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Feds Can’t Back Up Foreign Worker Program Changes, NDP’s Ashton Says | The Tyee

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NDP labour critic Niki Ashton called recent federal exemptions to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program ‘very troubling.’ Photo: Twitter.

Liberals recently allowed a seasonal exemption to federal program rules.

By Jeremy J. Nuttall, Today, TheTyee.ca

The Liberal government can’t produce anything to back up its decision to ease restrictions on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, according to the New Democratic Party critic for labour.

Niki Ashton said she asked Employment Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk to show the materials used in the government’s recent decision to approve an exemption that allows companies to bring in unlimited numbers of temporary foreign workers to fill seasonal jobs this year.

“I asked her to share the reports that guided her to the decision she’s making,” Ashton said, noting the conversation happened at a Monday committee meeting. “There are no reports. She gave this generic answer following my question.”

In February, the Liberals quietly removed a regulation that capped the number of foreign workers working below a provincial median wage at 10 per cent of a company’s workforce, but only for businesses in seasonal industries.

The removal of the cap means, for example, that employers such as fish canneries and resorts can bring in as many such workers as they want so long as the employment term is under 180 days. Under former regulations, the limit was 120 days.

The easing of restrictions applies to all seasonal workers, but Ashton said it was initially done to accommodate fish processing plants in the Maritimes.

She said she suspects the Liberals are bowing to political pressure from their MPs in the Maritimes, who are being lobbied by the seafood industry.

A spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada took questions from The Tyee Friday, but had not responded by late Tuesday.

A search Tuesday of the government’s job bank shows 17 available positions in fish processing plants with wages peaking at $15 an hour, while most jobs pay around $12.

Over the last decade, use of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has skyrocketed amid allegations of employers using it to skirt Canadian wages.

There have also been reports of workers brought to Canada through the program to perform menial work with no chance of being granted permanent residency.

Critics of the program have said that businesses should be forced to increase their wages in the spirit of the free market if they can’t find local workers.

Under public pressure, the Conservatives made changes to the program in 2013 and 2014, including imposing the cap on the number of workers an employer could bring in through the program.

Trudeau once a critic

The Liberal party was among the critics of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program under the Conservatives, but now Trudeau’s government is changing its tune, Ashton said.

The Liberals have committed to a review of the program, which Ashton said she expects will be held sometime in June.

But she said lifting the cap for some industries in the meantime, without appearing to have studied if it is needed, is questionable.

“They’ve gone ahead and allowed for unlimited acceptance of TFWs in certain sectors without due diligence, without reforming the program, without tackling the major issue, which is the lack of access to citizenship that TFWs face,” she said. “Their approach on the TFW program is very troubling.”

In 2014, then third-party leader Justin Trudeau wrote a column for the Toronto Star criticizing the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and calling for it to be “scaled back.”*

Trudeau said the program “drives down wages and displaces Canadian workers” due to loose restrictions under the Conservatives.

“First, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program needs to be scaled back dramatically over time, and refocused on its original purpose: to fill jobs on a limited basis when no Canadian workers can be found,” he wrote.

Playing with fire in Alberta: labour leader

So why then, wonders the president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, is Trudeau now allowing exemptions for a program that he once said threatened Canadian jobs?

Gil McGowan, who ran for the federal NDP last October, said he was concerned after hearing the exemptions are being used by Alberta resorts to hire temporary foreign workers.

Meanwhile, Alberta’s labour market limps on following the collapse in oil prices, with the unemployment rate increasing by 2.3 per cent since 2014.

McGowan said the Liberals are “playing with fire” by lifting the exemptions.

“It might lead to some kind of political or social explosion,” he said. “If [Albertans] get wind the Liberals are opening up the program again while unemployment rates are at levels we haven’t seen in more than a generation, I’m afraid that people will simply lose it.”

McGowan said the Liberals have not spoken to him about the matter, and called the move the “worst kind” of political bait and switch.

“The Liberals didn’t run on a promise of expanding the Temporary Foreign Worker Program,” McGowan said. “In fact, quite to the contrary: whenever they talked about it they said the program was exploitative.”

