CONSERVATIVE TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKER PROGRAM ie. No Amount of Greed is Too Much

This weeks' Woolwich Observer has a new take on the beleagured and well deservedly so TFW (temporary foreign worker) program. Tell me are other countries as stupid as Canada? It turns out that the federal Conservative government is long on puffery and short on substance on a number of economic fronts. Recently we were advised that Canada was not number one in job creation amongst the G7 but more likely number five. Hunh! Maybe the Conservatives in Ottawa are also sufferring from the same educational malaise mathematically that our children are. In other words our adult politicians can't count any better than our public school students. In regards to the TFW it was originally designed to bring in migrant farm workers to help out for short periods of time in the harvesting of crops in the fall. Then allegedly it was expanded to fill empty spots for highly trained people whose skills allegedly were in short supply in Canada. Now it's being used at both ends of the skills spectrum as well as in the middle. All of this begs the question. Are most Canadian workers handicapped in some way? Physically or mentally? Do Canadian workers suffer from three thumbs, one leg or only one arm? Are Canadians inherently lazy or stupid? That is basically in a nutshell what we are supposed to believe. Are Canadian workers somehow untrainable? Is there no public school system in this country? Do Canadians' brains peak at sixteen and after that it's all downhill? If you think about it carefully the whole idea of this program is quite insulting and noxious. What it is, is simply Candaian employers with no concern for Canadian citizens and residents, looking for cheaper more malleable labour. Don't fool yourself the malleability is huge. It means no unions , no backtalk and no questions around worker safety. What a joke workers' rights to say no to dangerous conditions are when a) the workers can't speak English 2) the worker who says no can be replaced the next day with a TFW .

All of this is a Conservative ideologists dream. Some owners, management and entrepreneurs can only drool at the prospects of never having to say sorry again. If a TFW breaks his arm on the job, deport him asap. Hell you probably don't even have to report it as a work related injury. If the owner wants to buy his wife a new car then just trim the workers' overtime pay for a few weeks. Are they going to complain and get their visa pulled? Hardly. What a find. I've never accused some of these Conservative feds of being overly smart but have they ever figured what they are doing to their own domestic market for their products? The TFW are saving and sending their money home. They sure as hell are trying very hard not to spend it here. Keep this crap up and who's going to be buying here? The unemployed due to your greed?

Steve Kannon in his Editor's Notes column titled "Foreign worker program "abuses" just part of plan to suppress wages" has that as his take on the matter. In other words he doesn't believe that these are individual company and employer abuses of a labour plan with some merits. Far from it he believes these "abuses" were expected and wanted by the federal Conservatives in order to drive down wages and unions. If everybody are terrifed at losing their jobs they will keep their heads down and as some bosses so desperately require, suck up to them. Is this the society and system we want for our children to work in?