Why are so many Canadians too lazy to work?

I am, for better or worse, getting to an age where I can remember a time fifty years ago. What I remember is that fifty years ago very few Canadians were too lazy to work. Whether you were a first or a tenth generation Canadian, the prevailing ethos stipulated that if you didn’t have a job, you were looking for one. Even when you took a trip on the pogey train, you knew that was a temporary vacation; you’d be back to the grind soon enough. Most everybody worked. In those days young people worked mainly to get out of their parent’s house and start an independent life. If you were still in mom’s basement at age 25, it was because you were working and saving for a place of your own, not because you were addicted to video games. Today, you can still be in mom’s basement in your 40’s, playing video games, and the world forgives you if you haven’t found a job yet that “agrees” with you. Which is why employers are “forced” to bring in temporary foreign workers. The Globe had a story the other day about the enterprising consultants who get rich off bringing TFWs into the country to do the jobs “Canadians don’t want to do.” The two iconic Canadian brands mentioned as relying on TFWs were Tim Hortons and Canadian Tire. No wonder. I’m a fan of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Living Wage Project, and I can guarantee you no job filled by TFWs at either of those companies meet the living wage standard. That’s why Canadians don’t want to do them. Those companies need to up their pay, not import foreign workers. But today I happened across this story; Halifax is worried they’ll have a bus driver shortage if their foreign workers can’t get their work permits extended. That didn’t sound right. I dug up the collective agreement between Halifax Transit and the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union, Local 508. I know driving a city bus may not agree with some people. The split shifts are a bitch until you have enough seniority to avoid them, and you’ll no doubt meet your share of obnoxious a-holes, but even the starting wage pretty much meets the CCPA living wage standard, and after three years you’re about $4/hr ahead of it. So why do we need foreign workers to drive city buses in Halifax? I’m aware of the argument that there’s no point because you’ll never afford your own place anyway, so might as well stay in mom’s basement and beat the latest Call of Duty. And a universal basic income would be great because then you could slip mom a little rent money. Pass the Doritos. I don’t buy it. Check out this starter in Dartmouth. Ten percent down and you’re looking at a mortgage of under two grand a month - cheaper than an apartment and well within a bus drivers reach! Sure, it needs a little work, but back in the day we expected our first home to be a fixer-upper. In fact, I’m still living in one today! Local 508 is heading into contract negotiations soon. While I hope they score a decent contract - 25% over four years would be decent, I don’t believe that will end the reliance on foreign workers. Far too many Canadians just can’t be bothered anymore.

Up the working class! Trudeau to roll out red carpet for more temporary foreign workers

My national newspaper of record has a front pager today titled Ottawa prepares to ease rules on temporary foreign workers by Bill Curry. Bill provides a quote from Immigration Minister John McCallum which succinctly captures the Trudeau government's commitment to working people in Canada, almost 1.5 million of whom are at this very moment officially unemployed;

We're also going to reduce some of the barriers and the silly rules... in order to give companies the freedom to bring in the best and the brightest.

Yup, that's why Canadians voted in Justin and his Liberal Party; to give the corporate sector more freedom.

So it's back to business as usual after the Harperites were shamed into tightening up the scandalous TFW program a couple of years back. All those Timmies stores across the west can resume importing the best and the brightest coffee servers from Mexico and the Philippines, folks delighted to work for minimum wage.

The fish processing plants on the east coast can bring in the best and the brightest fish plant workers and continue to pay starvation wages. After all, who needs to pay a living wage when some desperate foreigner is happy to work for next to nothing?

There you go, corporate sector, Justin's not such a scary guy after all, is he?

As tar sands collapse Canada pins economic hopes on seal penises

As oil sands projects are mothballed across Western Canada and employees pink-slipped by the tens of thousands (it's so bad that even some Temporary Foreign Workers are getting the chop) Canada is looking east to save the economy.

As in all the way east to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where the Harper gang have announced seal quotas of 400,000 harp seals, 60,000 grey seals, and 8,000 hooded seals for this year. That's a lot of seal peckers.

