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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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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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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Foreign workers issue delays trade deals

2014/05/20 Leave a comment

The higher-end of Temporary Foreign Workers. But given that one of the original cases was in relation to foreign IT workers displacing Canadian IT workers at the Royal Bank, not an easy issue for the Government. Particularly given that in contrast to NAFTA and the upcoming CETA, India is a low-cost supplier of IT services:

While discussions have also been delayed in part because of India’s lengthy election cycle, the fact that foreign workers have emerged as a potential stumbling block has implications for other lucrative trade agreements that Canada hopes to realize. It remains to be seen whether the resounding victory by Narendra Modi, a pro-business Hindu nationalist who heads the Bharatiya Janata Party, will help Canada overcome the impasse.

Rentala Chandrashekhar, the president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), which represents India’s IT community, recently visited Ottawa to stress the negative impact Canada’s reforms are having on trade and the potential that further changes could make things worse for both economies.

Mr. Chandrashekhar, a former senior public servant with the Indian government, met with Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, senior officials with Employment Minister Jason Kenney’s department and Don Stephenson, the chief trade negotiator for the Canada-India talks.

“Most important is perception, the perception that the Canadian economy is becoming more closed,” Mr. Chandrashekhar told the Globe. “The perception that walls are being put up … [This] is not something that is very conductive to the kind of environment that you need for pushing forward the idea of a freer trade regime.”

Foreign workers issue delays trade deals – The Globe and Mail.

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TFW’s are just one piece of immigration puzzle – New Canadian Media

2014/05/15 Leave a comment

 

TFWs

My piece on Temporary Foreign Workers and the linkages to permanent residency and citizenship:

Over the past 10 years, permanent immigration levels and citizenship applications have largely remained stable. The only major growth that has occurred is for Temporary Foreign Workers, many at lower skill levels, most of whom do not have a pathway to permanent residency. Moreover, the pathway from permanent resident to citizen has also become harder, and will become even more so, undermining the overall Canadian model of immigration and citizenship.

Over reliance on anecdote and weakness in the evidence base have contributed to a number of these policy changes. Policy change is complex and the effects are only known after a number of years. It took four years before the flaws in the redesign of Temporary Foreign Workers became apparent. It will likely take that long to know whether the new “Express Entry” immigration approach works as intended. The full effect of changes to the Citizenship Act will only be known in about 10 years, given the increased residency and related requirements.

TFW’s are just one piece of immigration puzzle – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Kenney defends job bank despite outdated postings

2014/05/14 Leave a comment

Yet another headache for the government in the context of Temporary Foreign Workers and the introduction of the “Express Entry” new immigration approach which will also use the Job Bank. To be fair, keeping such sites up-to-date is always a challenge:

The federal government will soon make enhancements to its online job bank amid revelations that hundreds of positions posted on the site have long since been filled, Employment Minister Jason Kenney said Monday.

“We are making improvements to the Canada Job Bank … we will be using new technological developments in the near future to ensure an even better matching of unemployed Canadians with available jobs,” Kenney said in the House of Commons.

The government will work with “private-sector web platforms” when provinces fail to send their own postings to the job bank, he added. Currently, most provinces and territories do so automatically.

The job bank is a critical component of Ottawa’s controversial temporary foreign worker program. Employers are required to post ads on the site seeking Canadian workers for four weeks before they’re able to apply to hire temporary foreign workers.

The government also relies in part on job bank data to determine what regions of the country are clamouring for labour.

But from customer service representatives in New Brunswick to food service supervisors in B.C. and RCMP clerks in Saskatchewan, many of the 110,000 jobs listed on the job bank are no longer available. A litany of postings are several months old; some have been on the site for more than a year.

Kenney defends job bank despite outdated postings.

In related Temporary Foreign Workers news, Minister Kenney’s refuses Quebec’s request for an exemption for the moratorium, and Minister Alexander makes one of his few public comments:

Kenney told the Commons the moratorium was imposed to protect Canadians who are looking for work.

The federal minister pointed out that 14 per cent of Quebec youth are unemployed as are 20 per cent of new arrivals to the province.

Ottawa announced the moratorium in late April after reports suggested the program was being abused by the food-service industry.

A spokesman for Quebec Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil said on the weekend the province has no problem with the program and that restaurants need temporary foreign workers to keep operating, especially in summer.

