André Pratte: Quebec prayer ban would render freedom of religion meaningless  

2025/09/08 Leave a comment

Good commentary but the police need to more willing to use the tools to remedy street blockages and enforce bubble zones:

…Yes, some of the demonstrations, tied as they are to the war in Gaza, are provocations. The demonstrators want to shock the public in the hopes of raising awareness to their cause. This is exactly the kind of unpopular behaviour that is protected by freedom of expression, as long as the demonstrators do not break the law, for instance by blocking traffic or intimidating others. If they cross those lines, the police already possess all the tools necessary to remedy the situation. An all-encompassing ban on prayers in public spaces is neither necessary nor reasonable.  

Separatist intellectual Mathieu Bock-Côté, who inspired many of the CAQ’s nationalist policies, wrote in Le Journal de Montréal that Islamic street players are “symbolic aggressions”: “We are talking about a conquering Islam, that is to say, an Islam shaped by Islamism and carried by waves of migration that are transforming the demographic composition of our societies.” However, Islamists are in no position to “transform the demographic composition” of Quebec, where Muslims represent a mere five per cent of the population, compared to 54 per cent for Catholics and 27 per cent for those who have no religion.   

For make no mistake: as with bill 21 banning the wearing of religious symbols by teachers, only one religion, Islam, is being targeted here. Other religious groups, including Catholics, have held ceremonies in public in Quebec for decades without anyone challenging their right to do so.   

The promised legislation will very probably violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. It is not yet known for certain if the Legault government will pre-emptively invoke the charters’ notwithstanding clause, but we do know that they have done so for two previous pieces of legislation, bill 21, already mentioned, and bill 96 strengthening the protection of the French language. This abuse of the notwithstanding clause is extremely serious, for in effect it deprives Quebecers of the right to challenge rights-infringing measures adopted by the state. Citizens are left with no means of defence, as if the charters did not exist. 

And so it is that Quebecers’ fundamental rights are being slowly but surely eroded. Sadly, that worrisome trend is met with an immense collective shrug.  

Source: André Pratte: Quebec prayer ban would render freedom of religion meaningless  

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Immigration Raid on Hyundai-LG Plant in Georgia Rattles South Korea

2025/09/08 Leave a comment

Korea negotiated release of the workers but short and long-term damage to USA as safe country for investment will increase:

The United States has for years pressured South Korea to invest billions of dollars in American industry, a push that has only increased over the last few months.

That made it all the more shocking for South Koreans when they learned that U.S. immigration officials had raided the construction site of a major Hyundai-LG plant in Georgia on Thursday, arresting hundreds of South Korean citizens.

U.S. officials said they had arrested 475 people during the raid, in Ellabell, Ga., because they were in the country illegally or working unlawfully. Most of them were South Korean nationals who had been sent to help finish building an electric-car battery factory, according to industry officials familiar with the project. Most, they said, were subcontractors working for the carmaker Hyundai and the battery maker LG Energy Solution, South Korean companies that share ownership of the plant.

The raid came at a sensitive time ​in trade relations​, unsettling South Korean businesses investing in the United States. Those companies face a unique problem under President Trump. While encouraging them to invest ​in the United States​, his administration has also imposed heavy tariffs and drastically tightened visa allocations, making it more difficult and costly for them to ship components and find technicians to build their factories.

The arrests left officials in Seoul reeling. Just last month, President Lee Jae-myung of South Korea met with Mr. Trump, and the two men reaffirmed their countries’ seven-decade-old alliance. They also agreed to a new broad-stroke trade deal. But officials from both sides remain engaged in tense negotiations over details of the deal, which was first announced in late July.

That uncertainty was reflected in South Korea’s shocked but subdued reaction to the raid.

The country was closely monitoring the case for clues on how the Trump administration’s immigration policy would affect the operations of South Korean industrial giants like Hyundai and LG​. Those companies have been pouring billions ​of dollars into building new factories in the United States​ under the encouragement of both governments, which seek to expand their alliance beyond military cooperation into global supply chains.

