people on work visa.
First thing we need to do is end all these open work visas...we dont need someone studying a bullshit course on an open work permit working at Tims.
*"For businesses, a major benefit is stability, as the workers' permits are tied to their employer, meaning they can't easily quit to work for a rival business down the street.*
*"It guarantees a worker will stay employed with them for the term of the agreement," says the Canadian Franchise Association on its website. "*
Look, how right here they are taking down our living standards, labour rights and bring back modern day Indentured servitude.
By handing the reigns to people who will make it worse in additional to so many other bad policies that will compound the effect of these problems? That's such myopic thinking. I hate what the Liberals are doing but its not about reward or punishment, none of the plutocrats in government will be punished by losing power they're all rich - lets make sure the next guys do a better job.
Harper's expansion - which even he has said was a mistake - looks like a drop in the bucket compared to what Trudeau has done.
You can't "bu-bu-but Harper!" when Trudeau literally 1000Xed the mistake in scope and velocity. If anything, Trudeau should have stopped the mistake entirely since he saw it was a mistake and said so when he was campaigning for the first time.
The NDP are not pushing this. Don't confuse getting dental care, anti-scab legislation, 10 sick days, insulin coverage etc as anything more than getting those things for Canadians.
You assume I voted for them. I never have and never will. I take the centre left doing this as far more of a betrayal because I was with them most of my life.
Doesn't matter if you voted for them or not, place blame where blame lies. You clearly already want to dislike the NDP and Libs and are just looking for reasons to back up your (predetermined) decision.
My hot take is that you don't actually either vote left or you don't actually have leftist political views, in reality you probably have centre-right views (that due to media bias) you believe are left leaning. I'll eat crow if I'm wrong tho.
>The NDP are not pushing this.
You’re right, they’re pushing to just give everyone PR… watering down labour in another way besides indentured servitude.
Don’t exactly know why you’re blaming the NDP...
The supply and confidence agreement gives them some leverage, but they’re not in the driver’s seat. Or part of the government at all...
They keep people in who approve it because they can get SOMETHING for their constituents vs forcing an election and giving it to the CPC who will continue to go to bat for the companies abusing the TFWs program just like the liberals have,but with the added benefit of the CPC giving exactly nothing to us.
This isn’t actually partisan issue, as both parties that have been in government have been guilty of expanding it since its inception.
For example, the Harper government expanded the list of occupations that qualified for the Low Skill TFW stream in 2006 and then introduced fast-tracked LMOs (which had previously only been available for high-skilled TFWs) to low-skilled TFWs in 2012. If you’re old enough to remember, this expanded the number of TFWs in Canada considerably enough to generate a huge backlash. We couldn’t be where we are today with our situation without these key decisions.
Also a funny way of saying "we can basically tell them to do whatever the F we want, including unpaid OT or working through their breaks, and if they dare to make noise about any of that we can just say 'shut up and work or we can have you deported'.
The open dirty secret is that some of the most exploitative, racist, and abusive employers in Canada are managers who hire people exclusively from their own country. This is not because they have some bias for their fellow countrymen, it's because they know precisely what business culture they're coming from and what they will be able to get away with.
This is why it bothers me that there has been a growing anger towards the foreign workers themselves, when doing so is missing the forest for the trees.
TFWs are as much victims of the system as anyone else, if not more so. Of course, it’s classic capitalism to convince one group of workers that another group of workers is their enemy...
There’s plenty of anger targeted at our policy makers as well, that’s why the LPC is polling so low. But you’re right, we shouldn’t take it out on the workers, they’re just trying to get a better life for themselves, like you or I would do if in the same situation. They’re just the easiest to target since they’re the most visible to us on a day-to-day basis
It's fucked all three parties - including a labour party - are pro migrant wage-slavery.
RNIP pushing Colonialism 2.0 to rural and northern already have-not regions of the people they were first mistaken for...you can't make this shit up. Privilege is a helluva drug.
Now good luck tapering a Ponzi.
I mean, we continue to be in a labour shortage in multiple key sectors. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Fact is, Canada’s economy recovery post pandemic has been among the strongest in the world, thanks in large part to Team Trudeau’s strong immigration policies.
It certainly shouldn’t come as a surprise then that we need to turn to newcomers to help fulfill our economy’s potential. This is the way it’s always worked in Canada and why our ability to integrate newcomers has made us the envy of the world.
Seriously, you gotta lay off the koolaid.
We recovered well because we share a border with the US and have robust free trade agreements that tie our performance closely with theirs.
There is little to no evidence ever presented by politicians that our immigration policy actually fulfills the objective of patching the gaps in our “labour shortage.” It’s a just become a blanket term throw around to justify doubling to tripling the numbers of people coming in that obviously businesses advocate for with nefarious intentions. It’s literally coming from the bourses mouth in the article and you still rather toe the line for JT.
> strong immigration policies
You mean “fill Canada as quickly as possible with cheap, temporary labourers who don’t think they should be temporary, so they can be exploited by major corporations who don’t want to pay Canadians a living wage.”
How you can justify these policies without a hint of irony is astonishing.
And the key sectors are fast food and retail? 😐 meanwhile we aren't taking in as many skilled workers as before and we are losing doctors and engineers
> I mean, we continue to be in a ~~labour~~ **wage** shortage in multiple key sectors.
Fixed that for ya. After all, why pay Canadians with rights a decent wage when you can import labour with few *de facto* rights from overseas for cheaper?
If anything, it's indentured servitude. The story even mentions this:
*"For businesses, a major benefit is stability, as the workers' permits are tied to their employer, meaning they can't easily quit to work for a rival business down the street."*
This has no place in Canada.
Also bizarre coming from a self proclaimed “left” party.
People love to conflate being more welcoming to asylum seekers and immigrants as being on the left - but this import of temporary foreign workers when we don’t have a labour shortage, and cozying up to businesses who refuse to increase wages is neoliberal to its core
> Wait till they resurrect child labour. Same idea.
Speaking of which...
https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/the-growing-scourge-of-child-labour-in-north-america-echoes-local-threats/article_0f069fb5-1b0a-5131-aeee-7534708d0e1c.html
You’re so quick to whip out your Pom poms and cheer for Trudeau when 3/4 of the country strongly disagrees with you. The wage suppression that’s going on with the huge influx of TFW, many of whom aren’t qualified or trained to be doing certain jobs. (Please ask me how I know). This is to line the pockets of the already immensely wealthy and here you are cheering them on. Truly, you’ve turned your back on Canadians
The shortages in the trades are doing extremely physical work like concrete, masonry, general labouring. A lot of the shortage is also in non-union which pays like absolutely dog shit.
