Harper's War On The Middle Class

Continues apace.

A shortage of skilled workers is the biggest challenge many Canadian businesses face today, Employment Minister Jason Kenney told a skills summit Wednesday, warning it could also jeopardize Canada's economic development in the future. 

The problem would continue to grow as the population ages, Kenney told the one-day conference, which brought together stakeholders to discuss the labour market, employee training and those under-represented in the labour force. 

Currently 30 per cent of the skilled trade workers in Canada are baby boomers, Kenney said, adding that they will soon retire. 

"They are going to take with them a lifetime of knowledge and skill," he said. 

It's necessary that an "informed national discussion" take place about the condition of Canada's labour market, in order to address future skills gaps, Kenney said. 

"We can acknowledge that we have inadequate labour market information and we need to do a fundamentally better job of getting granular information by region and industry," he said.

Coming from a minister of the government that has dismantled the ability of Statistics Canada to even perform an accurate, useful census of Canadians, that's almost funny - if it wasn't so tragic.

Of course, the Harper Conservatives don't like university educated people as a whole.  There's a reason for this:  people with a liberal arts based education don't typically vote conservative.  So, they've been quietly rejigging the funding for federal research grants (which are an important part of university funding) for several years.

Adjusted for inflation, granting council funding has been in serious decline since 2007-08. Funding for SSHRC has fallen by over 10 per cent in real dollars, while core support for NSERC and CIHR are down 6.4 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively. Support for the indirect costs of research has declined by 7.9 per cent. Overall federal support for the granting councils is down 7.5 per cent in inflation-adjusted dollars since 2007-08. 

There's more.  Not only has the government been quietly reducing the amount of funding it makes available for basic research, they have been changing NSERC's focus to "applied research":

"Collaboration between government, applied researchers and the private sector is vital to building an innovative economy," said Minister Goodyear. "The College and Community Innovation Program supports research collaborations between companies and colleges. It illustrates the importance our government places on creating the conditions for innovation and entrepreneurship to thrive in this country."

What does this have to do with Harper's war on Canada's middle class?  A lot.

First of all, it has fundamentally undermined the core of the concept of University.  If you are taking a degree in disciplines like Engineering, Business or Law, it's great.  You're seeing money poured into your department hand over fist.  If you're interests are in other areas - the social sciences, the liberal arts, not so much.  In fact, the government has been actively discouraging research in these areas and enrolment in those fields of study.  Want to study something that is "politically sensitive" (like gender and sexuality issues for example)? Good luck getting funding.  It isn't going to happen.

The consequence?  First of all, when you hollow out the liberal arts programs, you effectively turn the university into a technical college.  It might be one with the right to confer degrees, but I can guarantee you that the people coming out of those programs are not the well rounded thinkers that should be coming out of universities.  

This suits Harper quite nicely.  He and his "base" have long been critical of "intellectual elites" (you know conservaspeak for people who think about things rather than simply accepting the sound bite du jour).  So turning universities into institutions which turn out highly focused specialists in various domains suits them just fine.  If you don't think too much about any one part of his government, he doesn't seem too bad.  Start to analyze his government in more detail, and the picture rapidly becomes quite horrifying.

Further, by limiting funding to universities, Harper has made the cost of attending so excessive that only the wealthy can really afford it.  So much the better, it reduces the number of people who are likely to be critical of his government (or his ideological successors' governments).

But this is only one facet of Harper's war on Canada's middle class.  Through a series of other actions - mostly by policy fiat - Harper has gone after Canadians even more blatantly.

Front and centre in this has been the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP).  This has been used as a tool to undermine the balance of the Canadian labour economy.  Especially since the government started allowing all and sundry to come in under this program.  Historically, the TFWP existed quite explicitly for importing people with skillsets that are unique, rare and virtually impossible to find locally.  Generally, that meant only a relative handful of specialists came into Canada in any given year, certainly not enough to impact the local labour market.  Then the government started to open it up to general labour.  

Run a restaurant?  Having difficulty "finding qualified help"?  Oh, well now you can solve this problem by bringing in a bunch of labour from another country.  The effect?  Employers could suddenly refuse to pay reasonable wages in areas where there is a labour shortage.  (after all, if you lived in the Phillipines for example, how are you going to know that Calgary's cost of living is high and labour market is tight?)  Further, a foreign worker won't know their rights as a worker in Canada, much less are they going to be willing to "rock the boat" when their employer effectively holds the keys to their continued residence in Canada (especially important if they are considering moving to Canada permanently).  

Although the government has recently announced changes to the program, the damage to Canada's labour market has been done.  Many traditional entry level jobs are no longer available to Canadian youth.  There are many stories out there of youth applying at the local Tim Horton's or other fast food restaurant and being told that they are "overqualified".  Another friend of mine who is a plumber's apprentice has been finding job postings for "entry level" positions demanding 3+ years of experience.  This is a posting which is obviously aimed at a TFW coming into Canada who is looking to get into the same trade in Canada that they were doing previously.  

