After a series of revelations about abuses of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), the Harper Conservatives have announced so-called “sweeping changes”. Their political aim is to prevent this scandal from becoming a major issue in the 2015 federal election, without reversing the cheap labour strategy demanded by big capital.
Canada needs policies to put people’s needs ahead of corporate greed. Instead, the Harper government uses temporary foreign workers as part of the drive against job and income security for working people. This includes the expanding use of casualized, temporary, non-union workers, paid minimum wages and without benefits. The drive to reduce labour costs and attain a flexible work force is creating a brutal system of modern capitalist slavery, a system which generates, and feeds off, a huge pool of working poor.
The TFWP was introduced under the former Liberal government, as part of a wider corporate drive to channel cheap labour to employers. The Conservatives have gone further, erecting new obstacles against immigration for family-reunification and other humanitarian grounds, and reducing the number of successful refugee applicants. Visa requirements have been increased for certain nationalities, and foreign visitors suspected of potentially seeking asylum are being blocked at ports of entry, while others are being deported without the right to appeal. The racist Bill C-24, the so-called “Strengthening Citizenship Act”, creates a new second-tier category of citizens with fewer rights. The Tories axed health benefits for refugees and refugee claimants, denying access to drugs, dental and vision care, and even wheelchairs, until this racist policy was overturned by the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program expanded, to funnel foreign workers into poorly‑paid jobs without legal rights, protections or benefits. These super‑exploited workers are at the mercy of employers, and then forced to leave Canada. The 2012 Conservative budget allowed companies to pay TFWP workers 15% less than the prevailing wage.
Like similar programs in other capitalist countries, the TWFP also gave right‑wing forces an opportunity to divide the working class by promoting anti‑immigrant racism.
But with growing protests over the mistreatment of TFWP workers, and the understanding that this program artificially inflates unemployment rates, it became necessary for the Conservatives to announce changes.
But the “reforms” announced by Minister Jason Kenney will save the low-skills TFW program. The estimate that some 12,000 employers rely on the TFWP leaves out primary agriculture, tourism and resorts relying on youth with open work permits. Some 830,000 employers with fewer than 10 workers are exempted from the cap on low‑wage, temporary migrant workers.
Placing limits on the number of applications and charging higher fees will not stop employers who depend on cheap temporary labour, including big corporations like McDonalds and Tim Horton’s.
We join with others in the labour and immigrant rights movements to say that the entire TFWP must be scrapped, not just “adjusted”. We support demands to grant immediate access to the immigration stream for all current temporary foreign workers, to shut down the low‑wage categories, and to allow those who come to work in Canada the ability to settle as permanent residents, with the same rights and protections of all workers.
Issued by the Central Executive Committee,
Communist Party of Canada
July 15, 2014