ICYMI: Canada plans new temporary foreign workers program to give ‘trusted’ employers quicker access

2023/08/21 Leave a comment

Of note, including the cautions by Rupa Banerjee and Syed Hussan:

The federal government is rolling out a “trusted employer program” that is meant to reduce red tape and make it easier for Canadian employers to bring in temporary foreign workers.

Officials say the Recognized Employer Pilot program will be open for applications as soon as September, first to employers in agriculture, then to all others starting in January.

It will provide employers that have “a history of complying with program requirements” with a permit to usher in foreign workers that’s good for three years, without the need to reapply within that period.

But experts and advocates are expressing some concerns over the level of scrutiny that will be in place to ensure workers are being treated well, as well as the economic conditions into which Canada will be bringing more temporary workers: a crisis of affordable housing, rising interest rates and high inflation.

The new measures come amid skyrocketing numbers of temporary foreign workers in Canada.

“There’s an overreliance on temporary workers at the detriment of Canadian workers, and in particular, newcomers,” said Toronto Metropolitan University professor Rupa Banerjee, Canada Research Chair of economic inclusion, employment and entrepreneurship.

“It also really shows how much the temporary foreign worker program is really about responding to employer demand. The employer lobby really is that strong.”

Currently, employers must undergo what’s known as labour market impact assessment (LMIA), every time they hire workers under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to ensure there’s a need to fill the job. They must receive a positive assessment from Employment and Social Development Canada in order to hire the foreign workers.

The number of temporary foreign worker positions approved through an LMIA annually have skyrocketed from 89,416 in 2015 to 221,933 last year, according to federal data.

Those numbers don’t include the hundreds of thousands of international students and graduates who have open-work permits, and those who arrive from more than two dozen countries that have shared mobility agreements with Canada.

“The Recognized Employer Pilot will cut red tape for eligible employers, who demonstrate the highest level of protection for workers, and make it easier for them to access the labour they need to fill jobs that are essential to Canada’s economy and food security,” Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault said in a statement Tuesday.

Applications to the pilot program, which has a budget of $29.3 million over three years, will close next September.

To qualify, employers must have received a minimum of three positive LMIAs for the same occupation over the past five years from a list of occupations that have been designated as in-shortage.

Officials said employers will be subject to a more rigorous upfront assessment process than they currently undergo, based on their history and track record with the program, ensuring that it “targets employers with the best recruitment practices.”

Canada, like other countries, has been increasingly relying on foreign workers to address labour and skills shortages despite criticisms that the workers’ precarious immigration status has exposed them to abuse and exploitation by employers.

Foreign workers, especially those in low-skill, low-wage jobs, have reported owed wages and unpaid overtime, and complained about unsafe work conditions and a lack of employment standard enforcement.

“Things like that easily get swept under the radar. And an employer could easily remain on the trusted employer list while still engaging in, sort of, very mundane and regular forms of exploitation to workers,” Banerjee said.

“Without a lot of really careful oversight and auditing, it’s very easy to allow the kinds of abuses and exploitations that exist very routinely to go under the radar and get worse because it’ll be just easier to get more and more people in.”

Further facilitating the entry of migrant workers will create a more “flexible” labour force for employers but may further strain the tight housing market, access to health care and even the school system.

“Not only is it a concern of the workers themselves, but the level of scrutiny that needs to be put into place to ensure that this is a win-win, not just a win or lose,” said Banerjee.

“There’s a bigger story of, kind of, what does this mean for Canadian society and the ability to actually absorb these extra temporary foreign workers.”

Federal Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay said the new pilot will help secure Canada’s food supply chain.

“From Canada’s farm fields to our grocery stores, workers throughout the food supply chain provide an essential service,” he said. “It is vital that Canadian employers, including farmers and food processors, are able to hire workers who are critical to food production and food security in Canada.”

Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said what will matter is how employers are scrutinized.

“It’s not possible to identify good employers based on complaints or inspections. Workers don’t complain because, when workers complain, they face deportation, eviction, homelessness, lack of work and other reprisals from employers,” said Hussan.

“Employers want quicker access to temporary foreign workers because temporary foreign workers have the least rights.”

Boissonnault said the government over the past few years has strengthened protection of migrant workers by preventing employers from charging recruitment fees, providing workers with information about their rights and launching a tip line for complaints.

“These are steps in the right direction in demonstrating that we take our responsibility seriously,” Boissonnault told reporters.

Source: Canada plans new temporary foreign workers program to give ‘trusted’ employers quicker access

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Century Initiative on auto-pilot: Canada’s future prosperity, quality of life, and security depend on population growth.

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

Tide continues to turn against the Century Initiative’s focus (fixation?) on population growth despite the efforts to frame as “growing well” as recent commentary in a variety of media attest.

Most notably, the Globe having hosted a number of CI events in the past has weekly articles (if not more frequently) criticizing the government’s focus on population growth from permanent and temporary migrants.

The specific recommendations are self-serving.