Apparently there's folks in Asian countries who'll pay big bucks for a seal penis. Or at least they used to before Viagra was invented.

The wishful thinkers at the Fur Institute of Canada have cooked up a plan that would see a nine month hunt provide work for forty seal-hunters at a cost of $9 million. Allegedly the Harperites are "studying" the plan.

Here's a better plan; pay each of those seal-hunters $50,000 a year to stay home. That's a grand total two million bucks. The government saves seven million, PLUS saves us the embarrassment of being known as the internationally reviled seal-slaughtering penis peddlers, the target of animal welfare groups around the world, and the laughing stock of the G-7.

Some thoughts on the international refugee crisis

There's a minor flap afoot in Canada about our shameful response to the Syrian refugee crisis. At this point in time, Canada has admitted a grand total of 750 or thereabouts Syrian refugees.

For all of our grandiose talk of human rights, we pull up lame when it comes to delivering.

Right now well over a million Syrian refugees are holed up in both Turkey and Lebanon. Well over half a million in Jordan. There are almost a quarter million Syrian refugees in Iraq!

How desperate would you have to be to seek refuge in Iraq? Iraq is itself a major source of refugees in the global refugee equation.

The news that Canada is cherry-picking potential refugees based on their religious affiliation should give pause for thought too. A refugee is a refugee. A human being is a human being. Politicizing the refugee process makes Canadian government bureaucrats no different than the Nazi operatives who were charged with deciding who goes to a work camp and who goes to a death camp.

Here's another thing about the refugee crisis. All the top refugee source countries are countries in which the Nations of Virtue (EU, NATO) have been heavily meddling. Until we decided on regime change in Syria, the top source countries were Iraq and Afghanistan. Syria now tops the list. It's not hard to see what these nations have in common.

Here's a policy suggestion that I hope somebody in Ottawa will read; lets eliminate the Temporary Foreign Worker program entirely, and meet our labour needs by bringing in refugees! That's a win-win and win again.

Out with 400,000 TFWs, in with 400,000 refugees.

We have every reason to believe that a Syrian or Iraqi refugee, allowed into Canada, would be every bit as productive a worker as the TFWs from Mexico or Bangladesh. And this would ease the pressure on countries like Lebanon and Jordan, allies who are groaning under their refugee burden, and who are at considerable risk of becoming adjunct states to the Caliphate.

The only downside is this; if the Harper government actually instituted such a humane and sensible policy, those 400,000 new refugee-immigrants might be inclined to vote for him...

The toxicity of the Temporary Foreign Worker program

Had a get-together with extended family to celebrate the 60th wedding anniversary of my folks this afternoon.

Every single person there was an immigrant, which is just an oblique way of acknowledging that none of us have a Status card.

So we're all immigrants or the children of immigrants, and we come from here and there and everywhere, and what's wrong with that?

Point is, had there been a TFW program back in the day, my folks and all these other folks would have been shipped back to the old country as soon as their temporary work assignment was done.

They would not have been allowed to put down roots.

They would not have been allowed to buy homes, start families, start businesses, bring their relatives over, raise children here, send those children on to university or the workforce, or see the next generation start a new wave of businesses etc....

And so it went, and the nation benefited hugely.

Under the TFW program, they'd all have been kicked out after a couple of years.

Helping Canadian workers stay flexible

No, I'm not talking about shopfloor yoga lessons.

I'm talking about the kind of flexibility GE boss Jeff Immelt had in mind when he waxed wise on worker's expectations a couple years ago.

There's always something precious about a $25 million a year guy giving tips for living to the shopfloor folks he's been driving into abject penury.

But we're talking about the flexibility that ensues when you see your job being fobbed off on one of those hard-working Mexicans or Filipinos who have been making hay big-time under Canada's "Temporary Foreign Worker" program.

A friend of a friend made quite a success story of herself establishing a business that did site-clean-up for home-builders in the Calgary area over the past few years. She struggled till she hit the brass TFW ring.

Her first batch of Mexicans turned her struggling business into a gold mine! Needless to say, she swears by them now. And why not?

