Temporary Foreign Workers Will "Save" Canadian Jobs -- Give Me A Break!
I dropped into a Tim Horton's donut shop this morning in Westbank, British Columbia. On the wall, I saw the poster below urging customers to write their MPs to lift a temporary ban on temporary foreign workers in some low end service industry jobs. The poster made the preposterous claim that, without temporary foreign workers, some restaurants would have to scale back hours or close altogether -- in a nation with 1.5-million Canadians out of work and another 900,000 involuntarily in part-time jobs!
The poster was the work of a lobby group called Restaurants Canada, giving a url of protectingcanadianjobs.com -- a website which has since disappeared.
The poster contended "In some markets, restaurant owners would have to scale back their business or even close their doors without those temporary [foreign] workers." So, to save Canadian jobs, allow hordes of "temporary foreign workers." So to fight alcoholism, should we have another double Scotch?
Most fast food restaurants depend on volume for profitability. They need a large and constant customer base; therefore, they need to be in population centres. And such centres have unemployed entry level workers. In the odd employment hot spots, like Fort McMurray in the high wage oilsands of Alberta, fast food outlets may have to work a little harder and (ee gads, offer higher wages) to attract the workforce of youth, housewives, Aboriginals and the retired to staff their restaurants. If that mean slightly higher local food prices, so be it.
A website called Creekside wrote a blistering critique of this "save Canadian jobs by importing foreign workers" idiocy.
Paul Fromm
Director
Canada First Immigration Reform Committee
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