Kenney Op-Ed: Foreign workers in Canada: Let’s separate the facts from the myths

From anecdotes (“”There are tens of thousands of employers who tell me that they would go out of business if they couldn’t find people to fill those jobs.”) to Minister Kenney’s more evidence-based approach announcing the changes to the Temporary Foreign Workers program.

His op-ed is particularly revealing:

Several recent studies have come to this conclusion, suggesting that over-reliance on the program’s general low-skilled stream has prevented wages from rising in some low-paid occupations in parts of Western Canada, and may have reduced labour mobility. For example, overall median wages in Alberta have gone up by an average of 31 per cent since 2006, but wages in the province’s food services sector, a heavy user of the program, increased by only 8 per cent. This kind of distortion is unacceptable.

Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney put it well last year when he said “We don’t want an over-reliance on temporary foreign workers for lower-skilled jobs, which prevent the wage adjustment mechanism from making sure that Canadians are paid higher wages, but also so that firms improve their productivity as necessary… The intent of the government’s review is to ensure that this is used for transition, for those higher-skilled gaps that exist and can hold our economy back.”

Foreign workers in Canada: Let’s separate the facts from the myths – The Globe and Mail.

Lots of coverage on the changes, largely targeted towards abuse of the program for the fast food service industry. CBC overview on the changes, Changes to Temporary Foreign Worker Program include limits and fines, Macleans (Temporary foreign worker rules reformed, but tensions remain) and the Government briefing package with the key message of Overhauling the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

Initial commentary of interest:

Campbell Clark in the Globe, makes some valid points in Reforms to foreign worker program are welcome, but why the long wait?:

To their credit, they produced a serious plan. The reforms provide greater incentives for employers to find low-wage workers at home by raising application fees and limiting the percentage of each company’s work force that can be brought in from abroad. The caps will be phased in over two years. And Mr. Kenney promised to increase transparency by reporting the numbers for each employer.

Even the style used to unveil the reforms was refreshingly grown-up for a government that typically prefers slogans to explanations. The ministers briefed journalists on technical details, and did a talk-till-you-drop press conference explaining their rationale. They acknowledged some businesses might be hurt, but said companies should turn more to recruitment, training and wage increases. Mr. Kenney said he wants to return the program to what it is supposed to be: a last resort.

But there is also the past. Should the Conservatives have woken to the problems before? “No,” Mr. Kenney said. The Conservatives, he explained, accepted the policy in place when they took power as “normal.”

That is a frank admission. Governments do not look under every rock for worms. But it is a tad short on mea culpa. Under the Conservatives, the number of low-wage workers – those not in special programs for nannies or farm workers, or covered by agreements like NAFTA – grew from a few thousand to tens of thousands. Mr. Harper’s government spent to speed up processing for TFWs. If it is broken now, they should have fixed it sooner.

Helpfully, to the Government’s communications strategy, negative reaction from Alberta and the tone-deaf Canadian Federation of Independent Business (Alberta decries changes to foreign worker program):

“This is an appalling over-reaction,” said Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which has supported the Conservative government’s economic approach in the past. “This will be a serious knock on this government’s small-business credentials to have taken the kind of move that they just did.”

Restaurants Canada, which represents restaurant owners, predicts the formula, combined with new $1,000 user fees, will force some restaurants to close, while others will need to raise prices to cover higher wages.

“I think there are going to be business casualties,” said Joyce Reynolds, Restaurants Canada’s vice-president of government affairs. “Are Canadians prepared to pay double what they pay now for a steak?”

Andrew Coyne starts off with a somewhat predictable more libertarian economic approach in Hiring foreign workers in Canada is a crime, but outsourcing overseas is fine but ends up arguing for a pathway to citizenship:

And the reforms themselves? They will be widely praised, and should succeed in moving the controversial program off the front pages, adding to Mr. Kenney’s reputation as the safest pair of hands in cabinet. Unfortunately, that does not make them good policy.

Consider an employer in the manufacturing sector, who finds himself unable to attract enough workers for certain kinds of unskilled labour, at least at the going wage. He is entirely at liberty to outsource the work to a company overseas, paying a fraction of the wages he would have had to pay his Canadian employees. He can move the whole plant offshore if he likes, laying off every one of its current employees, and import the product he sells rather than make it here. ….

This is the crime of which these [food service] employers, whom Mr. Kenney vows to harass and punish with $100,000 fines, are guilty: operating a business while in the service sector. They “cost” no more jobs than their manufacturing counterparts. It’s just that the hard-working, low-wage foreigners they employ are in our midst, and visible to us, not toiling away in some sweatshop overseas we never see. …

It certainly won’t help the foreign workers themselves, who will now be subject, as a support group, the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, put it, to a kind of “mass deportation order.” Many had hoped to convert their demonstrable fitness for life in Canada into permanent residency, and ultimately citizenship. Those hopes will now be dashed.

Yet if any reform were needed, that remains the more promising route. If temporary foreign workers were not temporary, they would no longer be foreign. They would not be “taking jobs” from Canadians. They would be Canadians.

John Ivison sides with the CFIB and other small businesses in With the temporary foreign worker changes Jason Kenney has done a great deal to insulate himself:

The Employment Minister has certainly gone to great lengths to insulate himself from more incendiary allegations of abuse. Unfortunately, the risks will be borne by those small businesses that are about to see their costs soar.

Tom Walkom from the Star, from a different perspective, ends up in the same place (Jason Kenney’s temporary foreign worker changes not enough):

Public pressure has forced Kenney to make the arrangement seem more palatable. But it is not. If we need more foreign labourers, let them come as full-fledged immigrants.

If paying Canadian fast-food workers a decent wage means we must shell out more for a cup of coffee, so be it.