​Both Hyundai and LG said little about the raid, except that they had started their own investigations, including into the practices of their subcontractors. But the unease was highlighted when ​South Korea’s Foreign Ministry issued an unusual statement ​on Friday, conveying its “concern and regrets” to Washington.

The ministry did not elaborate, but its language appeared to reflect South Korea’s frustration with the U.S. government’s treatment of South Korean investors.

“The economic activities of our investment companies and the rights and interests of our citizens must not be unjustly violated during U.S. law enforcement proceedings,” it said….

Source: Immigration Raid on Hyundai-LG Plant in Georgia Rattles South Korea

Filed under Immigration, Trump administration Tagged with ,

Browne: After 20 years working in Canada’s cultural sector, I can finally speak out without fear

2025/09/06 Leave a comment

Good long read and reminder of some of the excesses in the cultural (and other) sectors:

…I believe I was a progressive type. I wanted to be inclusive. I wanted to help people who had a difficult time – for one reason or another – get started in the cultural world or be recognized so they felt equal and worthy to others in the community. I tried to reach out to diverse communities not comfortable with traditional institutions, and … a long list of other well-meaning ambitions. Maybe I was a Christian trying to make the world a better place, but I’d never say that. Then I realized I was always going to be wrong, somehow. Remaining silent was safe for me and the organizations where I was employed. And I did even when there were people who were clearly paying for the sins of their ancestors or unintended consequences beyond their control, including having graduated from a prestigious university. I should have spoken up.

While I learned to say nothing out loud, I continued to have transgressive thoughts. In one training session, we began by confiding to the group what our pronouns were. Instead of he and him I wanted to insist on “sir” or “Mr. Browne” as monikers. (This is how my generation used to address older people they respected.) Needless to say, I didn’t blurt this out.

The cultural world is full of enforcers in 2025: art schools, universities, arts associations and, most brutal and rigid, provincial and federal funders. All conspire to instill proper thinking. If you’ve applied for government grants you know that culture money is a not so subtle animator of social policy objectives. If you want government money, you twist your art to fit their agenda. Much of what is produced in this manner alienates and produces cynicism, not just for a mainstream audience but for complicit culture workers.

Maybe the culture world needs an existential crisis to push us from so-called Canada to patriotism. One that moves culture from an exclusionary ideology that needs to keep finding people and ideas to disenfranchise or to be superior to … to what I’m not sure. Unsettling ideas are the raw cultural edge artists used to embrace; few sought the safety of consensus. This volatile, uncensored realm, not managed by academics or bureaucrats, can perhaps once again offer the possibility of revelation. 

Maybe a new generation of curators and administrators will better separate art from advocacy. In my postretirement life, I’m returning to my teenage ambition to be an artist. I have such old-fashioned ideas about art I’m likely not going to provoke anyone, but I’d hope I’m encouraged by whomever runs museums to do just this.

Kelvin Browne is a former vice-president at the Royal Ontario Museum and the former Executive Director and CEO of the Gardiner Museum

Source: After 20 years working in Canada’s cultural sector, I can finally speak out without fear

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Cheng: What I Got Wrong About D.E.I.

2025/09/06 1 Comment

Good piece and reminder that the importance of the journey:

…Math is famous for its equations, but equations are more subtle than they first appear. A simple equation like 4 + 1 = 1 + 4 shows not just that two values are equal but also that there are two subtly different ways of adding the same numbers to produce the same result. A similar approach applies to more advanced and complicated forms of math, such as the study of shapes or paths through space. We make choices about how to determine equality.

This is relevant to how we evaluate what people have achieved and make predictions about how well they will do. We can get some insight into how we should make these evaluations from a mathematical field called metric spaces.

A metric is a way of measuring the distance between two points but not necessarily physical distance; it could be how much time it takes with traffic as a factor or how much energy will be expended, depending on whether you’re going uphill or downhill. A distance cannot be measured based on the position of a single point. It requires the effort of measuring the distance between two points. This may sound redundant, but it’s an important clarification: Metrics can be measured only by taking into account the starting point and ending point, as well as relevant features of the journey — the whole story.