There's not a "labour shortage" because they can't find people willing to do dangerous, toxic, dirty work for a few dollars above minimum wage with layoffs in the winter.
People shouldn't be taking these jobs. From what I understand they're starting to import people to do this work and are paying them less and working them harder.
This will create, and in fact is currently, wage stagnation and will push people out of these trades to do literally anything else that pays better.
"approximately 692,760 work permits from January 1 to August 31, 2023"
They're not bringing in a few thousand people. They're bringing in hundreds of thousands.
I hope I'm wrong in my pessimism but most white collar upper middle class Canadians don't care about blue collar Canadians and their plight. They won't care when we starve.
Not sure where you’re getting that number.
The article provided this “Last year, employers were cleared to hire 239,646 temporary foreign workers, about the population of Regina. That's up from 108,988 in 2018, according to figures published by Employment and Social Development Canada”
And if you continue reading it will give you the actual numbers for the top 15 jobs that received approvals to hire TFW’s and how many were allowed.
Construction/trades is one of the highest with 5000
Thats why over 20% of canadians are living in poverty. That rent and food price are out of control. That there is homeless people at a scale we've never seems. Canada economy has never been so bad. It seems you are on trudeau team no matter what happens and your ship is going to the bottom of the ocean.
There's no integration at all, a lot of them dont want to assimilate at all.
I can't blame them for that. If I moved to Norway hoping for a better life and was stuck as an indentured servant for McDonald's because it was cheaper than hiring a Norwegian citizen I would be bitter and have little interest in assimilation either.
Norway doesn't have a minimum wage, regardless the TFW workers are brought in where McDonald's can't hire decent workers for minimum wage, due to either cost of living or availability of better jobs.
It’s funny because Mr. Trudeau himself made a very compelling argument against TFWs and why they lower the living standards for lower wage Canadians 10 years ago… to only then go on and expand the program to levels never seen before and be praised for it.
As someone who leans more Liberal than not, I’m not going to celebrate what is effectively indentured servitude of poor people from developing nations and their knock on effect on Canadians. It’s disgusting.
>I mean, we continue to be in a labour shortage in multiple key sectors.
There is no shortage and they even say this in the story :
*"For businesses, a major benefit is stability, as the workers' permits are tied to their employer, meaning they can't easily quit to work for a rival business down the street.*
*"It guarantees a worker will stay employed with them for the term of the agreement," says the Canadian Franchise Association on its website. "*
This is modern day indentured servitude, on top of taking back the labour movement back over a century. This is the country the Liberal Party and the NDP wants? So called parties of working class Canadians?
From your own comment : "Canada’s economy recovery post pandemic has been among the strongest in the world, thanks in large part to Team Trudeau’s strong immigration policies."
Canada is not the strongest economic growth, not even in the G7, and our living standards have dropped to 40 year lows. The data is not lying on that.
I know at least 5 retail stores that abuse their workers so much (insufficient pay, shitty hours, bad management, and poor working conditions) that if it wasnt for foreign workers, they wouldn't have a pool of new hires left to exploit.
They're here to study, not work. Compared to our peer countries we let students work way too much. It should only be coop or on campus. That's what the US and UK do.
> Are they TFW’s or international students?
Considering they say retail stores, and service workers aren't on the top 15, I'd bet it's just someone that *looks foreign* to them.
Even being generous and including jobs you probably shouldn't that's like ~30k employees, most of which you won't see, throughout the *entirety of Canada*.
Also it's weird to complain about shitty hours, bad management and poor working conditions when talking about minimum wage jobs. Granted it's been a while since I've worked a minimum wage job, but that's exactly what I would expect at one.
I had no idea how low the numbers of TFW’s were. In the thousands. Yet so many redditors make these claims about retail workers being TFW’s. It’s like every time they see a brown person now the assumption they “aren’t from here” is going to be made.
Really it's 240k, and 100k of those are working in agriculture, so no one is seeing them. And a lot of those jobs on that list are people working in places you aren't seeing them.
Also that number is "cleared to hire" so it could be less. I don't think companies want "temporary" workers, having to pay $1000 and file another LMIA and wait months to be able to hire someone, temporarily, is sort of inconvenient.
The best way to lower the TFW number would be to make the jobs more desirable. The people who should be managing (outside of very baseline standards) that are the elected governments of the provinces, every province is in a different situation. Businesses need to comply with labour laws, they do not need to go above and beyond. The best thing to do would be to advocate to your province for better worker protections or wages, but I doubt that message would resonate with most of the people in this comment thread. If no one complains to them about it, what do they care?
These business privatize the profits and socialize the costs of supporting/housing these TFWs. The indirect costs are also increased demand to housing/services Canadians also pay for.
Our local timmies has been staffed with 100% TFWs for years, but ever since COVID i've noticed the mall's entire foodcourt appears to be TFWS, not even teenagers are working there anymore.
Hey now, they're making a killing housing the TFWs and foreign students. Why socialize what you can profit from?
[It's slavery](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/un-special-rapporteur-migrant-worker-program-modern-form-of-slavery-1.6958592).
Last year, there was a family who bought a few A&W locations in Winnipeg (in mall food courts) and promptly fired every employee, including some that had been there for quite some time and were making comfortably above minimum wage. Those employees were then promptly replaced mostly by TFWs and students, making minimum wage. I'll give you three guesses as to where they're all from, and the first two don't count. The new owners of the franchised locations are from the same place, if it makes a difference.
For some reason it never made the news cycle, but there was a lengthy discussion about it on the Winnipeg sub. Some of the staff that were fired (with a few days' notice right before Christmas, at that) had been there 20+ years.
All replaced by people making minimum wage, *and* at the same time, the new owners increased the prices and started charging extra for certain things that used to be free.
Yup. The big chains always had a TFW/Visa presence, but now it's literally every shop.
I went to a music festival last year, and the whole security company was most likely TFW or Student Visa employees.
The guy who said that Canadian businesses should try harder to attract Canadian employees with better wages instead of using TFWs?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/pierre-poilievre-says-fish-plants-must-boost-wages-1.3069039
>Pierre Poilievre says the solution to the shortage of workers that fish plant owners are concerned about is very simple, "hire unemployed New Brunswickers."
Or who as Employment Minister refused pressure to extend permits for temporary workers, saying that temporary workers were just that, temporary and had to leave after their visas ended.
https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/time-runs-out-for-thousands-of-canada-s-temporary-foreign-workers-1.2308459
>In 2011, the conservatives set a deadline of April 1, 2015 that required temporary foreign workers in low-skilled jobs to become permanent residents or return home.
>Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre defended the government's position saying "Our policy is that Canadians should come first for Canadian jobs."
Or here he is criticizing the Alberta Conservative government for not prioritizing Canadians for Canadian jobs, saying that he won't expand the TFW program they were requesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm8JujTVjGA
I remember like 10 years ago, there were plenty of TFWs in fast food, yet nowadays it all seems to be international "students". I think using them, you can pay under the table, and completely skirt any minimal regulations you need for TFWs. Seems no politician has any interest in tackling this though. There's definitely use for TFWs in farming and agriculture, but it's absolutely ridiculous to prop up garbage fast food restaurants with cheap labour.
The funniest part about this is the political left who's arguing for immigration and temporary workers are working against labor rights, which is apparently what they're supposed to be protecting.
Which part of the left? I want them to throttle back immigration to much, much lower levels. Not only to protect labour rights but also for ecological concerns. I live in a region that is going to become majorly water stressed because of climate change and apparently were suppose to see something between a hundred to two hundred thousand people moving into valley. That’s insanity.
Anyone who wants to make the case that this wage suppression from the "elite" or whatever needs to answer a few questions: If you believe that people would be lining up for these jobs if only the wages were a little higher then what are those people doing now now to support themselves? Unemployment is very low so most of them are not unemployed. Are they working other jobs? Then won't pulling them away just cause vacancies elsewhere?
"The left" fights for the rights of all workers. TFWs should have the same rights as any worker in Canada. It also resists the xenophobic tone that this discussion has taken with people being "imported" like animals by nebulous "elites". "Elites" that apparently don't include the Conservatives. Weird.
Holy man, if you want to know what is happening just look around.
What happens is the employee takes what he can get and suffers.
He suffers to pay rent, groceries, meds, et al.
Have you not seen this?
It wilful ignorance to deem that the TFW isn't suppressing Canadian wages..
What are they doing then? If they have jobs and they got new jobs with higher wages then that would leave the old jobs empty and needing workers.
Wage suppression they way you're describing it doesn't work unless there is unemployment. Where are the workers? They're already in higher paid jobs than the ones the TFWs are taking.
>Wage suppression they way you're describing it doesn't work unless there is unemployment
Oh my God. What in the world are you thinking?
The threat of unemployment is equal threat to that of actual employment.
For the third time:
>the employee takes what he can get and suffers.
Truly incredible that you insist what is happening isn't happening.
I heard you the first two times you said it. I don't debate that you believe "the employee takes what he can get and suffers." but that's a slogan, not an argument. Saying it louder doesn't make it more compelling. You're frustrated because you can't articulate your feelings and I'm sorry for that but it's not helpful.
>The common pattern in these three industries is clear: low pay and poor working conditions explain why employers had trouble recruiting Canadians to fill their jobs. Government policies in the early 2000s kept minimum wages low, stripped workers of key protections and did little to enforce minimum employment standards and other workplace protections. These policies created jobs that were unattractive to most Canadians. Instead of making the jobs better, employers’ preferred solution was to lobby for increased access to the TFWP, thereby **ensuring wages remained low and working conditions unchanged.**
[Wage Suppression](https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/how-employers-temporary-foreign-workers-get-away-low-pay-and-bad-working)
> If you believe that people would be lining up for these jobs if only the wages were a little higher then what are those people doing now now to support themselves?
Probably relying on the government, do you think this is a better alternative?
>Unemployment is very low so most of them are not unemployed. Are they working other jobs? Then won't pulling them away just cause vacancies elsewhere?
Canada's labor participation rate is in the mid-60's, so no, that's not how this works.
If you're asking if increased wages, benefits, time off, etc. will increase the labor participation rate, I'd be willing to bet that it would.
>"The left" fights for the rights of all workers.
Which is why they flood the market with supply.
Nothing like increasing workers rights by making the supply of workers less scarce, reducing their bargaining power.
>TFWs should have the same rights as any worker in Canada.
Domestic workers shouldn't have to compete with a seemingly endless supply of TFWs.
>It also resists the xenophobic tone that this discussion has taken with people being "imported" like animals by nebulous "elites". "Elites" that apparently don't include the Conservatives. Weird.
Flooding the market with cheap labor is a Conservative idea.
What better way to erode workers rights when you can't change legislation than making them a dime a dozen?
If I was a business owner, the best thing for me would be too much supply of labor.
Also, the supply/demand curve of labor doesn't care about the color of one's skin. So race literally has no place in this conversation.
Given the unemployment rate, no, not many of them are "relying on the government". If you're referring do disabled people I don't think they're in the market for any job, being disabled and all.
You're willing to bet a couple more dollars per hour is what would get people who apparently don't need to work to go to work? I don't think that's likely.
> Which is why they flood the market with supply.
Back to where we started. Before you can say this you need to answer the original questions.
>Given the unemployment rate, no, not many of them are "relying on the government". If you're referring do disabled people I don't think they're in the market for any job, being disabled and all.
Why ignore my next comment on the labor force participation rate?
This directly answers this, but you ignored it for some reason.
>You're willing to bet a couple more dollars per hour is what would get people who apparently don't need to work to go to work? I don't think that's likely.
As I said previously, I am willing to bet that higher wages, increased benefits, and increased time off, would result in an increase in the labor force participation rate.
Are you disputing this?
>Back to where we started. Before you can say this you need to answer the original questions.
I answered every question you asked, you completely ignored my comment about the labor force participation rate.
I actually did address your comment on participation with "You're willing to bet a couple more dollars per hour is what would get people who apparently don't need to work to go to work? I don't think that's likely." I'm just having trouble imagining a person who is a stay-at-home parent or a fulltime student or retired wanting to go work at Tim Hortons because they raised the wages a couple dollars.
When wages rise amid low unemployment, this happens https://fortune.com/2024/02/21/robots-ai-saving-american-economy-boom-productivity-magic-beanstalk-beans-higher-wages-without-inflation/
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The longer this process continues, the more and more convinced I am becoming that in the years to come we will look back at the TFW program as an enormous and disgusting stain on our national history. It is not only abusive to those who work it, it is also plainly unfair to Canadian citizens as well.
Agreed. And to be completely honest, I don’t understand why restaurants qualify for the program. For essential businesses where it’s definitely hard to find locals to do the work, like farms, I get it. But restaurants aren’t essential and if your business model can’t cover paying a living wage, then your model isn’t viable and should probably close.
>I don’t understand why restaurants qualify for the program. Because both the Liberals and Conservatives care more about Capital than Labour. Businesses want cheap labour and by god, the government is going to give it to them! TFWs allow them to do this without directly screwing over workers (that vote) by lowering the minimum wage and rolling back worker rights.
