THIS week, Canadians finally noticed and vented their wrath about the temporary foreign worker program. Started to address acute short-term labour shortages, the program has expanded and run amok, aided by the willful blindness of its supposed regulators.
Corporate Canada's dirty little secret is that the program allows businesses to import foreign workers for a wide range of jobs that Canadians could do, but at 15 per cent less pay.
The RBC scandal is the most obvious example. There, skilled Canadian workers were clearly being replaced. But similar issues have been raised about HD Mining's insistence that it had to bring in Chinese miners for a B.C. project, an issue now being heard in court. It's also curious that 10 or 20 years ago coffee shops like Tim Hortons functioned just fine without the program.
The truth is Canada doesn't have a labour shortage. It has a shortage of really cheap labour.
But the race to the bottom has been fully embraced by many Canadian corporations, most of which - like RBC - are turning enormous profits, while wrapping themselves in the flag.
They have a lot to answer for. It also strains credulity to believe the feds issued permits to almost 340,000 temporary foreign workers without any eyebrows being raised or questions being asked.
Ottawa allowed the program to expand on the ideological fallacy that what's good for Canadian corporations must be good for Canadians. Clearly that's not the case.
It's time for the government to step up and close the loopholes.
