Internal memo reveals Ottawa cut labour market data spending

2014/06/12 Leave a comment

More indications of the botched up Temporary Foreign Workers program, linked to bad labour market data, cutbacks and overall approach to evidence-based policy making:

“Things are getting done in the opposite direction,” said economist Don Drummond, who will release a paper Wednesday for the Institute for Research on Public Policy calling on Ottawa to tackle Canada’s long-standing labour market data problems. “Normally you create an information infrastructure and that informs the policy. But here we’ve had dramatic changes in policy with the temporary foreign worker program and the Canada Job Grant, while we’re undermining the lousy information infrastructure we already had.”

Mr. Drummond chaired a 2009 panel on labour market information and says many of the panel’s recommendations have not yet been fully implemented.

A spokesperson for Mr. Kenney said the minister has repeatedly noted the need for better labour market information in Canada and is looking for ways to achieve this. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada explained the spending reduction by stating that the department has modernized its data portfolio in a “tighter fiscal environment,” in part by stopping low-priority surveys to fund higher-priority research.

The recent debate over labour data has focused in part on the government’s decision to reduce funding for Statistics Canada, which gathers labour data through phone surveys of employers, while relying more on private-sector data based on scans of Internet job boards.

Internal memo reveals Ottawa cut labour market data spending – The Globe and Mail.

Update:

The Government announced that it would restore funding to StatsCan to improve labour market information:

“The government will be launching two significant, robust, new labour market information studies,” Mr. Kenney told the House of Commons Wednesday. “Of them, one will be a quarterly study on job vacancies and the other a robust annual survey on wage rates, just as experts have asked us to do.”

Sources say the new $14-million would largely reverse the 20 per cent cut by 2015-16, returning the department’s annual spending on labour market information to more than $80-million.

Ottawa increases funding for labour-market surveys

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“Keeping the price of latte low” – Why the Conservatives need to make changes to the foreign worker program fast

2014/05/31 Leave a comment

Good piece by Campbell Clark in the Globe on Temporary Foreign Workers. Latte line is priceless:

Temporary foreign workers really shouldn’t be part of any company’s basic business model, especially if it’s their strategy to fill jobs that don’t require training. Governments should be expecting wages to rise, not stepping in to provide thousands of visas for low-paid workers.

But the government has watched that grow into a common practice over several years. Freezing it has just added unpredictability.

The moratorium won’t kill Canada’s economy. Most consumers will spend their dollars elsewhere in Canada if a restaurant with a labour shortage has a long wait. But the tourism industry does have some reason to worry that the sudden freeze just as their busy season starts will cause problems for some businesses, and perhaps hurt the sector….

But whatever the government decided to do, it should have provided a transition program so the sector wasn’t hit suddenly, he [Garth White, Restaurants Canada] said. And the government should stop moving its deadline and announce its plans to reform the program, he said….

The president of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, David Goldstein, said most in the industry don’t like the current program, but they do need the workers. There are some jobs it’s just hard to fill with Canadian workers, he said.

“The inconvenient truth is that in a Richard Florida society, somebody still has to make him his latte,” he said.

It’s not clear that Canadians should make it a policy priority to keep the price of the latte low, by making it easy to recruit lower-paid workers from abroad.

Why the Conservatives need to make changes to the foreign worker program fast – The Globe and Mail.

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Live-in Caregiver Program faces nine questions | Vancouver Sun

2014/05/28 1 Comment

Interesting piece by Douglas Todd on the live-in caregivers program. I was not aware of the high percentage of live-in caregivers working for members of their own families. Most of the experts cited are critical of the program rather than a more balanced selection, but this does not necessarily invalidate their concerns:

The nine debates:

1. How much does Canada need foreign caregivers who work for their own families?

Since 40 to 70 per cent of Filipino caregivers live with their own sponsoring families in Canada, Kurland says it makes it hard to tell whether a family “is pulling a fast one” and the foreign domestic worker is properly trained or “performing their duties.” …

2. Is the LCP a back-door family reunification program?

Statistics Canada data shows in any given year Canada grants permanent residency to almost as many dependents of live-in caregivers as to the domestic workers themselves. The backlog for live-in caregivers and dependents seeking permanent residency is three years and contains more than 25,000 people, mostly Filipinos. Still, in 2011 Canada gave permanent residency to more than 11,000 caregivers and their children or spouses; in 2012 the figure was 9,000.