  • Housing and other infrastructure cannot be ensured in the short-to-medium term given time lags;
  • Social infrastructure also has time lags and why highlight childcare-it is healthcare where the current crunch is greatest;
  • I suppose meet existing targets on permanent immigration is better than arguing for further increases but…;
  • Given the large number of temporary residents already transitioning to permanent residency (about 50 percent of new permanent residents are former temporary residents), hard to understand its reference to improving planning for temporary residents given there is none.

Nothing in their submission refers to productivity and economic growth (per capita GDP).

While not surprising, just as the government has an opportunity (and obligation IMO) to pivot to more reasonable immigration policies and targets, CI itself needs to take stock of the realities on the ground and of political discourse and move beyond the platitude of “growing well.”

This submission fails on both counts, mirroring the government’s approach to date:

Canada’s future prosperity, quality of life, and security depend on population growth.

Century Initiative believes that the federal government should plan and invest for a growing population with a focus on growing well – ensuring that the benefits of population growth are broadly shared by all Canadians. 

To this end, our written submission for the 2024 pre-budget consultation process is focused on ensuring that the federal government take action to enable Canada’s long-term economic and social prosperity by responsibly growing the population. Century Initiative recommends that the federal government adopt the following evidence-based policy measures, aligned with the findings of our 3rd annual National Scorecard on Canada’s Growth and Prosperity:

  • Recommendation #1: Work with provincial, territorial and municipal governments to ensure more public and private investment in housing and other physical infrastructure needed to support a growing population.
  • Recommendation #2: Invest in social infrastructure – particularly child care – that will support families and support a growing population.
  • Recommendation #3: Meet existing immigration targets as committed in the 2023-2025 Immigration Levels Plan, which would mean maintaining admissions within a target range of 1.15 per cent to 1.25 per cent of the population annually.
  • Recommendation #4: Improve settlement services for temporary residents, increase opportunities for temporary residents to transition to permanent residence, and improve the process of planning for temporary resident admissions.

Source: Century Initiative: Canada’s future prosperity, quality of life, and security depend on population growth.

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Keller: The Liberals have broken Canada’s immigration system

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

The Globe continues its transition from an immigration booster, hosting Century Initiative events, to one of the more trenchant critics of current policies, with weekly if not more frequent negative and well argued commentary:

Canada’s immigration system used to be the envy of the world.

Note my use of the past tense.

To appreciate what was good about Canada’s previous immigration strategy – the one followed until recently through governments Progressive Conservative, Conservative and Liberal – contrast it with the dysfunction of our friends down south.

Since the 1980s, the United States has had relatively low legal immigration compared with Canada. The U.S. also wasn’t particularly focused on admitting the highly educated and highly skilled. And there was an unofficial immigration stream – called illegal immigration or undocumented immigration, depending on one’s politics – that involved millions of people, most in low-skill, low-wage jobs.

In 2015, when the Trudeau Liberals came into office, Canada was already a high-immigration country, with a rate two-and-a-half times higher than the U.S. More importantly, Canada was a smart immigration country, with immigration selection built around the points system, which sent educated, skilled, young immigrants to the front of the line.

Both countries’ immigration had long been a mix of family reunification, refugees and economic immigrants, but Canada put the accent on the latter. Within the economic stream, our points system put the emphasis on people who were more educated or skilled than the average Canadian, and whose contribution could boost not just gross domestic product, but GDP per capita.

A skilled immigrant doesn’t just grow the size of the economic pie. They’re likely to grow it at a rate greater than the rising number of forks in the pie.

As for the U.S., it stood out for having a large pool of permanently temporary immigrants, most filling low-wage jobs. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimated that there were 12 million people classified as illegal aliens in the country.

Canada’s own count was unclear, but clearly far lower.

And that was at least partly because of another bipartisan Canadian policy choice. This country had long devoted considerable efforts to making it hard to enter or remain in Canada without permission. People from countries whose citizens had a record of overstaying tourist visas found it extremely difficult to get a tourist visa.

A 2017 World Economic Forum survey ranked Canada as having among the world’s most stringent travel visa rules, placing us at 120th out of 136 countries. But that this was a feature of the Canadian system, not a bug.

We had a wider door than the U.S., yet taller walls. The welcome mat and the walls were complimentary, not contradictory. Canada was a high immigration country with unusually high public support for immigration. Why? Because the manner, scale, makeup and regularity of immigration clearly benefitted Canada, and Canadians.

Our immigration approach was successful, stable and boring.

In 2013, the U.S. Senate passed the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act. The bill died in the House of Representatives because the Republican leadership refused to take it up – they wanted to campaign against illegal immigration, not fix it – but in the Senate it was supported by the entire Democratic caucus, plus a third of Republicans.

The legislation proposed a points system to focus admissions on skilled immigrants; more opportunities for visa students who earned advanced degrees in science, technology and engineering to remain in the U.S.; and strong measures to discourage illegal immigration.

Had it become law, it would have given the U.S. a more Canadian-style immigration system.

A lot has changed over the past decade. But not so much in the U.S.

Since 2015, the Trudeau government – with the co-operation of the provinces, educational institutions and business – has remade our immigration system. Without anyone noticing, and without public debate, it has become more American.