When we evaluate people, we could do the same. Instead of looking at just what they have achieved, we could also look at where they started and be clearer about how we are measuring the metaphorical distance they have come and whether we are taking into account the support they had or the obstructions they faced.

If we are selecting sprinters for a track team, we might look at their best times for the 100-meter dash. But if someone had, for some reason, only ever run races uphill or against the wind, it would make sense to take that into account and not compare that runner’s times to others’ directly. We would be treating those people differently but only because their paths were different; really we’d be evaluating their paths fairly relative to their contexts.

Other forms of achievement are not as straightforward to measure, but the idea is analogous. If someone achieved a certain SAT score after months of tutoring and someone else earned the same score having never seen an SAT before, it would be reasonable to be more impressed with the latter result and think that the second test taker has more potential. We should think of D.E.I. efforts as the best versions of this and aim to design systems that can measure the fuller picture of someone’s professional journey, not just the current result.

It took me a long time to realize that when I began my career, I had probably worked much harder than I might have if I had had a different identity. I had to work against people telling me I would never be able to succeed. When I attended conferences, I dealt with inappropriate behavior from men senior to me. I had to find my way in my career having no mentors who looked at all like me. I am grateful for the support of some senior mathematicians, and I now realize that it wasn’t extra help because I was a woman; it was help in overcoming the extra obstructions I faced as a woman.

It shouldn’t be called sexist to help people overcome sexism, and it shouldn’t be called racist to help people overcome racism, but if we give this help too crudely, then we leave ourselves open to these criticisms. Math teaches us that D.E.I. initiatives should be about carefully defining the metrics we use to measure how far people have come and thus how far they have the potential to go. They should be about uncovering when some people are constantly running uphill or against the wind, which can inform us how to give everyone an equal tailwind and an equal opportunity to succeed.

Dr. Cheng is the scientist in residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Source: What I Got Wrong About D.E.I.

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Rioux | Drôles de prières

2025/09/06 Leave a comment

When is a prayer a prayer, and when is it more a political event. Other examples would arguably include the Annual March for Life and telling that most Christian religious figures oppose the ban:

…La France a toujours résisté à la tentation de légiférer sur ces prières, consciente que la religion a toute sa place dans les lieux publics pourvu qu’elle ne gêne pas l’ordre public et que sa présence ne relève pas de la provocation. Il n’est pas besoin d’être diplômé en théologie pour savoir que, dans nos pays, la prière n’est pas un banal instrument d’agit-prop. Ce prosélytisme exacerbé est en contradiction avec nos traditions culturelles et le sens même de la prière, celle-ci étant généralement considérée comme un geste intime et personnel qui exige le recueillement et ne saurait donc être confondu avec des slogans militants hurlés par une foule hystérique. Comment s’étonner dès lors que, en s’exhibant ainsi sur la voie publique, ces hommes (car les femmes en sont exclues) provoquent des réactions de rejet ? Et, à plus forte raison, s’ils le font un dimanche devant une église !

Pour peu que l’on daigne sortir de sa bulle, on constatera que ces prières publiques sont aujourd’hui instrumentalisées aussi bien sur Downing Street que devant la porte de Brandebourg. Si l’idée de la laïcité est étrangère à l’islam, se pourrait-il que, comme le voile, ces prières soient une façon pour lui de marquer son territoire ?

