We need lots more immigration to keep wages low

What's the difference between "fake" news and just telling an incomplete story?

This question popped into my head as I was perusing the cover story in today's Report on Business, wherein reporter David Parkinson allegedly "makes the case for immigration as an unbeatable strategy for economic growth."

The story gets three pages and focuses on Meridian Manufacturing in Winkler, Manitoba. Meridian is a division of Westman Group, an interesting enough Canadian success story in its own right, but in this article it merely serves as a foil for the thesis that Canada's working class has gone AWOL and desperate measures are required to keep our manufacturing sector afloat.

Desperate as in flooding the country with hundreds of thousands of desperate immigrants.

Oddly enough, nowhere in the story is there any mention of what kind of wages are on offer at Meridian. That would seem to be a critical piece of information in a story that is ostensibly about a labour shortage. I'm always skeptical about this labour shortage theme when we have a million and a half officially unemployed and millions more underemployed.

The best I could do was find this item at Glass Door; Meridian Manufacturing, great product but rock bottom wages. Is it any wonder that two thirds of Meridian's workforce are recent immigrants and temporary foreign workers?

Parkinson even provides a "case study" of Brooks, Alberta, where a quarter of the workforce are immigrants and TFWs, toiling for a whiff over minimum wage at the giant industrial abattoir in that town. Any context in terms of what's happened in the history of the meat processing industry since the time of the Gainer's lock-out would no doubt soil the depiction of Brooks as some utopian global village, so Mr. Parkinson thoughtfully spares us the burden.

So is this story "fake" news? No, it's worse than that, because it tells but one side of a multi-faceted story.

Usual douchebags whinging about imaginary Canadian labour shortage

Jason Kenney is up a bit of a stump these days. His agenda of appeasing employers by screwing workers has had to take a detour due to the Canadian election that looms on the horizon. Can't be seen as an enemy of the working class when there's an election in the offing!

Nevertheless, the long-term agenda for the Harper gang remains as it's always been; to tilt the playing field even more radically in favour of big money at the expense of Joe Lunchpail. No government initiative in recent memory has been as effective in making Canadian workers more "flexible" than the Temporary Foreign Worker program.

Think about it; well over a million Canadians officially unemployed, another million of working age in that mysterious category of "dropped out of labour market," yet foreign workers are ushered into the country by the hundreds of thousands.

That's how you keep workers "flexible," dontcha know!

And that's how you keep wages low!

Because paying higher wages cuts into the bonus pool for the bosses, and once that happens, well, holy mother of Marx, you're on the road to COMMUNISM!!!

Can't be havin' none 'o that shit up here in the Great White North.

Today the national newspaper of record has a scary story for us, about how foreign corporations might cancel plans for new developments in the energy sector if they're not allowed to bring in their own workers.

Well, off you go then... fuck you and good riddance!

The way I see it, this is a win-win. We don't have Chinese construction workers building stuff in Canada for four bucks an hour, and the cancellation of their proposed energy mega-projects will leave those climate-killing fossil fuels in the ground.

Unfortunately, the Harper gang has entangled us in so many dubious trade agreements that we'll be subject to hundreds of years of litigation as foreign companies sue Canada for compensation for the profits they could have made here.

So it looks like, thanks to Harper & company, we'll be well fucked over no matter which way we go.