The moratorium has been widely criticized by industry groups, with Quebec’s restaurant association calling it “exaggerated and unreasonable.”

Earlier on Monday, federal Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said the moratorium was imposed for “very good reasons.”

“There was abuse and we are absolutely committed to completing the review and the reform we have underway,” he said at an unrelated event in Montreal.

“And I can assure you and her (Weil) and Canadians across the country that when this program is relaunched, it will not be subject to abuse.”

He said the hiring of foreign temporary workers should be a “last resort.”

“There are young people across Canada…who are looking for permanent jobs and summer jobs and our first obligation as employers is to look to the domestic market.”

Temporary foreign worker ban: Kenney tells Quebec to hire unemployed youth

Lastly, commentary by Matt Gurney on the irony of the Quebec request:

But restaurant workers? It’s harder to make that case. If Canadians aren’t taking those jobs, the jobs probably aren’t paying enough. I’m sympathetic to the restaurant owners — the restaurant business is highly competitive, with razor-thin margins — but this is how capitalism works. Long-term jobs won’t adjust their prices to appropriate market-driven levels if there’s a gigantic foreign-worker-fed short circuit built into the process. Foreign workers when necessary to sustain and grow the economy, sure, but not foreign workers handing out the dessert menus as the default option.

Quebec is in an odd position here, and an ironic one. Despite the recent election of the Liberal party, and the attendant crushing defeat of the oft-xenophobic Parti Quebecois, the province still has a warranted reputation of being one of the less welcoming places in Canada with which to move. Even Canadian citizens, of the generically white ethnic background, can run into trouble for what language they speak. There are recent signs that this sad trend may slowly be moderating, but there’s still a very long way to go.

And while Quebec sorts out its discomfort with outsiders, it’s also insisting that it wants to retain access to a vast pool of foreigners to work in an industry in which they probably ought not to be working in the first place. “Send us some foreigners so we can hire them for service-sector jobs!” isn’t really something anyone would have expected to hear coming out of the province that was recently in an uproar about what civil servants could wear on their head or around their necks without getting binned, but here we are.

Quebec government really wants more foreigners. OK, then

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Jayson Myers: Building a better foreign workers program | National Post

2014/05/13 Leave a comment

From Jason Myers, CEO of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME) on Temporary Foreign Workers and some sensible recommendations (these are not fast food workers) to improve the program, including pathways to residency and implicitly citizenship:

We recommend that a new foreign skilled worker program be introduced, incorporating:

  • an improved national jobs bank that includes employment insurance claimants;

  • a broadly defined classification of skilled workers that’s based on industry needs, rather than on pre-specified qualifications;

  • an “above normal” wage threshold for temporary employment;

  • streamlined and consistently administered application and approval processes;

  • additional flexibility for employers located outside major urban centres, or in regions of rapid economic growth; and

  • improved pathways to residency, in order to give temporary foreign skilled workers better opportunities to become permanent contributors to the Canadian economy.

Jayson Myers: Building a better foreign workers program | National Post.

Meanwhile, Quebec wants an exemption from the federal moratorium.

Interesting that no cases of abuse or concern about Temporary Foreign Workers in food service industries, given Quebec’s overall higher unemployment rate. Quebec had about 44,000 foreign workers in 2012, about 13 percent of the Canadian total (Quebec’s percentage of Canada’s population is almost 24 percent):

“We are a bit worried about the impact of the moratorium on our restaurants and on our small and medium-sized businesses,” he said Sunday.

“We are ready to work with the federal government to tighten the rules of the program if need be.”

Weil is also planning to make the same case to Employment Minister Jason Kenney, who oversees the temporary foreign workers program, McMahon said.

A spokeswoman for Kenney said there are no immediate plans to lift the ban, in Quebec or anywhere else.

“Abuse of the temporary foreign worker program will not be tolerated,” Alexandra Fortier said in an email.

“Allegations of misuse will continue to be investigated and any employer found to have violated the rules will face serious consequences.”

Quebec wants exemption from temporary foreign worker moratorium on restaurants – The Globe and Mail.

