If you listened carefully the evening of Monday, April 29, you would have heard a collective groan rise up from the houses of entrepreneurs all over Saskatchewan as they watched the evening news.
That groan was quickly followed by the following: "Thanks Royal Bank for screwing it up for everyone."
Under heat from the opposition and some labour groups in central Canada, the federal government is now backpedalling on recent changes to the temporary foreign workers program. While a few adjustments were justified, the end result is you should now expect to spend a lot more time in the drive thru.
That's because in much of the Saskatchewan oil patch, if you get a burger, coffee or donut handed to you across a counter or drive thru window, there is a very, very good bet it was handed to you by a temporary foreign worker.
In my capacity as editor of Pipeline News, I talk to entrepreneurs pretty much every day. And the vast majority I have spoken to in the past six months have had to hire temporary foreign workers either to take advantage of growth opportunities, or to simply stay afloat.
In southeast Saskatchewan, most of the temporary foreign workers I see are Filipino. This is especially true in the service industry - restaurants and hotels. But I've also seen a recent influx of Irish, a direct result of that trade mission Premier Wall took part in last year. There's been a few Chinese, and a few Indian, as in from the other side of the planet Indian. There are so many Filipinos in Estevan now, there's even a specialized convenience store, serving comfort junk food from home. And that's a good thing. If it wasn't for this influx, you could not get fed in a large number of the restaurants in this town.
In industry, I see a lot of Eastern European tradespeople, such as Ukrainian mechanics. It's weird talking to these people, because my late grandfather came over in 1930, and other ancestors came before him. Now several generations Canadian, it's hard for me to relate to someone from the "old country," as Gido used to call it.
These people are all here because they are needed. Without them, a good chunk of Saskatchewan's economy would grind to a halt.
It's not easy to get them here, either. The process can take well over a year, sometimes longer. And they're not indentured either. If they quit, you're back to square one. To a one, all these entrepreneurs would much rather hire Canadians. While there may be Canadians out of work elsewhere in this country, they are not here. And they apparently are not willing to come here, otherwise they would have done so already. They might as well be on the moon.
The ugly truth is if we want to reduce Canada's dependence on temporary foreign workers, a host of Canadians need to get off their collective and individual asses. That means they have to be willing to go where the jobs are, even if it's not where they grew up. And they may have to stop looking down their noses at the rural Canada and leave some of the big cities.
That's hard for some people to swallow. I listened to the federal opposition tackle this subject during question period April 30. They want these jobs to go to Canadians, but they forget that Canadians aren't willing to take them. They also lack the guts to push unemployed Canadians to "get a haircut and get a real job," as George Thorogood sang many moons ago.
In other words, the opposition's take on this can be equated to sucking and blowing at the same time.
The Conservatives are no better, coming up with a set of solutions that, for the most part, will not solve anything, but rather exacerbate the problem.
There are apparently some real problems with the program. Paying up to 15 per cent less to foreign workers is unfair, discriminatory and exploitive. That needs to be fixed. But "Requiring employers who rely on temporary foreign workers to have a 'firm plan' in place to transition to a Canadian workforce over time," as the National Post reported, is a fool's errand. Of course all these employers want to transition to a Canadian workforce. If they could have hired Canadians, they would have done it a long time ago.
As for introducing a fee for labour market opinions, are you kidding? So now a restaurant in Weyburn has to pay the government to be told there's no Canadians to hire? It's as obvious as the 15 cars in the doughnut line up!
Instead of these people being temporary, what our government should be doing is fast-tracking citizenship for them instead of forcing them to return home after a certain length of time. They're obviously willing to work. Sounds like a good Canuck to me. Once they are Canadian citizens, the whole kerfuffle is moot.
So thanks, Royal Bank. Hope you don't need a catered meal anytime soon, because there may not be anyone to feed you.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