Businesses are running about wringing their hands about the changes to the TFWP.  Oh goodness, how will they keep their doors open?  Well, the short answer is by offering reasonable wages and working conditions that are somewhat better than slavery.  

Regardless, Harper is working his ass off to create an economic environment where the oligarchy has all the marbles.  (a $600bn "dead money" fund lying around - now tell me why these businesses cannot pay a reasonable wage?)  Make no mistake, there is an active war on Canada's middle class and Harper's government is spearheading it.

TFWP: Yet Another Reason To Shut It Down

The consequences of the Harper Government's widening of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program over the last several years keeps going from bad to worse.

At first it was employers choosing to hire TFWs over Canadians.  Then we started finding out that not only were the companies forcing them to living in company-owned apartments and deducting the rent off the payroll, but we also started hearing of cases where the TFWs themselves were being charged significant sums of money to get here.

Today, we have allegations of a company in BC abusing the program and all but engaging in extortion and human trafficking.

An Iranian couple are going public about how a B.C. business charged them $15,000 to come to Canada — a violation of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program rules — for jobs that turned out to be non-existent....“After you get this situation, you pay $15,000 and after that … where is my money? Where is my job? I always ask — when can I start my job?” said Aminian’s husband, Payam Bakht....Aminian and Bakht also said that once they were in Canada, Parvaz Film told them that if they paid an additional $1,200 per month to the company in cash, it would remit false payroll taxes to government, so the couple could pretend Bakht was working — and stay in Canada. 

“We didn't have job, we had to pay tax, and if we didn't pay tax we had to leave Canada,” said Aminian. “We have to pay $1,200 each month, without any work and without any salary.”

This is nothing less than fraudulent on the part of the company.  Charging $15,000 for a non-existent job is straight out fraud, demanding that the victims pay $1200 a month after that is criminal - that's extortion.  The owners of the company in question need to be held accountable for these allegations - in a court of law.

Not only does this represent the worst kind of exploitation possible, it shows us beyond any doubt that the program has holes in it that open it to the worst predations possible - human trafficking.

The rather flaccid response from the government is appalling:

Go Public tried several times to ask Kenney about this, in Ottawa, but he wouldn’t stop to talk. His office said he was too busy. 

It later sent a statement, saying enforcement is improving. 

“Under the previous Liberal government, no inspections were done to ensure that employers were following the rules," said Kenney's office. "In 2007, our government began conducting investigations and has increased the numbers of investigations done each year significantly since then."

The Minister is "too busy" to deal with problems in this program?  Not acceptable.  Mr. Kenney is the minister responsible for this program.  When issues like this arise, it is unquestionably his job to deal with.

Playing the "but but the Libruls" line is ridiculous.  The Harper Government started opening this program up in 2006.  Prior to that, it was a very limited, small scale program.  There are now hundreds of thousands of TFWs in this country, and the companies hiring them are showing more and more signs of exploiting the program as well as the workers.

Essentially, what Kenney has done is on one hand tightened down the immigration system to the point where it's difficult for families to be reunited through official channels, and then opened up an unofficial immigration channel through the TFWP, a channel that starts to look like a tool used by racketeers engaging in smuggling people into Canada.

We aren't talking about a few cases here, it seems that every time we turn around, there are more, and more serious offences being committed under this program.

If the minister isn't willing to clean the program up, it's time to shut it down.  If a replacement is needed, we can create that, but it has to be closely monitored and controlled.  

Just Shut It Down Already

As if we hadn't already heard enough about the vileness that is the TFWP, we have two major revelations today which more than justify shutting the whole thing down immediately.

First up is the "advice" that a company which recruits TFWs gave to an employer:

According to the email, which was obtained by CBC's iTeam, the Saskatoon-based recruiter told Houston Pizza in Estevan, Sask., that some employers of temporary foreign workers find that over time, the workers "become 'Canadianized' and increase their demands on the employers.'" 

"We believe a simple reminder to the workers will reverse the effects of the Canadian influence," it says.The 2011 email essentially suggested telling such "Canadianized" workers that if things don't work out, they could be sent home. 

International Manpower is part of the Mercan Group of companies which helps employers across Canada recruit temporary foreign workers to jobs many Canadians don't want.

If this doesn't show us in clear and unambiguous terms that this program has become exploitation, I don't know what will.  Essentially, this is telling employers to rule their workers with fear and intimidation - all the while, subjecting them to working conditions that Canadians would never tolerate.  

“After we actually agreed to everything, [Qizel] just said ‘Look guys you are working on commission. You don’t like it, you can get deported, I am cancelling your permit,'" said Soloviov. 

He said they were told they would get 25 per cent from each sale. The shock came on paydays, he said, when they received next to nothing. The employer deducted $225 every two weeks for rent plus other “fines," from the little pay they were supposed to get. 

