Canada reverses course, tightens up foreign-workers program

[Newsjock]

Source: The Globe and Mail

Amid a public outcry, the Conservative government is reversing controversial changes it made last year to the temporary foreign workers program.

The government announced Monday that employers will no longer have some flexibility to set the wages for foreign labour, calling a halt to what was known as the 15-per-cent rule. That rule allowed businesses to pay foreign workers up to 15 per cent below average wages for a job.

The Conservatives are also hitting pause on a program that fast-tracked the ability of some companies to bring in workers from outside Canada through what’s known as an accelerated labour market opinion.

... But after two companies were outed in the past six months for using the foreign workers program at what appeared to be the expense of Canadian jobs, the Tories promised reforms.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-reverse-course-tighten-up-foreign-workers-program/article11616303/

[PDJane]

1. It's going to take more than a cosmetic fix to cure that monstrosity.

The program is working the way it was designed to work; the only reason for the cosmetic fix is that the big banks were caught replacing existing workers through a broker. A broker that threatened relatives in India with hefty fines if their workers decamped to Canada. However, over one in five net new jobs created in the entire economy from 2007 through 2012 went to one of these temporary foreign workers, at a 15% less pay rate.

This is the neo-con way, and with 1.5 million Canadians unemployed, it's egregious.