L’idée n’est pas nouvelle. On ne compte plus les intellectuels qui, durant tout le XXe siècle, et même avant, ont démontré le caractère conquérant de l’islam. Admirateur de la richesse de la culture musulmane, l’islamologue français Roger Arnaldez fut un ami du grand écrivain égyptien Taha Hussein, l’un des artisans de la renaissance intellectuelle arabe (la Nahda). Il considérait que « la conquête est pour les musulmans un moyen normal, voulu et conduit par Dieu, pour répandre la foi dans les pays des infidèles ». Cette conquête n’est pas toujours le fait des armes, écrivait-il dès 1994, mais « d’une volonté non seulement de convertir des individus, ce qui est normal, mais de prendre pied et position dans la vie sociale et politique des pays de l’ancien Dar al-Harb [où l’islam n’a pas triomphé]. Il n’est plus alors question de djihad armé, moins encore de terrorisme, mais d’un projet de conquête insinueuse qui n’en est pas moins une conquête ».

Tout en reconnaissant que ces thèses pouvaient être contestées, l’islamologue membre de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques de France jugeait que « l’Islam, par beaucoup de ses traits et par son histoire passée, pose des problèmes que ne pose aucune autre des grandes religions. Il en résulte qu’on doit, à son égard, rester très attentif et garder une attitude de grande prudence »….

Source: Chronique | Drôles de prières

Filed under Laïcité, Religion Tagged with , ,

CHARLEBOIS: On food security, Liberals have the better Temporary Foreign Worker plan, Ivison: Poilievre takes a risk on scrapping TFWs

2025/09/06 Leave a comment

Of note:

…The Liberal plan — led by Mark Carney — opts for reform rather than elimination. It introduces a cap to reduce temporary residents (including workers and students) to under 5% of the population by 2027 and tightens eligibility, permit lengths, and program oversight. Crucially, agriculture and food processing are explicitly exempted, ensuring that farms and processors maintain access to the labour they need. This more measured approach reins in misuse of the program while protecting supply, helping to moderate food price pressures.

The implications for prices are stark. If Poilievre’s model is adopted, Canadians can expect sharper and faster increases in both food-service and retail. Restaurants will need to hike wages to compete for domestic workers, leading to menu prices that rise faster than inflation. Grocers will see wholesale costs climb as farm and processing labour tightens. By contrast, the Liberal plan allows for a gradual adjustment while safeguarding agricultural labour, which should help contain inflationary shocks.

So which policy best serves a country grappling with high youth unemployment and a food system dependent on reliable labour? Poilievre’s proposal appeals to those eager to prioritize Canadian youth, but it risks jolting the food sector and undermining affordability. The Liberal reform plan, though far from perfect, offers a more pragmatic balance: Reducing excesses, protecting supply chains, and keeping food as affordable as possible in an already volatile global environment.

In the end, the question is not whether Canadians will pay more for food — it’s how much more. One plan wagers on sweeping labour substitution to revive youth job prospects. The other emphasizes stability and gradual reform to steady the system.

For households already under financial strain, the choice policymakers make could be the difference between manageable increases and another round of sticker shock at the till.

— Sylvain Charlebois is director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, co-host of The Food Professor Podcast and visiting scholar at McGill University.

Source: CHARLEBOIS: On food security, Liberals have the better Temporary Foreign Worker plan

And from John Ivison:

…But while he has correctly identified the disease, it is less clear he has found the cure.

The Conservative plan would create a standalone program for seasonal agricultural workers and the food processing industry.

But ending the issuance of new permits cold turkey is likely to result in a completely different set of unintended consequences than the ill-advised policy that caused the problem in the first place.

The program should return to its original intent of allowing firms to hire foreign workers when qualified Canadians are not available, gradually reducing the number of temporary foreign workers as a share of the low-skill workforce.

That is what the Liberal reforms are trying to do, although as Poilievre pointed out, it looks like the government won’t hit its target in 2025.

However, a hard stop to the program is likely to give labour markets whiplash.

From a political perspective, it’s not an obvious win for Poilievre, even if the public is sympathetic to the intent.

His critics cite this as another example of him fighting the culture wars. That’s unfair: he was clear he was not demonizing foreign workers or regular immigrants.

But it is undoubtedly a hardening of the party’s position from the 2025 platform, which talked about dramatically reducing the number of temporary foreign workers and international students.

Poilievre seems to be more concerned about his leadership review in January than winning votes from people who didn’t vote for him last time.

