A counterpoint of view challenging the benefits of foreign workers
To the Expositor:
The Expositor’s editorial, “Temporary foreign workers are getting a bad rap,” scolds its readers who look to social media for news and opinions on the topic. But it was on social media where we saw Canadian Tim Hortons employees complain they were all being fired—many with 10-20+ years of loyal service—across four locations in Grimsby, Ontario, just before Christmas (offered a measly $300 cheque if they left quietly), in order to be replaced with cheap foreigners. In spite of a dearth of coverage from legacy media, Tim Hortons failed this time because of backlash on social media.
There was the very predictable but dubious claim that cheap foreign workers are “much like the ancestors of nearly all Canadian citizens.” That is to say, making the ocean voyage and life commitment to explore and settle the St. Lawrence, hunting and foraging about Gichigami and Mnidoo Mnising, demonstrating valour at Vimy, and the various tribulations associated with the ancestors of Old Stock Canadians who carved a nation out of raw wilderness, are, so we’re told, not unlike some tourist taking a climate-controlled flight to a pre-built nation to temporarily work a government-subsidized job.
The Expositor tells us foreigners have helped keep the poor university professors employed—indeed! Professors, and the postsecondary institutions they work for, have decided that, instead of educating the next generation of high-skilled Canadians, they should sell student visas in exchange for exorbitant tuition payments. The postsecondary foreigner fraud has extended so completely, this country now has strip mall “colleges” across the country which exist solely to print “diplomas” for the purposes of residency applications. Having the “Oxford” name displayed on a strip mall in Brampton is such a joke, and it devalues all academia in Canada.
We’re told the “critical example” for cheap foreign labour on Manitoulin is the old age home. There’s something funny about this, knowing pampered Boomer codgers at the local wrinkle ranch are sitting back retired while reading The Expositor as it heaps praise upon the foreigners changing their diapers and serving them sweet treats at the locally branded (but foreign owned and employed) doughnut shop.
Four point nine million people in Canada now have expired visas, or visas set to expire. That means roughly 12 percent of the population of Canada is now “temporary”; apparently, the word “temporary” is a misnomer (or a trick). Thankfully, The Liberals have now given us at least a hint of remigration under cover of Christmas; about 400 per week, along with a promise of 22,000 remigrations each year moving forward. This is a positive step in the right direction. But at this infinitesimal rate it would take a quarter millennia for full remigration of temporary foreigners. Canadians should not be competing for crumbs and sifting through scandal. We need to pump those remigration numbers way up.
Brandon Bushell
Mindemoya