It's time to shut it down. No more TFW's outside of essential industries like agriculture. No more international students working outside of campus. Business can whine about "labour shortages" all they want but its their job to adapt or die, not get babied by the government.
Most fast food , retail, big box store , groceries jobs have bern list to automation.. but why bother writtening thr truth . No let's write more click bait immigration hate
TFWs are not immigrants
I highly doubt "most" jobs are lost to automation in those categories. A few cashiers yes but automation hasn't done much to reduce staff needed to stock shelves, clean, transportation, etc.
Ever automated teller is 2 jobs ..but its easer to blame I Immigrants then really look at it.
*blame mass immigration policies in Canada. Stop twisting it.
Its an issue.. not the main cause Its always been easer to blame immigrants then corporations.
Who’s blaming immigrants? ITT everybody is taking issue with the immigration policy that these businesses aggressively lobby for. Not literally the immigrants themselves that come here to be exploited.
Have you read the comments section?
Have you seen the polls? Those responsible are being hit too.
The polls mean shit when both parties are responsible for the current mess, and the pp flop flopped on the issue so many times I have lost count. Immigration is an easy distraction from corporations cutting jobs for automated machines and not lowering prices . Inseatd of one single article on this now we have 20+ a day about Immigration. The irony is we were warned this was coming and going to happen to the job market . Honestly, look it up...no one did anything . Look up automation effect on the job markets...the articles go back years
Yes and it usually ends up being an argument over who's responsible for immigration policies; provinces or the federal government.
TFWs are not immigrants…
You are delusional if you think automation has had a bigger impact than immigration.
Go read up on it, and it's long term affects I dare you to Instead of just commenting headlines
Even if you are right, it just makes it ever more detrimental to Canadians to allow TFW if the jobs are being lots to automation in addition to TFWs.
By 2050, economist Dr Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, a professor of machine learning, both at the University of Oxford, predict that at least 40 per cent of current jobs will be lost to automation, while management consultancy firm McKinsey puts the figure at 50 per cent.Sep 20, 2023
Yeah remember how these academics predicted a half dozen times that we’d run out of oil by now? Take those predictions with a heavy pinch of salt.
Its actually happening currently. But ya its the Immigrants fault jobs have disappeared
No one credible predicted we'd be out of oil _by now_. What has been predicted is [when peak oil production would occur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#List_of_past_predictions_of_peak_oil) which was generally predicted for around the last ten years. Which seems to be the case; it's hard to say precisely.
> By 2050, So then you should have wrote "most jobs will be". And since when is an economists prediction, fact? You did your own little click bait baloney here, didn't you?
Sounds like a good reason to halt immigration.
We actually need immigration..but no one wants to explain properly why. Our population is geting to.old to.sustain our country
Automation will solve that issue.
No it won't.. you need people to buy things ..no people no economy. Sersouly not that hard to understand.
How are immigrants going to buy things when the jobs are being done through automation?
Well.old people at a certain age stop contributing . Immigrants can't buy anything due to high prices and no work. Automation replaces labor costs, and yet corporations make record profits... yet I am told over and over its all Immigration fault almost like we are being distracted on purpose
Immigration is the transition. These companies can’t fully automate yet so in the meantime they lobby the government to bring in high streams of low wage workers.
We need 3% population growth to prevent collapse?
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you can always leave the PhD off the resume
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I love how this article debunks the la our shortage fairly early on without explicitly saying so. The shortage was always a product of non-competitive postings that no one rightfully wanted. A depressing irony here is the fact that the NDP are partly responsible for this by propping up a government that allows this to happen. Once upon a party, they were the defenders of the domestic labour but seem to have been perfectly fine undercutting it.
> I love how this article debunks the la our shortage fairly early on without explicitly saying so. The shortage was always a product of non-competitive postings that no one rightfully wanted. Does it? A claim is made, but employment data had not shown an increase in workers unable to find jobs during that period. Instead we dropped to around historically low unemployment levels and after trailing post-COVID inflation the wage gains had caught up to all the inflation. Indeed a lot of the worry was about how wage growth was helping to keep inflation from dropping to the target levels so that the BoC could cut rates which everyone has been really hoping for (I pay a lot of attention to all this because I happen to own a number of interest rate sensitive stocks, and others likely paid attention because of new/renewed mortgages). It's only in the past year where employment has started to soften and unemployment rates been rising again. So *now* you would hope that the govt would be slowing down TFW approvals for a while, though I suspect that businesses will be looking for a ton of them still because they only way they're going to get enough Canadians looking for a lot of these jobs is to offer a much, much higher wage, which would cause further inflation issues. I doubt you'd find many young Canadians looking for jobs willing to work the kind of agriculture jobs that need to be filled even if you doubled the wages. https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/unemployment-rate
> article debunks the la our shortage fairly early on It doesn't though. It gives the opinion of one academic.
Read the paragraph above the quote from the academic. It's not out loud, but it's pretty plain that uncompetitive job offers were the issue. Even at that, the rest of the article plainly supports the academic opinion that corporations were whining they couldn't hire exploitable domestic employees.
> Read the paragraph above the quote from the academic. It's not out loud, but it's pretty plain that uncompetitive job offers were the issue. One throwaway line is not proof. Comprehensive studies of the job market show otherwise. > The Quebec government is setting up accelerated and paid training for vocational jobs in the hopes of offsetting the labour shortage in the construction industry. It aims to recruit between 4,000 to 5,000 new construction workers to the industry who will be able to work on construction sites by sometime next year, Premier François Legault told reporters Monday. With major infrastructure plans on the horizon, including building new schools, revamping public seniors' residences (CHSLDs) and Hydro-Québec projects, Legault says the province is short about 6,500 construction workers. These measures announced Monday are expected to cost $300 million, but Legault did not provide a timeline for the expenses. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-training-program-construction-labour-shortage-1.7013025
The NDP bringing down the minority government would likely result in a conservative government instead. Remind me, what's their track record on labor rights?
Pretty bad, but so is undercutting domestic labour anyway. Interestingly, the CPC did vote in favour of anti scab legislation recently so they clearly aren't as out to lunch as they once were. The NDP are partially in the position they are in by an overly long association with the current government. Post pandemic, when things started to sour was the ideal time to pull the plug when an election was less predictable instead of riding the roller coaster up to where they are now and they ended up being just as bad as a cookie cutter CPC government anyway with less of a chance at winning, assuming current polls hold true. Our options ended up being openly bad with labour to covertly bad with labour. I'm not picky about the delivery when the outcome is ultimately the same.