3. Poor school and workplace performances

Numerous studies show the offspring of Filipino immigrants, especially boys, do not perform well in schools across Canada. UBC professor May Farrales has focused on the achievement gap among Filipino students in Vancouver, where they drop out of school more and have lower averages….

4. Filipino-Canadians rely more on taxpayers support

Filipinos earn less than Canadians in general, according to a York University study, which says the LCP’s “two-step” approach to immigration has “led to poor economic outcomes for those entering through the program, as well as long periods of separation from family.” Those who come to Canada in conjunction with the LCP, says the study, end up on average receiving more taxpayer support than other Canadians.

While some believe the family separation dilemma could be eased by giving live-in caregivers and their dependents permanent residency upon arrival in Canada, Kurland says that’s not feasible. It would remove live-in helpers incentive to complete even their two-year stint.

5. Does the LCP subsidize affluent families?

The media have run stories about well-off Canadian couples engaging in “nanny poaching” because of reportedly strong competition for live-in caregivers. But, if many caregivers work for their own families and virtually all leave such live-in duties as soon as they can, how intense can demand be?

Caregivers “from less developed countries are prepared to work long hours for low wages in order to obtain permanent residency,” says Martin Collacott, a former ambassador to Asia who is spokesman for the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform. “In effect, the relatively small number of affluent Canadians who can afford to bring in live-in caregivers from overseas are being underwritten by taxpayers.”

6. Other countries more attractive to domestic workers, except for one thing

Most Filipino live-in caregivers would avoid Canada and choose to work in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia or Japan or if it weren’t for the offer of citizenship, say Serafico and Diesta….

7. Are live-in caregivers circumventing immigration screening?

Most immigrants to Canada are admitted based on job skills or potential to invest. But live-in caregivers are babysitters, nannies and seniors helpers, which Immigration Canada ranks as low-skill. They are not eligible to get into Canada through regular immigration categories.

“Is the LCP really meeting an ongoing labour-market need or simply functioning as a means of immigration to Canada by individuals who wouldn’t otherwise qualify?” asks Collacott, who frequently appears before immigration subcommittees in Ottawa….

8. How does the LCP affect the Philippines?

Filipinos who work abroad send home more than $23 billion a year in remittances. “It’s keeping the whole country afloat, even with all its corruption,” says UBC’s Laquian, who arrived in Vancouver in the 1960s when there were fewer than 1,000 Filipinos in Canada.

While Laquian and his wife, Eleanor, actively support the Vancouver Committee for Domestic Workers and Caregivers Rights, he worries about the downside of so many industrious people leaving behind their families and the Philippines….

9. Would an au pair program be more effective?

With so many questions about Canada’s offer of citizenship to foreign live-in-caregivers, Kurland thinks highly of instituting an alternative “au pair program.”

An au pair program would offer temporary work to foreign nationals, but lead to better, more regulated working conditions that would lure caregivers from a wider range of countries, including, he says, France, Spain and Ireland….

Live-in Caregiver Program faces nine questions | Vancouver Sun.

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Ottawa approved thousands of foreign worker requests at minimum wage, data reveals, Banff profile

2014/05/28 Leave a comment

More evidence of how the Temporary Foreign Workers program expanded without adequate oversight and analysis:

Using Access to Information legislation, the Alberta Federation of Labour obtained extensive statistics about the program and provided its findings to The Globe and Mail. The union sought and obtained information on the number of Labour Market Opinions approved by Employment and Social Development Canada that were for minimum wage jobs. An LMO is a screening process meant to ensure employers have exhausted efforts to hire Canadians before turning to the program.

