|
Edmonton lawyer Yessie Byl calls temporary foreign workers Alberta's disposable workforce. With the current economic downturn, this is more true today than it has ever been.
For the last several years Yessie Byl has become a passionate advocate for Alberta's temporary foreign workers. Byl was a featured speaker at a public forum sponsored by the Sheldon Chumir Foundation at the University of Alberta on February 25.
Byl pointed out that - before 2002 - there was no provision in Canadian law to bring in low-skilled temporary foreign workers. Canadians used to look down their noses at countries like Germany and the United States and the social problems and tensions caused by their guest worker programs.
Since the policy change in 2002, there has been a virtual flood of temporary foreign workers into Canada to the point whereby at the end of 2008, Canada has more guest workers than the United States, despite having only one-tenth of its population. Many of these temporary workers have been brought in to fill positions in the retail, fast food and hospitality sectors by employers unwilling to pay the kinds of wages and benefits that would be needed to attract Canadian workers..
And no province has jumped onto the temporary foreign worker bandwagon with more enthusiasm than Alberta. In each of the last two years, Alberta accepted significantly more temporary foreign workers than it did legal immigrants. By December 1, 2008, there were 58,000 temporary foreign workers in Alberta, which is greater than the population of the City of St. Albert.
And what will become of these guest workers given rising unemployment and an economic downturn? The early signs are not encouraging. Thousands of these vulnerable workers are being laid off. The easy answer is to say they should just all go home to their countries of origin now that their services are no longer required here in Alberta. But many of these workers (especially those in low-skill and low-wage occupations) were recruited to come to Alberta with the promise that this would be a stepping stone to allow them to legally immigrate.
As Jim Gurnett of the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers pointed out at the forum, the temporary foreign worker program was bad public policy when there was an economic boom. Now that the boom has turned into a bust, the well-documented problems with the program will only get worse.
|
Sunday, 05 February 2012 