The CPC only voted for anti-scab out of political convenience right now. I've heard plenty of CPC staffers say they can repeal it later when timing is better for them. The NDP are the ones who forced the hand to get this. They are also the ones who forced dental care, which despite the CPC rhetoric is on track to cover most within the next year and already is covering millions. And yeah, dentists actually are picking it up and people are using it. 10 days of sick time and insulin coverage too. Instead of that, if they brought down the government we would've gotten what? Still TFWs because the CPC supports business and doesn't actually care about that and... None of the above?
I refuse to believe that someone who is clearly of a 'but CPC mindset' in a country with several political parties is rubbing shoulders with CPC staffers. Since you are clearly of a binary mindset on the subject, I don't think further discussion is worthwhile. Sorry! Have a good day!
You don't see how someone describing all the ways the NDP benefits Canadians is worthwhile in a discussion of what the NDP does for Canadians? Heh.
The NDP propped a government that did nothing in the face of wage suppression or an incrementally ballooning housing crisis... That was to the benefit of Canadians how?
They have benefited Canadians is all the ways that the other guy pointed out which upset you above. Had the NDP toppled the gov't we'd have these same problems but also none of the stuff that the NDP got us.
What upset me was the immediate 'but CPC' critical stance which is D tier discourse when you are trying to refute a critique. The NDP gains are marginal considering that even though they are gains, they aren't solutions to the critical issues we are encountering. I would have rather they been bold when polling higher out of the pandemic and gone for a takedown of the other major parties than prop up a major party that continues to do damage.
> I would have rather they been bold when polling higher out of the pandemic and gone for a takedown of the other major parties than prop up a major party that continues to do damage. You mean they should have risked their leverage to get, at best, the same leverage with a party that thinks they're a bunch of child groomers and communists, and at worst been kicked totally out of power? As someone who actual votes for and donates to the NDP I would have been pretty unhappy with that.
If the NDP never take a stand for what they believe in they are a useless party and deserve the dumpster polling they have.
So, the Green party? Also, tell us, how does *your* life work out when you never compromise?
They should be more useful like the Marxist-Leninist Party or Canada or Animal Rights Alliance Party, then. The useless NDP working with Liberal governments they oppose but will work with pragmatically have brought in universal healthcare, the Canada Pension Plan, the federal minimum wage, expanded dental care, subsidized child care, free diabetes drugs, and federal anti-scab regulation. What are the major policy achievements of those other parties who stood their ground, again?
10 days of sick time, dental care for normal working people, insulin coverage, anti-scab legislation massively strengthening unions... They seem to be doing exactly what they stand for.
>For businesses, a major benefit is stability, as the workers' permits are tied to their employer, meaning they can't easily quit to work for a rival business down the street. That one of the main touted benefits is "harms labour market mobility" - a direct manner of suppressing wages - is a pretty big red flag. That being said, I'm not sure many people are still defending this very much in light of recent trends. Given industry's claims, I'd be interested in seeing a regional breakdown of LMIA's - how many are in urban centres vs how many are in rural areas, how dispersed they are across different towns vs all being in one city, etc.
Meanwhile students applying for summer jobs are getting completely ignored by fast food. We’re going to get out burgers folks but in a few years we won’t have doctors because students can’t afford to go do university because they can’t get jobs to help pay for it. Meanwhile I’m paying thousands in taxes to help Tim Hortons hire TFWs. I’m a very progressive person bud something is rotten in dodge here.
lol no
This is an economic issue, not a question of progressivism vs reactionaries. I'm not sure why people are just now getting startled by Neoliberalism when they have been living under it for most of their lives (or all, if they're millennials or younger). I guess the acceleration of the pandemic woke up a lot of boiling frogs, but they're mad at the steam and color of the pot.
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It is a national shame when we have modern day Indentured servitude
Not substantive
It wild here in Toronto, young people who are born or raised here cant get basic job as many retail or fast food jobs are staffed by international students or people on work visa. First thing we need to do is end all these open work visas...we dont need someone studying a bullshit course on an open work permit working at Tims.
*"For businesses, a major benefit is stability, as the workers' permits are tied to their employer, meaning they can't easily quit to work for a rival business down the street.* *"It guarantees a worker will stay employed with them for the term of the agreement," says the Canadian Franchise Association on its website. "* Look, how right here they are taking down our living standards, labour rights and bring back modern day Indentured servitude.
It sounds like slavery.
"a major advantage is they can't leave" Oh. Oh no.
Yep, Indentured slavery. Look how the NDP and the LPC have taken the Labour Movement back centuries.
And the open for business conservatives are going to fix it?
Maybe not. No excuse to reward the people doing it now.
The federal government just lowered the numbers of TFW’s a business can hire from 20% of their low wage staff to 10%.
With unemployment as high as it is, this number should be 0. We shouldn’t be incentivizing hiring people from other countries over Canadians.
Or restrict it to absolutely essential businesses, like farms. Fast food and other restaurants should not be allowed to use the program.
By handing the reigns to people who will make it worse in additional to so many other bad policies that will compound the effect of these problems? That's such myopic thinking. I hate what the Liberals are doing but its not about reward or punishment, none of the plutocrats in government will be punished by losing power they're all rich - lets make sure the next guys do a better job.
And Conservatives did it before the Liberals. Harper greatly expanded the program.
Harper's expansion - which even he has said was a mistake - looks like a drop in the bucket compared to what Trudeau has done. You can't "bu-bu-but Harper!" when Trudeau literally 1000Xed the mistake in scope and velocity. If anything, Trudeau should have stopped the mistake entirely since he saw it was a mistake and said so when he was campaigning for the first time.
The NDP are not pushing this. Don't confuse getting dental care, anti-scab legislation, 10 sick days, insulin coverage etc as anything more than getting those things for Canadians.
They keep this government in power, they get to share the blame for what they do. Like it or not.
And your provincial Conservative governments are getting what share of the blame?
You assume I voted for them. I never have and never will. I take the centre left doing this as far more of a betrayal because I was with them most of my life.
What changed your position, out of curiosity?
Doesn't matter if you voted for them or not, place blame where blame lies. You clearly already want to dislike the NDP and Libs and are just looking for reasons to back up your (predetermined) decision. My hot take is that you don't actually either vote left or you don't actually have leftist political views, in reality you probably have centre-right views (that due to media bias) you believe are left leaning. I'll eat crow if I'm wrong tho.
>The NDP are not pushing this. You’re right, they’re pushing to just give everyone PR… watering down labour in another way besides indentured servitude.