According to the documents, at least 15,006 minimum-wage positions were approved between March 31, 2010, and Feb. 10, 2014. (Only the numbers for Ontario go back as far as 2010, which means the actual totals for the period would likely be higher.)

Ottawa approved thousands of foreign worker requests at minimum wage, data reveals – The Globe and Mail.

On a more positive note, good profile on how Temporary Foreign Workers have transitioned to permanent residency in Banff, and some of the integration challenges:

Dean Irvine, principal at Banff Elementary, says this can sometimes be a struggle with immigrants from countries like the Philippines, where the culture says you leave education to the educators. “My experience is that is pretty standard in Asian countries for parents to say to teachers: ‘You’re the experts, you take care of things, we don’t necessarily need to communicate.’ That’s been a challenge here, but I think it’s getting better.”

Then there is the adjustment to living alongside moose, elk, deer and sometimes bears. When one elementary-school teacher noticed children from the same Filipino family absent a few days in a row, Ms. Godfrey’s office called to inquire what was going on. It turned out the mother couldn’t walk her children to school and didn’t want them going alone for fear they might encounter some wild creature.

“It’s all about educating them,” Ms. Godfrey says.

Mr. Jalalon says his family has adapted fairly easily to life in Canada, and a decidedly different climate than that of the Philippines. He has been surprised at how welcoming the people here have been, which is much different than the treatment he received in Abu Dubai, where he worked as a paramedic for two years before coming here. There, he says, Filipinos were treated as second-class citizens. Not in Banff.

If anything, he says, he wishes the many Filipinos in Banff worked harder to integrate themselves into the community, to do things like volunteer. Instead, many keep to themselves or stick close to their fellow countrymen. The Filipino community in Banff is too insular for Mr. Jalalon’s liking.

“There was a bad typhoon back home in November of last year – Typhoon Haiyan,” Mr. Jalalon says. “And it was the people of Banff that led the fundraising to help out, not the Filipinos here. I felt quite ashamed by that.”

Many here are concerned about the chill the federal government has put on the temporary foreign worker program. It is a reaction to stories suggesting some businesses are discriminating against non-immigrant Canadians because they don’t believe they have a comparable work ethic to employees they’re bringing in from overseas. But Darren Reeder, executive director of the Banff Lake Louise Hotel Motel Association, says the two resort communities desperately need the TFW to compensate for the loss in workers to higher-paying resource jobs elsewhere in the province.

Mr. Reeder says the fact many of these foreign workers are converting to full-time residents has been a huge benefit to towns like Banff. “It’s been wonderful to see [foreigners] become immersed in the community,” he says. “But we still need assistance in better meeting the needs of our foreign national population.” Despite challenges around housing and other issues, he says, “the fact so many want to become permanent residents speaks to community spirit and the lifestyle we offer. They’re saying: ‘It’s a price worth paying.’”

 Banff’s changing labour landscape 

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Behind the Komagata Maru’s fight to open Canada’s border and the Question of an Apology

2014/05/26 Leave a comment

Fascinating account of the legal battles and the lawyer, J. Edward Bird, regarding the passengers of the Komagata Maru. Well worth reading:

The government’s strategy became clear the very day the Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver. Health screening, a process normally completed within an hour, followed by immigration board interviews of all passengers, dragged on for days. The ship became a prison – no one was allowed off or on; food and water began to run low. The passengers’ lawyer, J. Edward Bird, was denied the right of access to his clients for weeks.

“I can only surmise that the instructions from the department at Ottawa to the immigration authorities here was to delay matters and delay matters and procrastinate and delay until such time as these people were starved back to their original port from whence they came,” he told a meeting hall packed with both South Asians and whites on June 21. “They talk about socialists and anarchists. There are no set of anarchists in Canada like the immigration officials who defy all law and order.”

Behind the Komagata Maru’s fight to open Canada’s border – The Globe and Mail

Interesting that Leader of the Opposition Tom Mulcair has called for a formal apology in Parliament.

