The recent headline in the daily press says it all: "Foreign workers drive unemployment up in B.C."
The story quotes a study of Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) from the CD Howe Institute – hardly an organization known for left-wing thinking on anything. The study's researchers conclude that, contrary to business lobby group assertions that the TFWP has a positive impact on our economy, the program actually made unemployment worse.
The CD Howe report is not the first to slam the TFWP. A Parliamentary Budget Office report came to pretty much the same conclusion when it noted that "a higher portion of TFWs in the private sector could also be putting downward pressure on the private-sector job vacancy rate."
The report went on to link these labour market pressures to a lowering of wages and incomes. While some in the employer community might cheer that fact, workers don't.
But the controversy with Canada's TFWP isn't just academic. As the program has been steadily ramped up by the Stephen Harper government, scandal has dogged it every step of the way. The latest revelations that McDonald's franchise operations have been abusing the system by laying off their Canadian staff and diverting available work to TFWs only reinforces the fact that the federal government's approach to this whole issue is wrong-headed in the extreme.
And while various federal cabinet ministers try to express surprise and dismay at the abuses of the program, their reaction is shallow at best. Various reports, some by provincial governments, long ago flagged the program as a problem in need of a major overhaul.
Even Alberta's Conservative government, whose Ministry of Employment and Immigration found that in 2010 74% of the 400 workplaces employing TFWs in that province violated employment standards, had to concede that the program was having a negative impact on provincial labour market standards.
The fact that the TFWP has been plagued with scandal comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with how the program operates.
The utter lack of transparency on the part of employers using the program is a major flaw. It's only because of investigative reporting by a number of media outlets that Canadians have been able to get any insights on the program and the degree to which it is being abused by employers large and small. From fast-food chains to high-profile construction and resource development companies, all have been found to be bending the already loose program rules to fit their needs.
Just as troublesome is the flimsy rationale – the Labour Market Opinion (LMO) – that allows employers to access the program in the first place. A mini-industry has taken root in Canada in which so-called experts produce LMOs to justify an employer's application for TFWs.
Typically, these LMOs justify the application for TFWs by showing that the employer has been unable to recruit Canadians to fill vacant positions. However, in a number of high-profile cases, employers had either deliberately excluded Canadian workers from full-time work or put conditions on the work that they knew no Canadian worker could meet.
At its core the problem with the TFWP has everything to do with rights. The program treats TFWs more like widgets than like human beings.
As the Alberta report showed, workplace standards for these workers fall well short of legislated minimums, hardly a surprise when you consider that TFWs are effectively indentured to the sponsoring employer and can be "sent home" if they don't comply with that employer's game plan.
Let's be clear about one thing: Canada is a land of immigrants, a place where the diversity of cultures and skills that comes with that immigration is celebrated.
Let's also recognize that immigrating to a new country takes courage; it often means uprooting families and finding your way in a new place, none of which is easy. And when those who immigrate arrive in Canada, they deserve to be treated with respect and celebrated for their commitment to make Canada their home.
The TFWP is an assault against all of those things. Workers, no matter where they come from or what their circumstance is, have rights that need to be not only protected, but also respected.
It's time to overhaul the TFWP and replace it with a system that promotes rights, not loopholes and abuses.