Québec réclame la levée du moratoire sur l’embauche de travailleurs étrangers | Le Devoir

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Why Canada has a serious data deficit

2014/05/13 1 Comment

More on the importance of good data by Barrie McKenna in the Globe’s Report on Business:

Prof. Gross [the C.D. Howe Institute researcher responsible for their study on Temporary Foreign Workers and their effect on increasing unemployment in AB and BC] acknowledged that perfect data is “very costly.”

So is bad data.

Employment Minister Jason Kenney recently imposed a moratorium on the use of temporary foreign workers in the restaurant industry, following embarrassing allegations of misuse by some McDonald’s franchise and other employers. And he has promised more reforms to come.

But who is to say that restaurants need imported foreign labour any less than hotels or coal mines, which are unaffected by the moratorium? And without better information, Mr. Kenney may compound his earlier decision to expand the program with an equally ill-considered move to shrink it.

The government’s troubles with the temporary foreign workers program is a classic case of bad data leading to dubious decision-making. Until recently, the government has relied on inflated Finance department job vacancy data, compiled in part by tracking job postings on Kijiji, a free classified-ad website. Statscan, meanwhile, was reporting that the national job vacancy rate was much smaller, and falling.

The problem goes way beyond temporary foreign workers. And it’s a data problem of the government’s own making. Ottawa has cut funds from important labour market research, slashed Statscan’s budget more savagely than many other departments, and scrapped a mandatory national census in favour of a less-accurate voluntary survey.

The Canadian government has demonstrated “a lack of commitment” to evidence-based decision-making and producing high-quality data, according to a global report on governance released last week by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a leading German think tank. The report ranked Canada in the middle of the pack and sliding on key measures of good governance compared with 40 other developed countries

One of the disadvantages of being in government for almost 10 years is that decisions which may have appeared to be cost-free can come back and haunt you.

Why Canada has a serious data deficit – The Globe and Mail.

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Website maps businesses using temporary foreign workers in B.C. and Alberta

2014/05/09 Leave a comment

Interesting and innovative way to analyze and communicate Temporary Foreign Workers and their impact through mapping:

Of 511 Metro Vancouver businesses that received government authorization to recruit temporary foreign workers over a one-year period, 107 were restaurants, pubs or fast-food outlets — almost 21 per cent of the total. Everything from Megabite Pizza and Waves Coffee to Dead Frog Brewery and Doolin’s Irish Pub received approvals.

In Calgary, 299 of the 718 business that received authorizations in the same period were restaurants, pubs and fast-food outlets — 41 per cent. Those included a slew of Subway, Dairy Queen and many other franchises, as well as several mom-and-pop eateries.

“The majority of the people in those programs are not skilled workers working on construction projects where there’s a labour shortage,” Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour, said Wednesday.

“They’re simply being used as cheap labour in large urban areas where there’s already tens of thousands of people unemployed.”

Website maps businesses using temporary foreign workers in B.C. and Alberta.

The link to the map application:

NTFW Map

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Feds walking fine line on temporary foreign workers, say diaspora groups

2014/05/08 Leave a comment

One of the few articles I have seen with reactions from some community groups:

Several industry lobby groups, including Farmers of North America and the Canadian Restaurants and Foodservices Association, have publicly defended the program.

However, leaders of two community organizations serving target constituencies for the Conservative Party opposed widespread use of the program.

The expansion of the program under the Harper government is creating a two-tiered society in Canada, whereby foreigners are brought in but not afforded the same rights as other immigrants or citizens, said Jagdeep Perhar, president of the India Canada Association, in a phone interview.

“I think this is a fundamentally wrong approach,” he said.

“The government should adapt their policy to maybe bring less immigrants to the country, that is fine. But once the immigrants are in, then we should not discriminate,” he said.

Diaspora youth, like all Canadians, are facing trouble with unemployment, while temporary foreign workers continue to stream in, said Victor Wong, executive director of the Chinese Canadian National Council, in a phone interview.

“I think in the end when the government puts its jobs record on the line, I think people will see that it’s failed,” he said.

The government has alienated business owners and employees alike in the Chinese and other communities with its management of the program, he said.

“They’ve been trying to talk out of both sides of their mouth for six years now, and to just kind of get away with it, and now it’s blown up in their face,” he said.

Feds walking fine line on temporary foreign workers, say diaspora groups | Embassy – Canada’s Foreign Policy Newspaper.

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