Canada's "immigration reforms" designed to screw Canadian workers

Thanks mainly to the CBC foregrounding the TFW abuse story that was always ignored by mainstream media, the Harperites have regrouped and refashioned their prized program to defuse the criticisms that it is designed to drive down the wages of Canadian workers.

Unctuous uber-turd Chris Alexander has made public the list of occupations that will qualify for "express entry" to Canada due to our imaginary labour shortage. If you heard his interview on CBC the other day, where after exhausting 101 ways to avoid answering a simple question he simply hung up the phone, you'll understand how he earned the "uber" for his turd badge.

But that's history. The interviewer was just trying to score some cheap points by exposing the vast gulf between Harper government rhetoric and the real world.

And while that is indeed a vast gulf, it's not the story we're following today.

Let's look at some of those 50 occupations that have alleged skills shortages.

Early childhood educators and assistants. Canada's community colleges crank out qualified ECE's by the tens of thousands. Most of them end up working for a wage that puts them well below the poverty line. That's why there's a shortage. Bringing in thousands of Filipinos helps who?

University professors and lecturers. Most freshly minted PhDs I know have trouble stitching together enough sessional work to even come close to the poverty line. THERE IS NO FUCKING SHORTAGE!!!

Investment dealers and brokers. Oh for fucks sakes! This can't be serious!? Virtually every investment house in Canada has been steadily downsizing at least since '08, if not before. Investment dealers need "express entry" to Canada because there is a shortage of qualified people?

Complete bullshit!

It goes on and on like that. There might be half a dozen occupations on that list of 50 that have legit shortages. Instrument technicians might be one; petroleum engineers might be another, and there might be a few more, but in every case these shortages could be readily remedied by educating Canadians who are unemployed or underemployed.

We don't need "workers" to fill a non-existent worker shortage. These programs are designed to drive down the wages and strip the benefits from Canadian workers, so that the multinational conglomerates who will be employing these workers can reduce their labour costs and increase their management bonuses.

What this list proves is that the Harper gang is not about "reforming" an anti-worker TFW program; they're about entrenching it and making things even worse for Canadian workers!

More doubts cast on Canada's imaginary "worker shortage"

This time it's the Parliamentary Budget Office throwing cold water on the Harper governments' contention that Canada is in the throes of a major skilled worker shortage.

In fact, the PBO's Mostafa Askari pretty much confirms what we've been saying all along; the "skilled worker shortage" is political flim-flam designed to cover up the fact that the Harper government has been waging all-out war on Canadian workers.

The government has pointed to the so-called skills mismatch to justify measures like the foreign temporary workers program, stricter unemployment insurance eligibility rules and the Canada Jobs Grant, which has been unpopular with the provinces.

The PBO report points out that a genuine labour shortage would result in upward pressure on wages. Instead, wages in most fields have been stagnant, and the addition of hundreds of thousands of "Temporary Foreign Workers" has in fact put considerable downward pressure on the wages of many Canadian workers.

The only point on which the think tank here at Falling Downs would disagree with Mr. Askari is over his "surprise" at the government's use of statistics to justify their conclusions that there has been a labour shortage.

It's all politics. The Conservative Party represents business, not workers. Of course the business community would like to see downward pressure on wages; of course they'd like to flood the country with foreign workers undercutting Canadian wages; of course they'd love to use any excuse to cut back unemployment benefits...

How is any of this a surprise?