What gets most talked about most – and what isn’t American – is how Canadian immigration levels that had been stable for a generation are being steadily increased. By 2025, this country will be welcoming half a million new Canadians a year, and rising, double the number of a decade earlier.

But the Liberals have brought about a much bigger and little-noticed revolution in the shadow immigration system’s various temporary foreign worker streams – whose accent is on admitting people for low-skill, low-wage, low productivity jobs. Just like the shadow immigration system in the U.S.

Canada’s streams of temporary admissions are now larger than traditional immigration, and growing fast.

I’ve recently written about how hard it is for doctors – even Canadian graduates of overseas medical school – to get permission to work in Canada. The supply of these highly-educated professionals is greatly restricted.

At the same time, however, the Liberal government has gone to extraordinary lengths to give employers a nearly unlimited supply of low-wage workers, with many of those now arriving via the education visa stream. Those visas used to be entirely about education, but many schools now appear to be partly or even mostly peddling something else, namely the opportunity to reside and work in Canada, usually in a low-wage job.

More on this, and how to fix it, next week.

Source: Opinion: The Liberals have broken Canada’s immigration system

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Opposition mounting to Dundas Street name change. Three former Toronto Mayors call for reconsideration 

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

For the record, letter from former mayors Crombie, Sewall and Eggleton, highlighting the false arguments used by advocates for the name change. Opportunity for new mayor Chow to signal that she has a broader perspective than the Dundas change advocates and is careful with taxpayer money:

Dear Mayor and City Councillors,

We, former Mayors of Toronto, request you to re-consider the decision to re-name Dundas Street.

We question the interpretation of the research leading to that decision and the practicality of carrying it out. Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was, according to a considerable amount of historic evidence, a committed abolitionist of slavery. His first achievement as an abolitionist was in 1778, when, as a lawyer, he took a appeal case in Scotland, of an enslaved person Joseph Knight, brought to Scotland from Jamaica by his owner. In court Dundas stated that he “hoped for the honour of Scotland, that the supreme Court of this country would not be the only court that would give its sanction to so barbarous a claim. Human nature, my Lords, spurns at the thought of slavery among any part of our species.” The judges not only agreed but ended slavery completely in Scotland.

Dundas has been faulted for his next act on the subject, in 1792. Then a British MP, he moved an amendment to a motion of William Wilberforce on the abolition of the slave trade to make it gradual. Wilberforce’s motion of the previous year, 1791, had failed miserably, 163 to 88. With Dundas’s amendment, it at least passed in the House of Commons, the first anti-slavery motion to do so in Great Britain.

Unfortunately, the plan was subsequently defeated in the House of Lords. It would take a lot more than a British law to get rid of the slave trade and slavery, which Dundas understood. Yet even Wilberforce eventually came to see the necessity of intermediate steps: in 1823 he became vice-president of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery.

Dundas’s appointment, of John Graves Simcoe, also an abolitionist, as the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada (Ontario) also promoted the anti-slavery cause. On arrival, Simcoe sought to get an abolition bill adopted, but there were slave owners in the House of Assembly and much opposition. The abolitionist attorney-general, John White, who presented it, then revised it drastically and it passed in 1793, making Ontario the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to adopt an anti-slavery law. John White, not so incidentally, was defeated in the next election.

Dundas was also enlightened about French-English relations in Canada, notably requiring laws to be enacted in both languages, instead of English only. He also was responsible for Britain taking steps to reverse two decades of oppression of Black Loyalists in the Atlantic provinces.

In summary, it appears that Henry Dundas for whom the street is named, was a committed abolitionist who, when facing strong opposition and certain defeat, rather than give up his quest, advocated for interim measures that would ultimately lead to that result. It seems he was doing the best he could under challenging circumstances at that time in history.

Therefore, we don’t see a valid reason to remove his name from the street. From a practical perspective, and given the City’s financial circumstance, there are more appropriate ways to spend $8.6 Million.

On behalf of David Crombie, John Sewell, Art Eggleton

(The letter was signed by Mr. Eggleton

Source: Breaking: Opposition mounting to Dundas Street name change. Three former Toronto Mayors call for reconsideration

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Gerson: Want to ease Canada’s housing crisis? Let’s start by being responsible about international student visas

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

Gerson nails it. But goes beyond international students given housing and other pressures by increasing numbers temporary foreign workers and permanent residents:

Desperate calls by schools to urge local homeowners to rent out their rooms; students paying $650 a month to live three-to-a room in college towns boasting monthly rents upward of $2,000; a viral TikTok video purports to show an international student living under a bridge in Scarborough, Ont.

Housing is a complicated issue. It will take co-ordination, cash, and time to fix. But in the short term, there is at least one glaringly obvious – if surely controversial – way to help ease the challenge of finding affordable rental accommodation: We need to stop issuing so many international student visas.

Of course, this is not going to solve the housing problem in and of itself. But anybody who thinks that our desire to bring in as many fruitful international students as possible isn’t contributing to the housing crunch hasn’t looked at the figures lately.

Canada was home to more than 800,000 international students as of the end of last year. That number, which began growing under the Conservatives, has continued to increase at an extraordinary pace since the Liberals took office; it has roughly doubled since 2015.