This — and other immigration-reform positions to come — are Rempel Garner’s work and it should have been her show. There are many able Conservative MPs who have been reduced to bobbleheads by the leader and that must change.

Scrapping the temporary foreign worker program is a valid, if misguided, response to the crisis in youth unemployment.

But the risk for Poilievre is that he’s shrinking, not expanding, his pool of available voters.

Source: John Ivison: Poilievre takes a risk on scrapping temporary foreign workers

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Adam Pankratz: The NDP is here to rescue us from ‘cis’ men

2025/09/06 Leave a comment

Patrick Lagacé has the more serious yet witty take below this take by Pankratz:

…Among the various requirements to be approved to run for the poisoned chalice of NDP leader is a Nomination Signature Form, which must be signed by 500 members in good standing of the NDP. So far, so normal. Then, as is too often the case for the new left, normal leaves the room to be replaced by grievance and nonsense.

And so, to ensure common sense is entirely absent from the signature process, the NDP requires “at least fifty percent (50%) of the total required signatures must be from members who do not identify as a cis man,” and “a minimum of one hundred (100) signatures must be from members of equity-seeking groups, including but not limited to racialized members, Indigenous members, members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community, and persons living with disabilities.”

If there were any lingering doubt, the party of the working class is now definitively the party of identity politics and grievance culture. This is the language that broadcasts to Canadians that the message the NDP got from their electoral drubbing is that they must be even more radical.

While the NDP’s tone deafness to public sentiment is remarkable, the manner in which it facilitates the exclusion of women is even more staggering. Nowhere, readers of the rules will note, is it specified that 50 per cent of signatories must be female, only not “cis man.” That is to say, a candidate can be approved with a combination of cis men and trans women, all natal males, without the need to seek the approval of a single female. While this scenario is admittedly unlikely, it is staggering that a party so hell bent on “inclusivity” and “equity” is so obviously comfortable with the erasure of women from its inclusion criteria. By refusing to mention the word “woman” anywhere, the NDP have signalled their virtue, all while displaying the electoral communications sophistication of trepanned gnat….

Adam Pankratz is a lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.

Source: Adam Pankratz: The NDP is here to rescue us from ‘cis’ men

Legacé: Le NPD domine dans UQAM—Les-Nids-De-Poule

…Le NPD déconne parce que l’immense majorité de la population canadienne est cisgenre. Ce n’est pas une opinion, c’est un fait : les non-cis – transgenres et non-binaires – composent très exactement 0,33 % de la population canadienne de plus de 15 ans selon le recensement de 2021, soit 100 815 personnes sur 30,5 millions de personnes.

Mais oui, limitons le nombre d’hommes cisgenres qui peuvent appuyer une personne désirant diriger le NPD, ça me semble une excellente façon d’élargir la tente politique de ce parti !

Là où le NPD déconne aussi, c’est pour la vérification de l’étiquette de tous ces signataires. Comment les instances néo-démocrates vont-elles vérifier si un signataire est cisgenre… ou pas ?

S’il est 2S, soit bispirituel autochtone ?

Et véritablement autochtone ?

J’ai un TDA diagnostiqué : suis-je en situation de handicap ?

Passage sublime du texte de Catherine Lévesque dans le Post : Le parti n’a pas répondu immédiatement à savoir comment les dirigeants du parti vérifieraient si les signataires s’identifient comme cisgenres ou faisant partie d’un groupe « en quête d’équité ».

Pour authentifier les cis, va-t-on demander aux signataires de baisser leur pantalon ?

Pour le 2S, euh, comment on vérifie cela ?

Je cesse de déconner : le NPD a bien le droit de faire ce qu’il veut, même divorcer formellement de la majorité des Canadiens qui ne sacralisent pas leur sexe, leur genre, leur sigle, leur orientation sexuelle, leur patrimoine culturel. Bref, la moyenne des ours-es.

