How times change. In 2007, then Minister of Human Resources and Social Development Diane Finley was bragging about how the Conservatives were making it "faster and simpler for employers to hire a foreign worker." Fast forward to 2014, and Employment and Social Development Minister Jason Kenney is being kept very busy lately reassuring us that Canadians must always be first in line for available jobs and no abuse of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program will be tolerated.
For eight years, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has been a cornerstone of Conservative economic policy, bolstered by the use of made-up statistics claiming that Canada is suffering from a labour shortage.
The program, created by the Liberals, has been grown to outrageous proportions by the Conservatives: in 2012, there were 338,189 Temporary Foreign Workers working in Canada. In fact, Canada has been admitting far more temporary workers than it has economic immigrants under the Conservatives.
This temporary workforce has been used to drive down wages for Canadian workers, aided in part by Conservative rule changes that allowed employers to pay foreign workers less than Canadian workers, until widespread outrage led the government to end that practice last year.
In the last few weeks, we've been seeing the fruits of this strategy:
•Reports of Canadians being fired or passed over in favour of temporary foreign workers;
•Allegations of foreign workers being kept in appalling conditions, laboring for little or no pay;
•The announcement from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that one-quarter of new jobs created in 2012 went to temporary foreign workers; and
•Confirmation from the C.D. Howe Institute that the program has increased unemployment in Canada.
Jason Kenney would have us believe that he's as outraged as anyone that these abuses have taken place on his watch, first as Immigration Minister and now as Employment and Social Development Minister. In fact, he's been claiming repeatedly that, "If and when there are abuses, we act clearly and quickly." Yet the facts are not on the Minister's side.
The CBC reports that the Canadian Border Services Agency raided an employer paying temporary foreign workers next to nothing to work at mall kiosks in 2011. Yet for three years, that employer was permitted to continue hiring foreign workers -- his permits were never pulled, his name was never put on the employer blacklist, and he never faced criminal charges.
In fact, for three years the Conservatives' blacklist of employers who were banned from using the program due to violations sat empty, until the Minister started adding names just last month in response to heavy media coverage of abuses. This was despite multiple cases of documented abuse.
The reality is that the Conservatives have completely mismanaged the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, from making it easier to bring in temporary foreign workers to a complete and utter failure to police employers for misuse and violations.
That's why New Democrats have called for a moratorium on the use of the Stream for Lower Skilled Occupations and an immediate, independent review of the whole program. We have moved well beyond the point of quick fixes. It's time for a fundamental re-think of a deeply flawed program.
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