International students, who actually dwarf the population of temporary foreign workers at the moment, comprise about 17 percent of university enrolment in this country. Further, the majority of those students are opting for schools where housing is exceptionally expensive and difficult to find – namely, in big cities in Ontario and British Columbia.

Why this is happening is fairly obvious. Firstly, the federal government is trying to use study as a method of attracting top international talent. Between 2010 and 2016, 47 per cent of international students who graduated from a Canadian postsecondary institution stayed in Canada.

Secondly, international students are cash cows. Tuition fees for domestic students are regulated by provincial governments. Not so for their international counterparts, which makes bringing in foreign learners incredibly lucrative for perpetually cash-strapped schools and universities. (The real growth is increasingly not just from universities, but also from private colleges.)

And these visas don’t come with anything else – that is, the schools don’t need to provide housing for the students they bring in. Student housing is annoying and expensive and a pain to manage, and most schools know that, which is why they are not particularly keen to do it. That’s why Canada’s stock of purpose-built student housing lags dramatically behind our counterparts in the United States and Europe.

This isn’t an isolated problem, either. These kids need to live somewhere, and their desperation ripples through the broader housing market, driving up demand for affordable rentals and even single-family housing.

I spoke recently with Mike Moffatt at the Richard Ivey School of Business, and he provided me with some research on the subject – including links to his own recently published report offering advice to governments on how to address the housing crisis.

Ontario alone needs to build 1.5 million housing units by 2031 to keep up with expected growth led by immigration and, yes, by international students. (The province is behind on its commitment to do so.)

And while there will be no quick fix, no silver bullet – at least one answer is painfully obvious, no?

Granting an ever-growing number of student visas to people we know will struggle to find housing is unethical at best and fraudulent at worst.

We need to dramatically cut the number of student visas, especially for private colleges, some of which are offering a quality of education that is less than desirable. We then need to tie student visas to housing availability – that is, a university shouldn’t be allowed to take on more international students than it can house in that community, for the duration of that person’s time studying in Canada. And we need to ensure schools don’t respond to this edict by pushing out less profitable domestic students, which only displaces the problem from one class of student to another.

That means we need to incentivize building more affordable rental housing. There will be a role for federal and provincial governments in this effort, perhaps in co-ordination with the private sector, to address this critical need as quickly as possible.

But I don’t see any way to address this problem unless we temporarily curtail the number of international students. The federal government needs to become far more restrictive about that particular avenue for immigration, and quickly.

If that edict seems extreme, I would remind everybody that reducing international student visas to a more manageable baseline would actually be among the easier levers to pull to relieve pressure in our housing market. Everything else from here on in is going to get much more difficult.

Jen Gerson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.

Source: Want to ease Canada’s housing crisis? Let’s start by being responsible about international student visas

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SHEPHERD: Poilievre repeatedly refuses to offer his own immigration target numbers

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

Don’t normally post articles from “True” North but of interest that they are criticizing Conservative leader for not commenting or engaging on immigration targets.

Personally, I have some sympathy for his refusing to comment given that any reduction might well be portrayed as anti-immigration or even racist by the Liberals and NDP (which or course it would not be as I have argued elsewhere):

Immigration Minister Marc Miller hinted recently that he may soon announce an increase in Canada’s immigration targets. The usually outspoken Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre seemingly has nothing to say about that.

“Whether we revise them upwards or not is something that I have to look at,” Miller said earlier this month. “But certainly, I don’t think we’re in any position of wanting to lower them by any stretch of the imagination.”

Officially, Canada plans to bring in 465,000 permanent residents this year, 485,000 next year, and 500,000 by 2025.

But don’t be fooled: we also invite in hundreds of thousands of additional residents every year, such as temporary foreign workers and international students, so our population actually grew by 1.05 million in 2022 even though we have a below-replacement fertility rate of 1.40 births per Canadian woman.

Canada’s exorbitantly high immigration numbers are straining the housing supply, the healthcare system, and social services such as food banks.

Many journalists, myself included, have been asking Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre what his immigration targets would look like if he becomes prime minister.

In a July press conference for ethnic media, blogger Darshan Maharaja asked Poilievre whether reducing immigration targets could help relieve the demand side of Canada’s housing crunch.

“In order for housing to become affordable at current rates of immigration we need to build six million homes by 2030,” Poilievre answered. “Right now we’re on track to build about 1.4 million homes. So we have to choose, either we’re going to build more homes or we’re going to have a big problem.”

“We gotta build, we gotta build now,” Poilievre said.

When I asked Poilievre’s office whether he would keep Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s immigration targets, and what he thinks about immigration minister Marc Miller possibly increasing the targets this fall, I received no answers to my questions and was instead sent a link to a CPAC video.

“My common sense policy on immigration will be driven by the number of vacancies that private sector employers want to fill, the number of charities that want to sponsor refugees, and the families that want to reunite quickly with loved ones,” Poilievre stated in the video during a stop in Ottawa.

“What’s wrong with the 500,000 target in your mind?” another journalist asks Poilievre.