Mais dans le rayon du signalement de vertu, ces règles sont presque aussi niaiseuses que le discours anti-raciste-anti-colonialiste-anti-patriarcal qu’on retrouve dans les associations facultaires les plus militantes de l’UQAM.

Le NPD est sorti des élections du 28 avril avec le pire résultat depuis sa fondation, tant dans le nombre de députés que dans sa part du vote populaire. Il a perdu le statut de parti officiel au Parlement. Son chef Jagmeet Singh a fini troisième dans sa circonscription.

Source: Le NPD domine dans UQAM—Les-Nids-De-Poule

… The NDP is messing around because the vast majority of the Canadian population is cisgender. It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact: non-cis – transgender and non-binary – make up exactly 0.33% of the Canadian population over the age of 15 according to the 2021 census, or 100,815 people out of 30.5 million people.

But yes, let’s limit the number of cisgender men who can support a person wishing to lead the NPD, it seems to me an excellent way to expand the political tent of this party!

Where the NDP also messes up is for the verification of the label of all these signatories. How will the New Democratic bodies verify whether a signatory is cisgender… or not?

If he is 2S, or indigenous bispiritual?

And truly indigenous?

I have a diagnosed ADD: am I disabled?

Sublime passage from Catherine Lévesque’s text in the Post: The party did not immediately respond to how party leaders would verify whether the signatories identify themselves as cisgenders or part of a group “in search of equity”.

To authenticate the cis, will we ask the signatories to lower their pants?

For the 2S, uh, how do we check this?

I stop fooling around: the NDP has the right to do what it wants, even formally divorce the majority of Canadians who do not sanctify their sex, gender, acronym, sexual orientation, cultural heritage. In short, the average of bears.

But in the radius of virtue reporting, these rules are almost as silly as the anti-racist-anti-colonialist-anti-patriarchal discourse found in the most militant faculty associations of UQAM.

The NDP came out of the April 28 elections with the worst result since its foundation, both in the number of deputies and in its share of the popular vote. It has lost the status of official party in Parliament. His leader Jagmeet Singh finished third in his riding.

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , ,

Poilievre calls for federal government to end temporary foreign worker program 

2025/09/05 Leave a comment

Some initial comments on the CPC proposal:

…The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), a small-business lobby group, condemned Mr. Poilievre’s proposal to scrap the program, saying that there were “zero” employers of entry-level workers who use the program for cheap labour. 

“We have many parts of Canada – particularly in rural and remote communities – with very few available entry-level workers for jobs on which local people depend,” said Dan Kelly, president of the CFIB, in a post on X.

Mr. Poilievre’s criticism of the program as exploitative has been voiced for years by international human-rights organizations and migrants’ rights groups. 

…In a recent interview with The Globe, Mikal Skuterud, a labour economist at the University of Waterloo, said that immigration is not the main driver of higher youth unemployment. Instead, he pointed to weak economic conditions and a sharp reduction in job vacancies that are making it tougher for people to secure employment.

Source: Poilievre calls for federal government to end temporary foreign worker program

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Bonner & Brown: Poilievre’s call to scrap the temporary foreign worker program is a good first step

2025/09/05 Leave a comment

Part of the ecosystem likely behind the CPC push to eliminate temporary foreign workers apart from agriculture.

Need for major trimming, undoubtedly, eliminating not realistic given pushback from business community and likely provinces.

While much of the pushback is self-serving, as businesses were far too eager to use temporary workers rather than improving compensation, training and investing more in technology, there will always be needs for some temporary workers irrespective of pathways or not for permanent residency:

…Canada’s foreign labour crisis can be seen as perpetuating intergenerational injustice by sidelining Canadian youth. The result is a sense of alienation and despair that makes people call into question the very legitimacy of Canada’s social contract. Many Canadian youth, especially those burdened by student debt and high living costs, view government and business as having abdicated their role in the natural order of a high-trust society: to contribute to public cohesion and nurture a skilled workforce. Instead, they’ve opted for importing an easily exploitable foreign population in order to suppress innovation and wage growth.