I witnessed PM Harper’s “drive-by” apology in 2008 at the Surrey community picnic and it was not pretty. I quickly came to the conclusion that if governments wished to apologize (without legal liability for events which occurred in the past), the only acceptable way to do so was in Parliament, as was the case for Indian Residential Schools, the Chinese Head Tax, and Japanese WW2 Internment:

As we celebrate Asian Heritage Month this May, we cannot ignore the mistakes of our past — we must remember the history of the Komagata Maru Tragedy.

We must condemn these acts, respectfully, officially, and with sincerity, no matter when they occurred.

That is why New Democrats stand with members of the Indo-Canadian community in their call for an official apology from the Parliament of Canada for the Komagata Maru Tragedy.

In 2012, Canada’s New Democrats presented an Opposition Day Motion calling on Stephen Harper and the Conservatives to deliver an apology long overdue — they refused.

While successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to do the right thing, the NDP has always advocated for an apology.

Today, we renew our call.

Let’s not wait another 100 years to do the right thing — it’s time for the government to act now.

Mulcair: 100 years after Komagata Maru tragedy, Parliament’s apology is overdue | Toronto Star.

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Canada facing more competition in drawing immigrants, says OECD study

2014/05/24 Leave a comment

Interesting study by the OECD on the essentially neutrality of immigration overall, even though it may be significant in particular sectors with skills shortages.

So both the claims of its benefits are likely exaggerated, as are the claims of its costs (i.e., Herbert Grubel: The invisible price tag of immigration):

“Even though most migration is not directly driven by workforce needs, immigrants are playing a significant role in the most dynamic sectors of the economy,” the study states.

“The impact of the cumulative waves of migration that arrived over the past 50 years in OECD countries is on average close to zero, rarely exceeding 0.5% of GDP in either positive or negative terms,” it says.

An examination of the fiscal impact of immigration on Canada, the U.S., Europe and Australia over the past 50 years suggests “is, on average, zero.”

New arrivals to OECD nations are “neither a burden to the public purse, nor are they a panacea for addressing fiscal challenges. In most countries, except in those with a large share of older migrants, migrants contribute more in taxes and social contributions than they receive in individual benefits.

Gives both perspectives reason for further reflection and analysis, as well as where does citizenship policy figure in immigration competitiveness.

Canada facing more competition in drawing immigrants, says OECD study.

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Immigration from Italy to Canada more than doubles since 2005 – Canada News Centre

2014/05/23 Leave a comment

Interesting, on both substantive and communications grounds. Substantively, likely reflects ongoing Eurozone post-2008 crash economic weaknesses. From a communications perspectives, surprising given that the Conservative party earlier on had largely written off Italian Canadians as Liberals, and the numbers of Italian immigrants are still small – 63rd source country in 2012):

Last year, 823 individuals from Italy became Canadian permanent residents, an increase of nearly 140 percent from 2005. In addition, 421 foreign students from Italy entered Canada in 2013, a 90 percent increase from 2005.

Italian immigration to Canada is once again increasing following a significant period of decline between 1967 and 2005.

The high number of new permanent residents includes newcomers coming to Canada from Italy as economic immigrants, which has almost tripled over the past 10 years. Last year, Canada admitted 500 people from Italy in the economic class, an increase of nearly 200 percent since 2003.

Immigration from Italy to Canada more than doubles since 2005 – Canada News Centre.

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Alberta Labour Minister blasts feds over foreign workers

2014/05/22 Leave a comment

Kind of amusing given previous bad blood between the two Ministers (Jason Kenney apologizes to Thomas Lukaszuk for a-hole email gaffe). But substantively, another call for pathways to permanent residency and citizenship:

“We need you here to stay. A revolving door is simply not humane, and economically not sound,” he said.

“In most cases what we need in Canada, and particularly in Alberta, is permanent foreign workers.”

Lukaszuk blasted federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney for suspending the TFW program in the food sector last month to launch a review, after several Canadian businesses were accused of giving TFWs more hours or priority work status.

Alberta Labour Minister blasts feds over foreign workers | Alberta | News | Calg.

