No kidding.
There's a scary story in Canada's newspaper of record today about the supposed labor shortage in Alberta. The shortage itself is real enough. There simply aren't enough qualified welders and pipefitters and heavy equipment operators around to fill all the vacancies.
But it is a contrived shortage, a deliberately engineered shortage. There is a shortage of skilled workers because policy-makers at the highest levels want there to be a shortage.
The shortages they have created provide the rationalization for bringing in skilled workers from other countries. Needless to say they don't bring in those workers from high-wage countries. The entire game here is to bring in workers from lower wage countries to drive down Canadian wages.
That's also why they are lukewarm about bringing in unemployed American trades. Why bring in welders from Poland and Hungary when there's guys from Oklahoma and Texas would be happy for the work, and they speak the language and can put their stuff in the pick-up and be there in a couple of days? That's the problem; they speak the language, they're often members of the same unions, and they know the going rate for pipe welders isn't fifteen bucks an hour.
The obvious solution of course is to train unemployed Canadians to do the work, but that would require an investment in training.
And training the unemployed is just one more thing that would cut into corporate profits.
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