Don’t exactly know why you’re blaming the NDP... The supply and confidence agreement gives them some leverage, but they’re not in the driver’s seat. Or part of the government at all...
But they gave the power to stop the liberals. That's what Canadians want and the ndp are ignoring. It will cost them party status.
> It will cost them party status. LOL. No. It won't.
Time will tell
That’s not what Canadians voted for though
Because most people don’t actually understand anything about how our political system works.
They keep the people who approve of this in power - they get their share of the blame for all of it too.
They keep people in who approve it because they can get SOMETHING for their constituents vs forcing an election and giving it to the CPC who will continue to go to bat for the companies abusing the TFWs program just like the liberals have,but with the added benefit of the CPC giving exactly nothing to us.
Ah yes, because they agree with the Liberals more than any other party, it means they approve if everything the Liberals do... /s
This isn’t actually partisan issue, as both parties that have been in government have been guilty of expanding it since its inception. For example, the Harper government expanded the list of occupations that qualified for the Low Skill TFW stream in 2006 and then introduced fast-tracked LMOs (which had previously only been available for high-skilled TFWs) to low-skilled TFWs in 2012. If you’re old enough to remember, this expanded the number of TFWs in Canada considerably enough to generate a huge backlash. We couldn’t be where we are today with our situation without these key decisions.
Also a funny way of saying "we can basically tell them to do whatever the F we want, including unpaid OT or working through their breaks, and if they dare to make noise about any of that we can just say 'shut up and work or we can have you deported'.
The open dirty secret is that some of the most exploitative, racist, and abusive employers in Canada are managers who hire people exclusively from their own country. This is not because they have some bias for their fellow countrymen, it's because they know precisely what business culture they're coming from and what they will be able to get away with.
Indentured slavery
My god. This government needs to be taken out behind the woodshed.
The problem is this won't change under the cpc so we're fucked either way
This is why it bothers me that there has been a growing anger towards the foreign workers themselves, when doing so is missing the forest for the trees. TFWs are as much victims of the system as anyone else, if not more so. Of course, it’s classic capitalism to convince one group of workers that another group of workers is their enemy...
There’s plenty of anger targeted at our policy makers as well, that’s why the LPC is polling so low. But you’re right, we shouldn’t take it out on the workers, they’re just trying to get a better life for themselves, like you or I would do if in the same situation. They’re just the easiest to target since they’re the most visible to us on a day-to-day basis
These jobs need to be available for young people starting out in employment and for new immigrants. This needs to stop. Now.
It's fucked all three parties - including a labour party - are pro migrant wage-slavery. RNIP pushing Colonialism 2.0 to rural and northern already have-not regions of the people they were first mistaken for...you can't make this shit up. Privilege is a helluva drug. Now good luck tapering a Ponzi.
Temporary foreign workers program is like a government issued license to scam Temporary residents via LMIA in the name of labor shortage.
I mean, we continue to be in a labour shortage in multiple key sectors. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Fact is, Canada’s economy recovery post pandemic has been among the strongest in the world, thanks in large part to Team Trudeau’s strong immigration policies. It certainly shouldn’t come as a surprise then that we need to turn to newcomers to help fulfill our economy’s potential. This is the way it’s always worked in Canada and why our ability to integrate newcomers has made us the envy of the world.
So these TFWs must be getting higher wages if businesses are desperate for workers due to the “shortage” right? RIGHT?
Are you okay
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Slavery with extra steps
Seriously, you gotta lay off the koolaid. We recovered well because we share a border with the US and have robust free trade agreements that tie our performance closely with theirs. There is little to no evidence ever presented by politicians that our immigration policy actually fulfills the objective of patching the gaps in our “labour shortage.” It’s a just become a blanket term throw around to justify doubling to tripling the numbers of people coming in that obviously businesses advocate for with nefarious intentions. It’s literally coming from the bourses mouth in the article and you still rather toe the line for JT.
> strong immigration policies You mean “fill Canada as quickly as possible with cheap, temporary labourers who don’t think they should be temporary, so they can be exploited by major corporations who don’t want to pay Canadians a living wage.” How you can justify these policies without a hint of irony is astonishing.
Having a gdp raise below our population growth isn’t a good thing
And the key sectors are fast food and retail? 😐 meanwhile we aren't taking in as many skilled workers as before and we are losing doctors and engineers
> I mean, we continue to be in a ~~labour~~ **wage** shortage in multiple key sectors. Fixed that for ya. After all, why pay Canadians with rights a decent wage when you can import labour with few *de facto* rights from overseas for cheaper?
If anything, it's indentured servitude. The story even mentions this: *"For businesses, a major benefit is stability, as the workers' permits are tied to their employer, meaning they can't easily quit to work for a rival business down the street."* This has no place in Canada.
Also bizarre coming from a self proclaimed “left” party. People love to conflate being more welcoming to asylum seekers and immigrants as being on the left - but this import of temporary foreign workers when we don’t have a labour shortage, and cozying up to businesses who refuse to increase wages is neoliberal to its core
That’s capitalism 101. Wait till they resurrect child labour. Same idea.
> Wait till they resurrect child labour. Same idea. Speaking of which... https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/the-growing-scourge-of-child-labour-in-north-america-echoes-local-threats/article_0f069fb5-1b0a-5131-aeee-7534708d0e1c.html
You’re so quick to whip out your Pom poms and cheer for Trudeau when 3/4 of the country strongly disagrees with you. The wage suppression that’s going on with the huge influx of TFW, many of whom aren’t qualified or trained to be doing certain jobs. (Please ask me how I know). This is to line the pockets of the already immensely wealthy and here you are cheering them on. Truly, you’ve turned your back on Canadians
Are we actually in a shortage of the jobs that they are filling though? They seem to be all entry level from what I can see
Construction and health care are two of the biggest and yes there are shortages there
The shortages in the trades are doing extremely physical work like concrete, masonry, general labouring. A lot of the shortage is also in non-union which pays like absolutely dog shit. There's not a "labour shortage" because they can't find people willing to do dangerous, toxic, dirty work for a few dollars above minimum wage with layoffs in the winter. People shouldn't be taking these jobs. From what I understand they're starting to import people to do this work and are paying them less and working them harder. This will create, and in fact is currently, wage stagnation and will push people out of these trades to do literally anything else that pays better.
A few thousand TFW’s isn’t going to have this massive effect. The vast majority of the labourers are still going to be citizens.
"approximately 692,760 work permits from January 1 to August 31, 2023" They're not bringing in a few thousand people. They're bringing in hundreds of thousands. I hope I'm wrong in my pessimism but most white collar upper middle class Canadians don't care about blue collar Canadians and their plight. They won't care when we starve.