*Story corrected April 13 at 11:15 a.m. to amend a quote error. [Tyee]

Source: Feds Can’t Back Up Foreign Worker Program Changes, NDP’s Ashton Says | The Tyee

Mulcair’s Election Campaign Mistakes Were Fatal Wounds | The Tyee

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Politics is unforgiving, as NDP’s vote for a new leader shows.

By Bill Tieleman, Today, TheTyee.ca

“A man who is used to acting in one way never changes; he must come to ruin when the times, in changing, no longer are in harmony with his ways.” — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 1532

Tom Mulcair went into his New Democratic Party convention on Sunday as a man out of time after the disastrous results of the 2015 federal election — and delegates stunningly punched the clock on his leadership.

Mulcair didn’t make a convincing case that he had changed and learned from his errors, and with the times changing rapidly under Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he indeed came to ruin.

Politics is an unforgiving business when one fails, as Mulcair fully knew, but even veteran observers were shocked after numerous pundit predictions that the NDP leader would leave convention either unscathed or mildly wounded.

Instead, Edmonton delegates delivered a politically fatal blow, not willing to take any chances that Mulcair might survive long enough to regroup and regain sufficient support to contest a 2019 rematch with Trudeau.

Despite Mulcair’s acknowledged success grilling former prime minister Stephen Harper in Parliament while Trudeau was busy finding followers on Twitter, he and the NDP discovered too late that it is constant campaigning, and not accumulating House of Commons accolades, that gets you elected.

Fifty-two per cent of New Democrats at convention voted in favour of a leadership vote — a result that, when announced on national television, left delegates in solemn silence.

And just like that, the NDP came to a fork in the road and chose a direction without a clear indication where it will lead, or who will lead it.

A leap in the dark

More obviously, they have taken a leap into the dark — endorsing the Naomi Klein-Avi Lewis led LEAP Manifesto that was vigorously denounced by Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley as detrimental to the economy and jobs but backed by a slim majority at convention, due to environmentalist members.

Notley made an impassioned and impressive speech to delegates Saturday, calling on them to back Alberta as the province whose natural resource revenues have supported Canada for many years in good times.

“We’re not making a choice between the environment and the economy. We are building the economy,” Notley said.

“I’m asking you to leave here more persuaded than perhaps some of us have been, that it is possible for Canada to have a forest industry, to have an agriculture industry, a mining industry, and yes, an energy industry, while being world leaders on the environment.”

And Notley asked NDP delegates to support building pipelines to B.C. to export oil.

“We need to be able to get the best possible world price for the oil we produce here, at the level of production that will be responsibly allowed under a climate change plan. And the way to do that is through pipelines to tidewater,” Notley said.

Not an easy sell — and one that delegates rejected in favour of the LEAP Manifesto’s hard-left politics that call for no energy development “if you wouldn’t want it in your backyard,” no new oil pipelines, cancelling all trade deals that “that interfere with our attempts to rebuild local economies,” and much more.

Notley was having none of that, preferring real power to pontification.

“We’re acting, really acting, on the basis of a concrete plan that is actually being implemented. That is what you get to do when you move up from manifestos, to the detailed, principled, practical plans you can really implement by winning an election,” Notley told delegates.

Pipeline provocations

But Mulcair himself appeared desperately ready to leap to save his leadership, telling CBC TV he’d “do everything” he could to keep oil in the ground if delegates agreed.

That only alienated his host Albertan New Democrats and private sector unionists who had supported his leadership — at the very convention that decided his fate.

But it again illustrated Mulcair’s fatal failings as a politician — a propensity to make snap decisions without full consideration or consultation, and with disastrous consequences.

Mulcair’s election announcement boasting that the NDP would balance every budget despite a shaky economy, when Canadians weren’t looking for fiscal austerity from a social democratic party, was his campaign’s terrible turning point.

Trudeau pounced on it, promising modest deficits to pay for infrastructure and other spending that Mulcair’s penny-pinching would prohibit — “real change now,” as the Liberals claimed.

But now it’s the NDP that seeks real change — in a new leader for troubled times. [Tyee]

Bill Tieleman is a former NDP strategist whose clients include unions and businesses in the resource and public sector. Tieleman is a regular Tyee contributor who writes a column on B.C. politics every Tuesday in 24 Hours newspaper. E-mail him at weststar@telus.net or visit his blog.

Source: Mulcair’s Election Campaign Mistakes Were Fatal Wounds | The Tyee