Herein lies the case for the Conservatives’ announcement as a key starting point. The government should actually abolish all temporary labour schemes in all sectors of the economy—with the exception of certain areas, such as seasonal agriculture, where the TFWP has never been controversial.

Ottawa and the provinces must use every means at their disposal (from tax incentives to public praise) to reward businesses for hiring and training actual Canadians.

This is the least Canadians should be able to expect from business and government alike. The sooner things change, the better.

Source: Poilievre’s call to scrap the temporary foreign worker program is a good first step

And a separate more alarmist piece by Brown,

Canada’s youth unemployment has surged to record highs, with 22 percent without jobs. This crisis stems from systemic failures in immigration policy enacted during the pandemic, particularly the abuse-ridden Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), foreign-student streams, and asylum and in-land asylum systems.

They have flooded the labour market with cheap, temporary workers, suppressing wages, and blocking entry-level opportunities for Canadian graduates. AI advancements exacerbate this, rerouting career paths young people trained for.

The fallout is profound: delayed adulthood milestones like independence, homeownership, and family formation. Skyrocketing housing costs force many into unaffordable dog-crate apartments or prolonged parental dependence. In an increasingly digital isolated world, this breeds alienation, eroding both confidence and social bonds.

Young men, hit hardest, are turning to radical fringes. Groups like the Dominion Society of Canada push for “remigration” well beyond deporting TFWP abusers or fraudulent claimants, with its supporters veering into blanket calls to expel immigrants. Such rhetoric risks serving as a kind of honeypot for the vulnerable, while potentially derailing legitimate reform.

One can certainly make the case that mass immigration has been the most destructive policy blunder in this country’s history. Historically poor trend lines in jobs, housing affordability, health-care wait-times, and a rise in violent crime all sit downstream from the decision to abandon the sensible. Couple this with spiking the GDP coming out of Canada’s pandemic response, suppressing wages, and experimenting with a country run as a post-national economic zone first, and a distinct society with standards and guard-rails second.

But calls for “remigration,” and saying you are inspired by “The Great Replacement,” is less a dog-whistle than a foghorn; and this group’s brazen call to revoke permanent residency status and naturalized citizenship is worse. We know what they mean when they say “heritage Canadian.” Canada may have been built by European settlers, Anglo and French, but not by them and them alone. Our demographic destiny changed long ago.

History warns us: idle hands, suppressed opportunities, and angry young men do not mix. Yet blame lies squarely with government and exploitative businesses, not with immigrants as a whole. Liberal policies have ballooned temporary residents to an estimated 3 million, prioritizing volume over integration. To stem this, Canada must enforce “temporary” status, deport those excesses, and restore a points-based system emphasizing skills and values.

This is the moment to cut the TFWP down to size, to continue to reform the International Mobility Program, and to return to the prioritization of Canadian workers, particularly those yet to get off the launch pad, to rebuild opportunity and restore the promise of tomorrow. Failure will only invite ugliness: potentially radical coalitions could fracture consensus on sensible changes. Success means launching youth into productive lives, fostering upward mobility for the first time in years.

By Alexander Brown, a director with the National Citizens Coalition

Source: Canada can fix its xenophobia by fixing its immigration system

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Pierre Poilievre’s call to scrap the temporary foreign worker program marks new, tougher stance for Conservatives

2025/09/04 Leave a comment

Safer area for Conservatives to attack and immigration critic Rempel Garner is having fun tweeting examples of TFWs in low-skilled service jobs. The excesses need to be trimmed and Canadian employers should not rely on TFWs to the same extent as cheaper labour or avoiding more investment in technology. Expect the provinces will also push back given the views of their business communities.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Mark Carney’s Liberals to ditch the federal government’s decades-old temporary foreign worker program, taking a harder stance against a program he’s previously said should be reduced, not axed outright.

The reason why, Poilievre said Wednesday, is because of worsening youth unemployment, rather than a Liberal-induced “immigration crisis” he has claimed has weakened both the economy and security of the country.

