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Originally Posted by belsarius
Those damned Liberals.. just sitting there doing nothing about the issues with the TFW program. Oh wait.....
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That’s closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.
Globe and Mail editorial (Aug 10):
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Fraud in the temporary worker program isn’t the problem. The rules that rig the labour market are
…This is not an accident: the Liberals rewrote the rules for the temporary foreign worker program two years ago and further opened the taps for low-wage workers from abroad.
There were three key changes to the low-wage stream of the temporary foreign worker program, separate from the agriculture stream. Previously, companies with permits under the low-wage stream could not fill more than 10 per cent of their positions with temporary foreign workers. In 2022, that cap rose to 20 per cent for all sectors, and to 30 per cent for seven sectors deemed to be particularly suffering from labour shortages.
The government also doubled the period for which labour market impact assessments were valid to 18 months from nine months. Those assessments are the basis for obtaining a permit for workers, and are supposed to show that no Canadian citizens or permanent residents could fill the positions.
In addition, the Liberals waived a rule that had prohibited companies in the accommodation and retail sectors from hiring temporary foreign workers when the local unemployment rate was 6 per cent or higher...
… But the Liberals, egged on by business, bought into the notion that the solution to tight labour markets was to allow companies to import cheap labour rather than to increase wages, or to boost the productivity of their existing staff.
The effect of all of those changes was to dramatically weaken the link between labour market conditions and the low-wage temporary foreign worker program, even as the number of workers permitted to enter Canada soared.
Rising unemployment levels would have slowed that intake under the old regulations. Not so under the new rules...
… But the real problem with the low-wage temporary foreign worker program is not abuse of the rules – it’s the rules themselves. The press release from Mr. Boisonnault’s office boldly stated that the temporary foreign worker program “is designed as an extraordinary measure to be used when a qualified Canadian is not able to fill a job vacancy.”
That may have been the case once. But now that is demonstrably untrue – and a slap in the face to unemployed workers struggling to find a job while the Liberal government allows businesses to continue to import cheap labour.
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