“I think what’s wrong is Justin Trudeau’s incompetence… I’ll make sure we have housing and healthcare so that when people come here they have a roof overhead and care when they need it.”

People who would have been hesitant to say it out loud even a year ago are now admitting it: our high immigration levels make it more difficult for Canadians to house themselves.

Even individuals with full-time employment can’t keep up with the average rent of $2,000 per month ($3,000 in Vancouver), and end up living out of their vehicles at highway rest stops.

Immigration is now becoming a ballot issue for voters who historically may have only ever expressed support for our system. According to a poll commissioned by Bloomberg News, 68% of Canadians believe Trudeau’s immigration targets negatively impact the housing market.

So, yes, Poilievre should be offering up a quantitative figure to let us know where he really stands on the matter, instead of always deflecting with calls to ‘build, build, build.’

Until he does, we can only conclude that the Conservative party does, in fact, agree with Trudeau’s immigration targets.

With no opposition or critique of Trudeau’s immigration levels from any political party in the House of Commons, there will be no acknowledgment that Canada’s immigration plan actually does not work to counteract an aging population and workforce. Because immigrants themselves age and most come with dependents, parents, and grandparents, immigration does notultimately address the problem of replacing retirees.

Deeper questions arise once you know these facts: do our high immigration targets exist solely so that banks have an endless supply of debtors, landlords an endless supply of renters, and corporations an endless supply of workers who are less aware or assertive of their rights?

I await Poilievre’s answers and numbers.

Source: SHEPHERD: Poilievre repeatedly refuses to offer his own immigration target numbers

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Despite Criticism, More People Than Ever Before Are Trying to Get ‘Golden Visas’ in Europe

2023/08/18 Leave a comment

Of note. Money quote: “It’s great for business” when countries threaten to close programs:

If you have the funds, buying your way into European citizenship is relatively easy—despite some politicians’ attempts to make it otherwise.

As such, demand for so-called golden visas across the European Union has skyrocketed, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. These documents allow wealthy foreigners to basically buy residency—and in turn, a path to citizenship—by investing in real estate or financial assets in European countries. All over the continent, people are taking advantage of the programs while they still exist.

While a couple of countries no longer offer golden visas—Ireland and the United Kingdom, notably—others are seeing a surge in demand. In May, Portugal issued a several-year high of 180 golden visas, while Greece’s 412 that month was an 87 percent increase from the year prior. In 2022, Spain gave out a whopping 2,462 golden visas, up 60 percent from 2021, and Italy distributed 79, the most since the country launched its program in 2018.

Part of the demand may be due to politicians’ calls to end the golden-visa system, which they say is loosely regulated and leads to rising property costs as wealthy foreigners move in. “Every time governments threaten to shut these programs down, there’s a surge of demand of people trying to get through the door before they close,” Nuri Katz, the founder of the immigration consultancy Apex Capital Partners, told Bloomberg. “It’s great for business.”

Portugal said in February that it would be ending its golden-visa program, while Greece increased its investment threshold from $272,854 (€250,000) to $545,708 (€500,000) in certain areas. Spain is considering an even larger bump, from $545,708 (€500,000) to $1.09 million (€1 million). But for the people eyeing these programs as a way to nab European citizenship, that price tag may simply be a drop in the bucket.

“For people worth about $5 to $7 million, richer millionaires, a $500,000 investment to get EU residency is fine,” Katz said.

And despite the push among some groups to do away with golden visas, the programs have brought an influx of cash into the EU, which many experts say may be enough to keep them around. In the past decade, countries that issue golden visas have seen about $27.3 billion (€25 billion) in investment through the programs, with Portugal on its own gaining $7.3 billion (€6.8 billion). That sort of money, particularly in places that rely on foreign capital, might be hard for countries to turn down.

Source: Despite Criticism, More People Than Ever Before Are Trying to Get ‘Golden Visas’ in Europe

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with ,

ICYMI: Don Wright: Why did Justin Trudeau switch sides in the ‘class struggle?’

2023/08/18 Leave a comment

More on the recent expansion of temporary foreign workers and relaxation of conditions, along with contrast when the PM was in opposition:

In 2014, Justin Trudeau wrote an op-ed arguing that the Stephen Harper government should dramatically scale back the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program.

His reasoning was sound – both in moral terms and in economic terms. He wrote: “I believe it is wrong for Canada to follow the path of countries who exploit large numbers of guest workers.” He also pointed out that large numbers of TFWs “drives down wages.”

We might have expected, therefore, that things would change under his leadership. And indeed, they have. Between 2015 and 2022 the number of TFWs in Canada doubled!

But TFWs are actually only a small fraction of total Non-Permanent Residents (NPR) with work permits in Canada. There is another category known as the “International Mobility Program” (IMP) which provides work permits for international students, graduates of post-secondary programs and other categories. The number of IMP work permit holders almost tripled between 2015 and 2022. In total, NPRs with work permits now exceed 1.1 million people – and have grown from 2.1 per cent to 5.5 per cent of the Canadian labour force.

This hasn’t happened by accident. The current government has made a series of changes that have opened the door to higher numbers of NPRs. Last year, for example, the federal immigration minister made it significantly easier for employers to get permits for TFWs.