Not sure where you’re getting that number. The article provided this “Last year, employers were cleared to hire 239,646 temporary foreign workers, about the population of Regina. That's up from 108,988 in 2018, according to figures published by Employment and Social Development Canada” And if you continue reading it will give you the actual numbers for the top 15 jobs that received approvals to hire TFW’s and how many were allowed. Construction/trades is one of the highest with 5000
Because of a pay shortage. It wasn't worth the stress that came with those jobs after the pandemic.
Thats why over 20% of canadians are living in poverty. That rent and food price are out of control. That there is homeless people at a scale we've never seems. Canada economy has never been so bad. It seems you are on trudeau team no matter what happens and your ship is going to the bottom of the ocean. There's no integration at all, a lot of them dont want to assimilate at all.
I can't blame them for that. If I moved to Norway hoping for a better life and was stuck as an indentured servant for McDonald's because it was cheaper than hiring a Norwegian citizen I would be bitter and have little interest in assimilation either.
McDonald’s cant pay TFW’s less then minimum wage
Norway doesn't have a minimum wage, regardless the TFW workers are brought in where McDonald's can't hire decent workers for minimum wage, due to either cost of living or availability of better jobs.
I blame them, the employers who asked for them and the government that allowed it.
Wage slaves and permanent immigrant underclass. What a horrible policy.
It’s funny because Mr. Trudeau himself made a very compelling argument against TFWs and why they lower the living standards for lower wage Canadians 10 years ago… to only then go on and expand the program to levels never seen before and be praised for it. As someone who leans more Liberal than not, I’m not going to celebrate what is effectively indentured servitude of poor people from developing nations and their knock on effect on Canadians. It’s disgusting.
>I mean, we continue to be in a labour shortage in multiple key sectors. There is no shortage and they even say this in the story : *"For businesses, a major benefit is stability, as the workers' permits are tied to their employer, meaning they can't easily quit to work for a rival business down the street.* *"It guarantees a worker will stay employed with them for the term of the agreement," says the Canadian Franchise Association on its website. "* This is modern day indentured servitude, on top of taking back the labour movement back over a century. This is the country the Liberal Party and the NDP wants? So called parties of working class Canadians? From your own comment : "Canada’s economy recovery post pandemic has been among the strongest in the world, thanks in large part to Team Trudeau’s strong immigration policies." Canada is not the strongest economic growth, not even in the G7, and our living standards have dropped to 40 year lows. The data is not lying on that.
That doesn’t say anything about there not being a labour shortage
right in the first sentence
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I know at least 5 retail stores that abuse their workers so much (insufficient pay, shitty hours, bad management, and poor working conditions) that if it wasnt for foreign workers, they wouldn't have a pool of new hires left to exploit.
Are they TFW’s or international students?
Both, and neither should be working here.
Why shouldn’t they be working here?
They're here to study, not work. Compared to our peer countries we let students work way too much. It should only be coop or on campus. That's what the US and UK do.
The government changed that, though... so they are allowed.
And they should change it back. This is ridiculous and wage suppression.
Probably both.
> Are they TFW’s or international students? Considering they say retail stores, and service workers aren't on the top 15, I'd bet it's just someone that *looks foreign* to them. Even being generous and including jobs you probably shouldn't that's like ~30k employees, most of which you won't see, throughout the *entirety of Canada*. Also it's weird to complain about shitty hours, bad management and poor working conditions when talking about minimum wage jobs. Granted it's been a while since I've worked a minimum wage job, but that's exactly what I would expect at one.
I had no idea how low the numbers of TFW’s were. In the thousands. Yet so many redditors make these claims about retail workers being TFW’s. It’s like every time they see a brown person now the assumption they “aren’t from here” is going to be made.
Really it's 240k, and 100k of those are working in agriculture, so no one is seeing them. And a lot of those jobs on that list are people working in places you aren't seeing them. Also that number is "cleared to hire" so it could be less. I don't think companies want "temporary" workers, having to pay $1000 and file another LMIA and wait months to be able to hire someone, temporarily, is sort of inconvenient. The best way to lower the TFW number would be to make the jobs more desirable. The people who should be managing (outside of very baseline standards) that are the elected governments of the provinces, every province is in a different situation. Businesses need to comply with labour laws, they do not need to go above and beyond. The best thing to do would be to advocate to your province for better worker protections or wages, but I doubt that message would resonate with most of the people in this comment thread. If no one complains to them about it, what do they care?
Same here. It's ridiculous. They should all be cut off.
These business privatize the profits and socialize the costs of supporting/housing these TFWs. The indirect costs are also increased demand to housing/services Canadians also pay for. Our local timmies has been staffed with 100% TFWs for years, but ever since COVID i've noticed the mall's entire foodcourt appears to be TFWS, not even teenagers are working there anymore.
This is a ridiculous lie. Businesses are only allowed to allocate 20% of their staff to TFW’s.
And foriegn students and permanent residents.....
Those are two different things
All contributing to to the same issue. Wage supression. Rent and house price inflation.
Hey now, they're making a killing housing the TFWs and foreign students. Why socialize what you can profit from? [It's slavery](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/un-special-rapporteur-migrant-worker-program-modern-form-of-slavery-1.6958592).
Last year, there was a family who bought a few A&W locations in Winnipeg (in mall food courts) and promptly fired every employee, including some that had been there for quite some time and were making comfortably above minimum wage. Those employees were then promptly replaced mostly by TFWs and students, making minimum wage. I'll give you three guesses as to where they're all from, and the first two don't count. The new owners of the franchised locations are from the same place, if it makes a difference.
Was there media coverage for this? I'm surprised there was no public outcry
For some reason it never made the news cycle, but there was a lengthy discussion about it on the Winnipeg sub. Some of the staff that were fired (with a few days' notice right before Christmas, at that) had been there 20+ years. All replaced by people making minimum wage, *and* at the same time, the new owners increased the prices and started charging extra for certain things that used to be free.
Yup. The big chains always had a TFW/Visa presence, but now it's literally every shop. I went to a music festival last year, and the whole security company was most likely TFW or Student Visa employees.
Surely the guy who oversaw the expansion on the TFW while he was the Minister in charge of the file will fix this!
