Foreign Workers: To use them and lose them is wrong

The announcement that the Harper government is loosening the rules governing temporary foreign workers has all the markings of a sorry chapter of history about to repeat itself just months after Prime Minister Harper issued a formal apology for the head tax imposed on 15,000 Chinese migrants imported in the 19th century to build the CPR, and for the Chinese Exclusion Act which sent them home when they were no longer needed.

Sad to say, following the policy change announced by Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Monte Solberg on November 16, another Prime Minister years from now will likely have to make the same apology because a new wave of workers is about to be shipped into Canada to face the same kind of exploitation, exclusion from basic workplace protections and ultimately their expulsion after Canada is finished with them.

As Minister Solberg noted, "the improvements we are announcing today are making it easier, faster, and less costly for employers to hire temporary foreign workers."

"Easier", because companies in 170 industries will no longer have to prove they can't find Canadians to do the work and "less costly" because monitoring the working and living conditions (many of these workers will have to live in makeshift on-site dormitories) will be left up to the provinces.

Based on our experience over the last decade working with tens of thousands of migrant agricultural workers brought to Canada each season, what many of these new temporary foreign workers will face is substandard housing, little or no Occupational Health and Safety Training, language barriers when faced with medical or legal challenges, and no mechanism to defend themselves against an abusive employer who can ship them home on a moment's notice if they voice a concern about their treatment or working conditions.

This vulnerability exists for the 18,000 migrant agricultural workers brought to Canada annually under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) even though SAWP is supposed to be monitored by both the Canadian government and the homeland government of the worker.

It is, but almost exclusively to the benefit of the employer, so it has fallen to social justice groups as well as our union to supply the legal, counseling, safety training and language services that neither of the governments provide.

Compared to SAWP, the new system that Minister Solberg announced this week is even worse. By simply acting as a work-visa processing centre while dropping any responsibility for the workers' well being, the federal government is giving employers huge latitude to exploit foreign workers while displacing Canadians who would do the same work.

Employers say they need foreign workers because they can't find Canadians to do the work. That's not quite true. What they can't find is Canadians who are willing to accept substandard, arbitrary and often unsafe working and living conditions without voicing their concern.

Some Canadian workers who were longtime employees at a Kingsville, Ontario greenhouse can testify to that, and they will when an Ontario tribunal hears their testimony of how they were fired without cause and replaced days later by temporary foreign workers from Cambodia who get paid less, don't know their workplace rights, and wouldn't exercise them anyway for fear of being shipped home.

It is the modern version of the head tax on foreign workers: use them and lose them.

Most Canadians are the children or grandchildren of people who immigrated to Canada to find work and a better future for their family. That is not an option available to the wave of temporary foreign workers about to hit our shores. They will build wealth for the companies who use them but not a Canadian future for themselves.

If we're to avoid another apology to foreign workers a century from now, then provide this new influx of foreign workers with the same wages and workplace protections afforded Canadian workers.

Make them truly welcome and available for citizenship; not a wedge to prop up a business agenda that drives wages and working conditions lower across all sectors of the economy.

Wayne Hanley, National President
UFCW Canada