“The individual temporary foreign workers, the workers themselves, they are not bad people. They are not the problem. They are being taken advantage of by Liberal corporate leaders who want to use them to drive down wages,” Poilievre said at a news conference in Mississauga.

“We continue to support the dream of all immigrants to Canada, the immigrants who come here to be Canadian to get a job, work hard, contribute and live a good life that is part of the Canadian promise, and that is not what we’re addressing here today.”

Experts, however, warn that the Conservative leader’s framing is misleading, and promotes beliefs that foreign workers are a prominent threat to Canadian jobs.

The long-standing temporary foreign worker program allows Canadian companies to hire foreign nationals for temporary positions, as long as employers complete a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) to demonstrate the need for a temporary worker and that no local Canadians or permanent residents can fill the role. Through its various streams, the program has been lauded as a way to address labour shortages, but has also become a magnet for criticisms that it exposes workers to exploitation and abuse.

During this year’s spring campaign, Poilievre pledged in his platform to “restore order to immigration” in part by “dramatically reducing the number of temporary workers.”

On Wednesday, his party called on Ottawa to permanently end the program, cease issuing visas for new workers, create a separate program for “legitimately difficult-to-fill agricultural labour,” and to wind down the program more slowly in “ultra-low-unemployment regions.”

Tim Powers, chair of public affairs firm Summa Strategies, said Poilievre’s tougher position and shift in tone suggests he is seizing on Canadians’ economic fears while also avoiding turning away more immigrant communities who could join his coalition of Conservatives.

“It isn’t so much about what the program actually does. It’s what he thinks it represents to Canadians, this narrative that their jobs are being taken from them, and young people don’t get the opportunity to do work because temporary foreign workers are replacing them,” Powers said.

“I think if you talk to a lot of employers who use the program, they would tell you that trying to find local workers, particularly in service-based jobs … is hard to do because not everyone views the opportunities to work in a fish plant or a Tim Hortons as a job they want.”

At a cabinet retreat in Toronto, Prime Minister Mark Carney said he believed the program still had a place in his policy book and said he would assess how well the program was working.

“When I talk to businesses around the country … their number 1 issue is tariffs, and their number 2 issue is access to temporary foreign workers,” Carney told reporters.

But the Conservative leader, citing a youth unemployment rate that has climbed to 14.6 per cent, rolled out a series of claims about the program to justify his ask.

“The Liberals promised they would cap the temporary foreign worker program at 82,000, but in the first six months, they’ve already handed out 105,000 permits,” Poilievre said.

….According to federal data, Canada set a target to admit 82,000 new arrivals through the program this year.

But Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said Poilievre’s 105,000 figure does not “represent new arrivals to the country” and includes permit extensions for people already in Canada.

“Between January and June 2025, 33,722 new workers entered Canada through this program, which is roughly 40 per cent of the total volume expected this year,” a spokesperson for the department said in an email.

Despite Poilievre’s focus on the economic impacts of the program, some economists and immigration experts expressed concern about that the Conservative leader’s comments could still feed into the belief that migrant workers steal jobs. 

“It is wrong to suggest that migrant labour is a major source of the problems Canadian workers are experiencing today — which are the result, first and foremost, of (U.S. President) Donald Trump’s tariff attacks, lingering high interest rates, the decline of high-wage industrial jobs, and government austerity in some provinces,” said Jim Stanford, economist and director of the think tank Centre for Future Work.

Stanford also emphasized that the program Poilievre is targeting only makes up a small share of the workforce and should not be confused with foreign workers under the substantially larger International Mobility Program, which includes international students.

Stanford said Poilievre’s claim that temporary foreign workers now make up two per cent of Canada’s workforce is inaccurate.

According to government data on the program, there were approximately 191,000 work permit holders in total in 2024, “less than one per cent of the workforce,” Stanford said. …

Source: Pierre Poilievre’s call to scrap the temporary foreign worker program marks new, tougher stance for Conservatives

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