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Quantifying and Visualizing Global International Migration Flows

2014/05/20 Leave a comment

Migration flowsAn interesting study on global migration flows and patterns by the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital. Highlights:

Contrary to common belief (4–6), our data (Fig. 3) do not indicate a continuous increase in migration flows over the past two decades, neither in absolute or relative terms. According to our estimates, the volume of global migration flows declined from 41.4 million (0.75% of world population) during 1990 to 1995, to 34.2 million (0.57% of world population) during 1995 to 2000. A substantial part of the fall might be accounted for by ceasing of cross-border movements triggered by the violent conflicts in Rwanda and the ending of the Soviet-installed Najibullah regime in Afghanistan. The number of global movements increased by 5.7 million between 1995–2000 and 2000–2005, and by 1.6 million between 2000–2005 and 2005–2010, whereas the percentage of the world population moving over 5-year periods has been relatively stable since 1995.

The size of migration flows within and between 15 world regions in 2005 to 2010 (estimates are in database S1) is shown in Fig. 4. Several migration patterns shown in Fig. 4 are broadly in line with previous assessments based on global stock data (11) and flow data for selected countries published by the U.N. (3, 4, 18, 19). Earlier observations include the attractiveness of North America as a migrant destination, the substantial movements from South Asia to the Gulf states in Western Asia, the diverse movements within and between the European regions, and the general tendency for more developed regions to record net migration gains, whereas the less developed countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America sent more migrants than they received from 2005 to 2010.

Check out the nifty interactive graphic here as a good example of how to visualize data.

Quantifying Global International Migration Flows.

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Temporary foreign workers: Canada needs fewer guests – and more citizens

2014/05/20 Leave a comment

Globe editorial:

What should Mr. Kenney do?

Study the issue: Take the time needed to get this right. Commission a group of experts and give them at least six months. Bring the other parties in, and borrow their best ideas. Don’t just introduce legislation in the next few weeks, backed up by nothing more than a thin press release and no actual evidence, and try to hustle it through Parliament. Learn from the fiasco of the Fair Elections Act.

Be principled: A temporary worker program should be for jobs that are temporary. There’s a logic to bringing in seasonal agricultural workers. There may be a logic to some highly skilled workers being brought in under the program, in cases where no trained Canadians exist or where the job is temporary. But burger flippers?

Shrink the program: Make it smaller. Much smaller. Cap the number allowed in each year. Let Canada’s labour market work. If employers in low-wage fields find that they have to offer compensation in excess of minimum wage to attract short-order cooks, customer-service agents and retail sales people, that’s a good thing. It will lead to higher wages for people at the low end of the wage scale, and it will also spur innovation and productivity gains. We want the market to work and to self-correct as it is supposed to, with a tight labour supply in one area of the country forcing up wages, thereby drawing in the underemployed, be they part-time students from down the road or the unemployed from across the country.

Give temporary workers more rights: Shrink the program – but expand their rights. Why not give them the right to change jobs, and even complete labour mobility within Canada, just like Canadians? Give them the power to fight back against abuse and raise their own wages.

More citizens, fewer guests: Canada was built by immigrants who became citizens, not visitors who went home. That’s our future, too.

Citizenship Bill C-24 at Committee goes in other direction, by making citizenship harder to get and no longer providing credit for time spent in Canada as temporary foreign workers.

Temporary foreign workers: Canada needs fewer guests – and more citizens – The Globe and Mail.

Interestingly, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business includes in its recommendations on Temporary Foreign Workers a pathway to citizenship, while the government’s Bill C-24 makes this more difficult given removal of partial credit for pre-Permanent Residents time:

•  Ending the moratorium on restaurants

• Creating a pathway to permanent residence for all TFWs

• A Bill of Rights for TFWs

• Stricter enforcement of existing rules

• An accredited TFW stream for trusted employers

• Matching TFW/Canadian wages by employer

• Maximum 1:1 ratio of TFWs to Canadians

• Allowing permanent immigration for those in entry-level jobs

• Ensuring other government programs (eg. EI) address need for entry-level workers.

CFIB urges feds to end moratorium, enforce rules, protect TFWs’ rights – National Scene – Daily Business Buzz.

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