“If you look at it, it’s modern slavery. Because some people were not actually paid at all,” said Soloviov. “I got paid 50 bucks or 100 bucks in the three months I worked and that’s bad exploitation. But some people were actually slaves and ended up owing him money.”

This is straight out exploitation.  It isn't even just a case of bringing in people from abroad to replace Canadian labour.

However, when you look at this through a different lens, it becomes quite clear that this program has been mutated by the Harper Government into part of a program aimed at driving down Canadian wages.  Like so-called "right-to-work" legislation, the TFWP has become a tool which has been used to dramatically alter the supply-and-demand balance in Canada's labour force.

Make no mistake, the TFWP has been around for ages, but it has been under Harper that it has been broadened to the point that TFWs are being used not as a means to fill a need for specialized knowledge or skills, but as a tool for getting labour cheaper than Canadians would tolerate.

SHUT IT DOWN NOW!

TFWP: SHUT IT DOWN, Minister Kenney

If the C. D. Howe Institute study released yesterday isn't a clue as to what is so fundamentally flawed with the TFWP, I don't know what is.

In its report, the non-partisan C.D. Howe Institute looked at a number of examples, but focused on what impact the program had on the labour market in British Columbia and Alberta — two provinces which have employed more temporary foreign workers than the rest of the country combined, in every year since 2007.

For part of the time period in question, the unemployment rates in B.C. and Alberta were seven and five per cent, respectively — lower than the Canadian average at the time and as such possibly a suggestion that employers were indeed having a hard time finding workers. 

But the report found the two provinces saw their unemployment rates change by a larger amount than the rest of Canada, both when unemployment was decreasing before 2007, and when the jobless rate started increasing after that. 

"On average, the variation in the unemployment rate during the whole period was 2.3 percentage points in the rest of Canada and 6.2 percentage points in Alberta and British Columbia," the report says, "which suggests the [program] potentially accelerated the rise in unemployment by about 3.9 percentage points in the two provinces between 2007 and 2010." 

This program is being used not as a tool to fill "urgent" jobs where the appropriate workers aren't available, it is being used as an excuse by employers to hire people for less money than Canadian workers would be willing to work for, or putting up with abuse that Canadians would not accept.

The workers allege they had to pay hundreds of dollars each for their work permits and Labour Market Opinion surveys, when employers are legally obliged to cover those costs. 

A Labour Market Opinion — also known as a LMO — is a legal document describing the worker's job and is required by the federal government before it issues a temporary permit for a foreign worker. 

Orense and Natividad claimed their boss changed their status to skilled supervisor on their LMOs, to help Orense become a permanent resident and allow Natividad to bring his wife to Canada.

 So, we have employers lying on the paperwork.  First of all, you can't tell me that a Supervisor role at Tim Horton's is a "skilled" role.  Yes, it requires some business knowledge, and some people management, but nothing that cannot be learned readily "On The Job".  We aren't talking about skilled trades level knowledge here - you know the stuff that requires a couple of years of training to learn, or a specific degree that takes 4 years to attain.  We are talking about the kind of work that any reasonably intelligent Canadian on the street should be able to pick up in a matter of weeks.

In other words, the employers are using this program as a way to sidestep having to pay Canadians realistic wages, and not be treated horribly.  Come to that, a friend who is currently hunting for work recently ran across a job posting for an "entry level" position that required 3+ years of direct experience.  A requirement that is clearly laughable to Canadians, but could easily be used by an employer to justify hiring through the TFWP instead on the basis that they couldn't find a 3+ year experienced Canadian willing to take "entry level" wages.

I think the biggest tip-off to the way that employers are abusing the TFWP is in recent statements by McDonald's Canada CEO John Betts, who called criticism of the program "Bullshit" on a conference call.  He's entitled to his opinion, of course, but likewise, we are entitled to consider the motives for his outburst.  McDonald's got caught profiteering at the expense of foreign workers they had hired, and hiring exclusively through the TFWP even when they had active applicants from the local area.  In short, McDonald's got caught with their pants down on this one, and they are feeling the heat for it.

The funny thing (if you can call any of this funny), is that employers like McDonald's or Tim Horton's would not find it difficult to hire staff if they were willing to pay something better than minimum wage to their staff, and didn't have working conditions that were so appallingly terrible.  These are people we are talking about.  Not automatons.  It used to be that many teenagers got their first jobs working at McDonald's.  These days, those same jobs aren't available to the teenagers, because TFWs have supplanted them.

In this morning's news, that Minister Kenney has suspended the Fast Food Industry's access to the TFWP, and while that is a good first step, it's now time to shut down this entire program.  There are already immigration programs for bringing in foreign workers when needed.  They aren't simple programs to navigate, but that also means that there is a disincentive for an employer to go that route unless the candidate has specific skills and knowledge that can't be acquired readily, giving local talent the opportunity to fill those roles first.

It's time for the government to start representing Canadians, rather than representing the interests of big business.