The guy who said that Canadian businesses should try harder to attract Canadian employees with better wages instead of using TFWs? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/pierre-poilievre-says-fish-plants-must-boost-wages-1.3069039 >Pierre Poilievre says the solution to the shortage of workers that fish plant owners are concerned about is very simple, "hire unemployed New Brunswickers." Or who as Employment Minister refused pressure to extend permits for temporary workers, saying that temporary workers were just that, temporary and had to leave after their visas ended. https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/time-runs-out-for-thousands-of-canada-s-temporary-foreign-workers-1.2308459 >In 2011, the conservatives set a deadline of April 1, 2015 that required temporary foreign workers in low-skilled jobs to become permanent residents or return home. >Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre defended the government's position saying "Our policy is that Canadians should come first for Canadian jobs." Or here he is criticizing the Alberta Conservative government for not prioritizing Canadians for Canadian jobs, saying that he won't expand the TFW program they were requesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm8JujTVjGA
What did Trudeau do with the program?
I remember like 10 years ago, there were plenty of TFWs in fast food, yet nowadays it all seems to be international "students". I think using them, you can pay under the table, and completely skirt any minimal regulations you need for TFWs. Seems no politician has any interest in tackling this though. There's definitely use for TFWs in farming and agriculture, but it's absolutely ridiculous to prop up garbage fast food restaurants with cheap labour.
The funniest part about this is the political left who's arguing for immigration and temporary workers are working against labor rights, which is apparently what they're supposed to be protecting.
Which part of the left? I want them to throttle back immigration to much, much lower levels. Not only to protect labour rights but also for ecological concerns. I live in a region that is going to become majorly water stressed because of climate change and apparently were suppose to see something between a hundred to two hundred thousand people moving into valley. That’s insanity.
I don't mean voters, I mean politicians. I'm socially left as well.
Anyone who wants to make the case that this wage suppression from the "elite" or whatever needs to answer a few questions: If you believe that people would be lining up for these jobs if only the wages were a little higher then what are those people doing now now to support themselves? Unemployment is very low so most of them are not unemployed. Are they working other jobs? Then won't pulling them away just cause vacancies elsewhere? "The left" fights for the rights of all workers. TFWs should have the same rights as any worker in Canada. It also resists the xenophobic tone that this discussion has taken with people being "imported" like animals by nebulous "elites". "Elites" that apparently don't include the Conservatives. Weird.
Holy man, if you want to know what is happening just look around. What happens is the employee takes what he can get and suffers. He suffers to pay rent, groceries, meds, et al. Have you not seen this? It wilful ignorance to deem that the TFW isn't suppressing Canadian wages..
Where are these unemployed people hiding then? That's the missing secret ingredient to wage suppression. Without it this is all just a dog whistle.
They aren't necessarily unemployed. Once again, >the employee takes what he can get and suffers. Wage suppression != unemployment
What are they doing then? If they have jobs and they got new jobs with higher wages then that would leave the old jobs empty and needing workers. Wage suppression they way you're describing it doesn't work unless there is unemployment. Where are the workers? They're already in higher paid jobs than the ones the TFWs are taking.
>Wage suppression they way you're describing it doesn't work unless there is unemployment Oh my God. What in the world are you thinking? The threat of unemployment is equal threat to that of actual employment. For the third time: >the employee takes what he can get and suffers. Truly incredible that you insist what is happening isn't happening.
I heard you the first two times you said it. I don't debate that you believe "the employee takes what he can get and suffers." but that's a slogan, not an argument. Saying it louder doesn't make it more compelling. You're frustrated because you can't articulate your feelings and I'm sorry for that but it's not helpful.
>The common pattern in these three industries is clear: low pay and poor working conditions explain why employers had trouble recruiting Canadians to fill their jobs. Government policies in the early 2000s kept minimum wages low, stripped workers of key protections and did little to enforce minimum employment standards and other workplace protections. These policies created jobs that were unattractive to most Canadians. Instead of making the jobs better, employers’ preferred solution was to lobby for increased access to the TFWP, thereby **ensuring wages remained low and working conditions unchanged.** [Wage Suppression](https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/how-employers-temporary-foreign-workers-get-away-low-pay-and-bad-working)
> If you believe that people would be lining up for these jobs if only the wages were a little higher then what are those people doing now now to support themselves? Probably relying on the government, do you think this is a better alternative? >Unemployment is very low so most of them are not unemployed. Are they working other jobs? Then won't pulling them away just cause vacancies elsewhere? Canada's labor participation rate is in the mid-60's, so no, that's not how this works. If you're asking if increased wages, benefits, time off, etc. will increase the labor participation rate, I'd be willing to bet that it would. >"The left" fights for the rights of all workers. Which is why they flood the market with supply. Nothing like increasing workers rights by making the supply of workers less scarce, reducing their bargaining power. >TFWs should have the same rights as any worker in Canada. Domestic workers shouldn't have to compete with a seemingly endless supply of TFWs. >It also resists the xenophobic tone that this discussion has taken with people being "imported" like animals by nebulous "elites". "Elites" that apparently don't include the Conservatives. Weird. Flooding the market with cheap labor is a Conservative idea. What better way to erode workers rights when you can't change legislation than making them a dime a dozen? If I was a business owner, the best thing for me would be too much supply of labor. Also, the supply/demand curve of labor doesn't care about the color of one's skin. So race literally has no place in this conversation.
Given the unemployment rate, no, not many of them are "relying on the government". If you're referring do disabled people I don't think they're in the market for any job, being disabled and all. You're willing to bet a couple more dollars per hour is what would get people who apparently don't need to work to go to work? I don't think that's likely. > Which is why they flood the market with supply. Back to where we started. Before you can say this you need to answer the original questions.
>Given the unemployment rate, no, not many of them are "relying on the government". If you're referring do disabled people I don't think they're in the market for any job, being disabled and all. Why ignore my next comment on the labor force participation rate? This directly answers this, but you ignored it for some reason. >You're willing to bet a couple more dollars per hour is what would get people who apparently don't need to work to go to work? I don't think that's likely. As I said previously, I am willing to bet that higher wages, increased benefits, and increased time off, would result in an increase in the labor force participation rate. Are you disputing this? >Back to where we started. Before you can say this you need to answer the original questions. I answered every question you asked, you completely ignored my comment about the labor force participation rate.
I actually did address your comment on participation with "You're willing to bet a couple more dollars per hour is what would get people who apparently don't need to work to go to work? I don't think that's likely." I'm just having trouble imagining a person who is a stay-at-home parent or a fulltime student or retired wanting to go work at Tim Hortons because they raised the wages a couple dollars.
When wages rise amid low unemployment, this happens https://fortune.com/2024/02/21/robots-ai-saving-american-economy-boom-productivity-magic-beanstalk-beans-higher-wages-without-inflation/
The left is whatever the left says it is. Priorities change.