More temporary foreign workers no way to grow middle class

TORONTO—In the most glaring bait-and-switch of the Trudeau Government, Immigration Minister John McCallum is seeking not only record growth of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program but also a dismantling of regulations that limit its abuse. The federal Liberals ran on a commitment to “grow the middle class” with the lofty slogan of “hope and hard work.” In the wake of a proposal that will exacerbate job shortages, depress wages, and generally erode the middle class right here at home, the slogan seems laughably hypocritical. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program has been plagued by a steady stream of scandals that have landed more than one government in hot water. This makes it puzzling that the Liberals would consider expanding it in an especially unfavourable economic environment. The Liberals claim that changes to the program will be made with guidance from a House Human Resources Committee report. Even though the changes have already been announced, the report justifying them is delayed until September. Is this the data-driven decision-making Canadians were promised? Even if the report is eventually released, its legitimacy is severely undermined by the committee’s refusal to hear from many Canadian labour groups. The recent proposal to expand the TFW program doesn’t make sense for Canadians in the wake of our growing unemployment numbers and plummeting rate of job vacancies. According to Statistics Canada, over the last two months, Canada lost 110,000 full-time jobs and the jobless rate rose to 6.9 per cent across the country. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Canada’s incidence of long-term unemployment (people searching for a job for more than a year) is at a striking 11 per cent. How an influx of temporary foreign workers could do anything but worsen the situation requires magical math that is clearly beyond the average economist or public policy adviser. At least as the program is now, there are regulations to encourage employers to hire Canadians before importing workers. A labour-market impact assessment is a screening process that ensures there is no Canadian available to do the job and therefore a legitimate need for employers to hire a temporary foreign worker. Minister McCallum has callously referred to measures that protect Canadian jobs, like the impact assessment, as “silly rules” and said, “We’ll get rid of many of these labour-market impact assessments, which slow things down enormously.” When there are so many Canadians unemployed, releasing Canada’s employers from any obligation to hire them before importing workers does little to serve the middle class. According to the June 2016 OECD report on the North American labour market, real wage growth in Canada has steadily slowed over the last few years. It’s well known that employers have taken to using temporary foreign workers as a way to circumvent Canadian wage rates. In a particularly egregious case, HD Mining brought in more than 200 foreign workers from China as a cost-saving measure even though Canadians had applied for the jobs. Minister McCallum claims that there are skilled-labour shortages fuelling his decision, but even McDonald’s has been importing workers. In 2014, three McDonald’s outlets in Victoria had to be blacklisted from the program for hiring foreign workers over available Canadians. Working at McDonald’s hardly seems like it requires specialized skills that can only be brought in from abroad. Indeed, claims of skilled-labour shortages are dubious at best. Canada has the highest proportion of highly-educated adults among all OECD countries, beating the average by 20 per cent. If there is a “skilled-labour shortage,” it isn’t because Canada is bereft of educated adults willing and able to work. OECD data shows that Canada suffers from persistent under-utilization of labour resources, especially among women and youth. The latest figures place youth unemployment at around 13 per cent. Youth face greater barriers to employment than the broader population. If there are any skilled-labour shortages, the government should prioritize getting young people and women into the workforce and reducing provincial barriers to labour mobility before looking for foreigners to fix the problem. Importing workers is a particularly short-sighted way to address skilled-labour shortages since it doesn’t harness or invest in the vast human capital available here at home. It also leaves us all with vast numbers of unemployed individuals who cannot contribute to or participate in the economy. While the immigration minister's job is to help encourage and manage immigration, the government's job is to ensure the well-being of Canadians. The proposed changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program do just the opposite. The changes are not supported by economic numbers or legitimate business needs. In the 2015 election, Canadians gave the Liberal Party a strong mandate to fulfill its commitment to “grow the middle class” not kowtow to foreign governments or the business interests of the one per cent. The government should scrap this TFWP expansion, remember the platform they ran on, and heed Justin Trudeau’s own 2014 analysis of the program. In a column for The Toronto Star, he wrote that the program “drives down wages and displaces Canadian workers.” He went on to write that “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.” Justin Trudeau had it right in 2014. The Liberal Party of Canada had it right in 2015. Don’t get it wrong in 2016. Aziza Mohammed is a global governance specialist at the World Bank and former issues manager to Ontario's minister of citizenship and immigration. The Hill Times