Perhaps more significantly, he eliminated the restriction on the number of hours that international students could work while they are supposedly studying. Previously, the limit was 20 hours a week. There are no limits on the number of international students that can be granted a student permit. All they need is acceptance from a “Designated Learning Institution.” In addition to the publicly funded universities, colleges and institutions, there are a large number of private, for-profit colleges that are in this business as well.

One doesn’t have to be too cynical to imagine that some private college operators would market themselves as a way to get a work permit in Canada, with a possible path to permanent resident status down the road, with the quality of the education being offered of secondary importance. Indeed, a casual search of the web will uncover many such stories.

One needs to be only a little more cynical to conclude that this was the federal government’s intention in lifting the restriction on working while studying. What an easy way to appease the demands from many in the employer community to deal with the “worker shortage.”

The jobs that NPRs fill are disproportionately low wage positions – jobs like food counter attendants, kitchen helpers, cooks, cashiers, retail salespersons, shore shelf stockers, clerks,delivery service drivers, and the like. Statistics Canada reports that, even with high educational attainment, NPRs were in occupations requiring no formal education proportionately more than the rest of the Canadian population.

You know, this kind of sounds like something that “those countries who exploit large numbers of guest workers” would do.

And let’s not lose sight of the other point that Mr. Trudeau made back in 2014. This all serves to depress the wages of Canadian workers. In particular, it disproportionately impacts low-wage earners – if employers couldn’t rely on the large number of NPR workers, they would have to raise the wages that they offer.

Why is the federal government aiding and abetting this? Apparently because they are responding to the consistent mantra from the employer community that there is a “worker shortage.” More precisely, there is a shortage of workers willing to work at the wages that certain employers prefer to pay. But whose side should the federal government be on?

Over the past 20 years “the bosses” have done much better than the workers. For example, Statistics Canada data shows that in 2003 the category of workers defined as “senior managers” on average earned 3.9 times more than the category of workers defined as “sales and service support.” In 2023 the multiple had widened significantly to 5.1 times. Sales and service support occupations include cashiers, service station attendants, store shelf stackers, food, accommodation and tourism workers, and cleaners – typical of the positions filled by many NPR workers.

Given this trend one needs to ask: who needs more help in the struggle for fair wages – the workers or the bosses? Why did the federal government apparently change sides in this struggle?

Don Wright was the former deputy minister to the B.C. Premier, Cabinet Secretary and former head of the B.C. Public Service until late 2020. He now is senior counsel at Global Public Affairs.

Source: Don Wright: Why did Justin Trudeau switch sides in the ‘class struggle?’

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Ottawa lance une stratégie pour attirer les «nomades numériques» sans rien changer

2023/08/18 Leave a comment

Of note, will see how situation evolves:

Le ministre fédéral de l’Immigration a lancé cet été — et en grande pompe — « une stratégie pour attirer les nomades numériques » au pays. Deux mois plus tard, rien n’a changé. Des centaines, voire des milliers d’entre eux, continuent de vivre au Canada dans la « zone grise » qui prévaut depuis des années.

Singapour, Inde, États-Unis, Philippines, Brésil… Diverses origines se croisent dans la résidence Nomad Coliving. Le bâtiment au centre-ville de Montréal loge quelques dizaines de ces nomades des temps modernes. Tous télétravaillent, à leur compte ou pour un employeur, et changent de pays au gré des saisons ou des échéances de visa.

Maria Kinoshita, gestionnaire de l’endroit, a organisé une fête avec tout ce beau monde lorsque l’ancien ministre de l’Immigration Sean Fraser a laissé supposer qu’un visa pour eux allait voir le jour.

« Nous allons lancer une stratégie pour les nomades numériques pour permettre aux personnes qui ont un employeur étranger de venir travailler au Canada jusqu’à 6 mois », avait-il lancé en juin dernier sur une grande scène d’un événement techno de Toronto. « Et si elles reçoivent une offre d’emploi pendant qu’elles sont là, nous allons autoriser qu’ils continuent de rester et de travailler au Canada. »

« Plusieurs ont eu l’espoir d’avoir un statut, raconte Maria Kinoshita. Ils ont reporté leur demande de visa en se disant qu’ils pourraient appliquer pour un visa de nomade. » Deux mois plus tard, rien n’a changé. Le fameux visa se fait attendre.

Ottawa prévoyait aussi consulter « des partenaires des secteurs privé et public afin de déterminer s’il serait souhaitable d’adopter d’autres politiques pour attirer les nomades numériques au Canada ».

Maria Kinoshita n’a pas été contactée. Même silence autour d’elle, elle qui connaît un peu tout le monde dans cet univers parallèle des travailleurs sans bureau fixe. Puisqu’elle a des origines japonaises, elle a cependant été appelée par le gouvernement du pays du Soleil levant, qui, au même moment, a lancé une stratégie similaire.

Le Devoir n’a pas pu trouver d’entreprises ou d’organismes québécois qui ont été consultés à ce sujet. Le gouvernement du Québec affirme aussi n’avoir pas été interrogé avant le lancement de cette stratégie.