They get in the country on their TFW card, and you can bet they won't be making any trouble. They don't have the luxury of taking the tried and true "take this job and shove it" route. The conditions of their contract don't allow them to quit just because somebody down the street offers them a couple dollars an hour more. Once they're in-country, they're yours!

While $12/hr may seem like a joke to any Canadian in Calgary, it's considered a great opportunity by the Mexicans in Calgary.

Which is what we're talking about when we talk about "flexibility."

Employers love flexibility. A Croatian or Tunisian welder making $16/hr is so damned flexible he makes the typical Fort Mac Newfie look like rigor mortis set in ten years ago. These folks are keen! You can hire two or three of them for the hourly rate of a Canadian!

And what is really great about the TFW program is that it helps the Canadians be just a little more flexible. Nothing like having a reserve army of TFWs waiting in the wings at contract time...

It helps those lazy-ass Canadians appreciate that in this globalized economy, they're not the only game in town anymore.

Canada's EU "Free Trade" deal to create 80,000 jobs - for Europeans

Big Steve came back from Brussels a week ago chuffed that a free trade deal with the EU was all but a done deal. Borrowing a line from Lyin' Brian's playbook, he deflected any questions about the secret deal by reciting the mantra "jobs jobs jobs".

We've heard that before.

CTV News got their hands on an internal EU document that should give all Canadians pause. Aside from giving away the store on agricultural quotas and generic drugs, Big Steve is prepared to open the floodgates to foreign workers. Here's a quote from the story;

"For the first time, Canadian provinces and municipalities will open their procurement to a foreign partner, going well beyond what Canada has offered (before)."

The document says the issue was particularly difficult to negotiate and was unresolved until both sides gave on the issue of rolling stock for public-transport systems.

Ontario and Quebec accepted a substantially lower local content exclusion to 25 per cent, and to expand the concept of "local content" to "local value," and to include labour, assembly and maintenance in what EU suppliers can provide.

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/internal-document-shows-europe-boasting-of-gains-in-canada-free-trade-deal-1.1525183#ixzz2jX1a4PHs

Note the last sentence; labour, assembly and maintenance are included in what EU suppliers can supply. In other words, if a Spanish company wins the contract to deliver a turn-key subway to Toronto, some or all of the work can be done by workers that company imports from Spain.

This will make the TFW boondoggle look like small potatoes. With an official unemployment rate of over 25% Spain has what is known in neolib circles as a "flexible" workforce, ie lots of folks desperate to work for next to nothing.

This will of course help the spoiled Canadian workers see the error of their ways when they demand a so-called "living" wage. That's an oxy-moron to begin with; if you're alive you're obviously making a living wage. The end game for Harper and the rest of the apostles of globalization is to have total labour mobility.

A level playing field.

Tighten your belts - it's a long way to the bottom.

Meet the other farmers of the future

These are the ones who will actually be feeding cities.

The organic farm-fresh 100 mile crowd will be feeding families and maybe even a few neighbourhoods, but it'll be the Monsanto ADM crowd that feeds the masses.

I was just talking this over with the Farm Manager, and she agrees that most of the farm managers of the future will be Mexicans.

Here's how it's gonna shake out.

We know most of the quality crop-land all over Canada and the US is being bought up by hedge funds. At the moment, a lot of this land is leased back to the farmers who once owned it.

That makes them, when you get right down to it, employees.

As employees, they've got that spoiled North American attitude that their work should provide them with a decent standard of living.

The hedgies will only put up with this cheek for so long. Then we'll see a major move towards both Mexican farm labour and Mexican farm managers.

Mexicans understand that they're lucky to make minimum wage.

When you understand that you're lucky to have a wage of any kind, you're not gonna be giving the boss a lot of trouble.

So here's the farm of the big-ag future.

Some white male sharpie who runs a million acre farm in Saskatchewan or Arkansas or both out of his home office in Connecticut is going to realize that bringing in farm managers at minimum wage from Mexico is gonna solve a lot of problems.

We've had Mexican farm labour here for years; Mexican management is just the next logical step.

Those big-ag guys are busy as busy can be filling out those H-2A and TFW applications at this very moment.