Un nouveau ministre de l’Immigration, Marc Miller, a été nommé cet été. Ce dernier est « en retraite » deux semaines avec le nouveau cabinet, et n’a pas pu répondre aux questions du Devoir.

Les communications du ministère ont toutefois précisé les intentions d’Ottawa, en disant vouloir s’« assurer s’il serait utile qu’un nomade numérique ait un processus clair pour demander un permis de travail au Canada, s’il décidait par la suite de chercher un poste auprès d’un employeur canadien ».

Entrer pour ne plus repartir

Pour Claire Estagnasié, doctorante à l’UQAM en communication et spécialiste du nomadisme numérique, une telle annonce « pourrait clarifier une zone grise, mais, dans la pratique, ça ne change absolument rien ». Ces nomades vont et viennent toujours sous un visa de visiteur, travaillant hors du cadre des lois canadiennes.

« Pas un mot sur l’assurance maladie » de ces voyageurs longue durée, fait-elle remarquer. Ni sur la taxation de ces travailleurs. Pour l’instant, les nomades numériques ne paient des impôts que dans leur pays d’origine. Un Américain qui réside au Canada paie ses taxes uniquement aux États-Unis, s’il ne reste pas plus de 6 mois de ce côté-ci de la frontière. Et il peut toujours retourner très brièvement chez lui pour ne pas dépasser cette limite de six mois, faire le tour de la frontière, pour ensuite demander un second visa de touriste en rentrant au Canada.

« Pour les nomades numériques américains, ça leur ferait moins de paperasse. Pour les autres, ça ne change rien du tout », résume la chercheuse. « C’est un effet d’annonce, d’image. »

Le Canada cherche à sédentariser prochainement ces nomades, précise par ailleurs le ministère. « Ils peuvent très facilement demander à prolonger leur séjour en tant que résidents temporaires, ou demander un permis de travail au Canada s’ils trouvent un emploi sur le marché du travail canadien. »

Un besoin de logements

Maria Kinoshita, bien qu’enthousiaste à ce que Montréal devienne une plaque tournante pour ces nomades modernes, prévient qu’il faudrait inclure dans cette stratégie une politique de logements. Sa résidence, à mi-chemin entre l’auberge de jeunesse et la maison de chambres, est déjà pleine. Elle projette d’ouvrir d’autres résidences à Montréal et à Québec. Et déjà, les listes d’attente pour ses chambres sont toutes aussi pleines.

Les prêts, le zonage, les assurances : tout est compliqué pour transformer un multiplex de six logements en résidence de seize chambres. « Il y a beaucoup de monde partant pour partir des places comme ça, mais ils ont été découragés quand ils ont vu ce que j’ai traversé », assure la femme d’affaires, elle-même nomade à ses heures.

« Je densifie la bâtisse », précise-t-elle, soucieuse de ne pas retirer de logements d’un marché locatif très à l’étroit. « Et j’accepte les locaux qui ont besoin de cet espace-là. »

Ailleurs dans le monde, ce ne sont pas les exemples de « stratégies pour attirer les nomades numériques » qui manquent. Le nombre de pays avec des visas spécialement pour ces travailleurs a explosé ces dernières années. On en comptait un peu plus d’une dizaine il y a tout juste deux ans, selon une estimation des spécialistes du nomadisme Partout chez nous. Ces derniers recensent à l’heure actuelle 42 pays avec un tel type de visa.

Source: Ottawa lance une stratégie pour attirer les «nomades numériques» sans rien changer

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Paul: What It Means to Call Prostitution ‘Sex Work’

2023/08/18 Leave a comment

Of note, like many terminology changes that blur meanings. Reminds me of the 1986 movie Working Girls:

Last week at the National Organization for Women’s New York office, women’s rights advocates, anti-trafficking groups and former prostitutes convened to galvanize New Yorkers to take action against the city’s booming sex trade. In addition to arguing for enforcement of existing laws — and for the penalization of buyers and pimps as opposed to the women and children who are their victims — they wanted to send an important message about the language used around the problem.

“The media uses terms like ‘sex work’ and ‘sex worker’ in their reporting, treating prostitution as a job like any other,” said Melanie Thompson, a 27-year-old woman from New York City who introduced herself as a “Black sex-trafficking and prostitution survivor.” The language of “sex work,” Thompson argued, implies falsely that engaging in the sex trade is a choice most often made willingly; it also absolves sex buyers of responsibility. (My colleague Nicholas Kristof recently profiled Thompson, who now works for the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.)

“I urge the media to remove the terms ‘sex work’ and ‘sex worker’ from your style handbooks,” she said.

In reporting the event afterward, The New York Post used the term“sex workers.”

The Post is hardly alone. In what at first glance might seem like a positive (and possibly “sex positive”) move, the term “sex work” suddenly appears to be everywhere. Even outside academic, activist and progressive strongholds, “sex work” is becoming a widespread euphemism for “prostitution.” It can also refer to stripping, erotic massage and other means of engaging in the sex trade. It’s now commonly used by politicians, the media, Hollywoodand government agencies. But make no mistake: “Sex work” is hardly a sign of liberation.

Why, you might wonder, does exchanging money for sex need a rebrand? Derogatory terms like “hooker” and “whore” were long ago replaced by the more neutral “prostitute.” But “sex worker” goes one step further, couching it as a conventional job title, like something plucked out of “What Color Is Your Parachute?” Its most grotesque variant is the phrase “child sex worker,” which has appeared in a wide range of publications, including BuzzFeed, The Decider and The Independent. (Sometimes the phrase has been edited out after publication.)

The term “sex work” emerged several decades ago among radical advocates of prostitution. People like Carol Leigh and Margo St. James, who helped convene the first World Whores’ Congress in 1985, used “sex work” in an effort to destigmatize, legitimize and decriminalize their trade. Not surprisingly, this shift toward acceptability has been welcomed by many men, who make up a vast majority of customers. The term subsequently gained traction in academic circles and among other progressive advocacy groups, such as some focused on labor or abortion rights.

I first heard the term in the early ’90s while living in Thailand, where I offered to volunteer for an organization aimed at helping local women caught up in prostitution. I’d been in enough bars with friends where underage girls flung themselves onto my companions’ laps, showering them with compliments, encouraging them to drink. Just being present seemed like complicity in what felt like a mutually degrading ecosystem. We all knew many of these girls had been sold into sex slavery by their own desperately poor parents.

But rather than focus on challenging systems of exploitation, the organization I was planning to help, led largely by Western women, aimed to better equip “sex workers” to ply their trade, such as negotiating for more money. I changed my mind about volunteering. I certainly didn’t want to make life more difficult for girls and women caught up in prostitution rings, but I couldn’t in good conscience help perpetuate the system.

No advocacy worker wants to stigmatize the women or children who are trafficked or who resort to prostitution. Survivors of the sex trade should never be blamed or criminalized. Nor should the humanity of individuals working in the sex trade be reduced to what they do for money. Both opponents and advocates of the term “sex worker” share these goals. Many of those urging legitimacy for the sex trade also take a stand vehemently — and presumably without seeing any contradiction — against child labor, indentured servitude and slavery.

But as with those close competitors for the title of “oldest profession,” the reality of prostitution isn’t worth fighting for. Though data is often incomplete, given the difficulties of tracking a black market, research from those who work with survivors indicates that only a tiny minority of people actively want to remain in prostitution. Those who enter the sex trade often do so because their choices are sorely circumscribed. Most prostitutes are poor and are overwhelmingly women; many of them are members of racial minorities and immigrants; many are gay, lesbian or transgender. Many, if not most, enter the trade unwillingly or underage (one oft-cited statistic shows the most common age of entry is between 12 and 16; some have also disputed this). They are frequently survivors of abuse and often develop substance abuse problems. Many suffer afterward from post-traumatic stress disorder. To say that they deserve attention and compassion is to acknowledge the breadth of their experience, not to deny them respect nor cast them solely as victims.

That some prostitutes eventually come to terms with their situation does not mean that they would have chosen it if they had better options. Melanie Thompson, who was kidnapped and sold as a prostitute at age 13, said at the meeting last week that by age 16, she told herself prostitution was her own choice. “We had to believe that in order to continue to endure,” she explained.

The urge to maintain that illusion is understandable. The term “sex work” whitewashes the economic constraints, family ruptures and often sordid circumstances that drive many women to sell themselves. It flips the nature of the transaction in question: It enables sex buyers to justify their own role, allowing the purchase of women’s bodies for their own sexual pleasure and violent urges to feel as lightly transactional as the purchase of packaged meat from the supermarket. Instead of women being bought and sold by men, it creates the impression that women are the ones in power. It is understandable that some women prefer to think of themselves that way, and certainly a vocal portion of them do.

But we owe it to listen to the other side as well. “We are not here out of a sense of morality about sex,” said Alexander Delgado, the director of public policy at PACT, an organization working to end child trafficking and exploitation and which co-sponsored last week’s event (along with Mujeres en Resistencia NY/NJ, Voces Latinas, World Without Exploitation and several other organizations). “The sex trade is a place where violence occurs and not a place where work happens.”

At a time when labor rights have gained traction and the Me Too movement has raised awareness around sexual harassment and abuse, it’s important that activists choose their targets wisely. The momentum of their hard-won victories should not be misplaced. A small, often elite, minority of people who work happily in the sex trade shouldn’t dictate the terms for everyone else.

“Prostitution is neither ‘sex’ nor ‘work,’ but a system based on gender-based violence and socio-economic inequalities related to sex, gender, race and poverty that preys on the most marginalized among us for the profitable commercial sex industry,” Taina Bien-Aimé, the executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, told me.

In recent years, language has undergone drastic shifts in an effort to reduce harm. Sometimes these shifts result in contorted language that obscures meaning. Sometimes these shifts make people feel better without changing anything of substance. And sometimes they do move the needle toward positive change, which is always welcome. But the use of “sex work,” however lofty the intention, effectively increases the likelihood of harm for a population that has already suffered so much. To help people hurt by the sex trade, we need to call it like it is.

Source: What It Means to Call Prostitution ‘Sex Work’

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