Document Details

2009-10-14

Norma Greenaway

The Windsor Star

A federal proposal to punish employers who do not live up to commitments to temporary workers they hire from outside of Canada is not tough enough, say critics of the temporary foreign worker program.
Clarizze Truscott, a volunteer with the Alberta-based Citizens Concerned for Temporary Foreign Workers, said Tuesday the new rule is unlikely to be effective because most foreign workers would rather stay silent about their mistreatment than risk losing their job by complaining to authorities about their employers.
Under the proposed regulation, the government would bar employers from hiring workers under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program for two years if they fail to keep their promises regarding wages, working conditions or occupations. It says their names also would be posted on the Citizenship and Immigration website.

The government also proposes putting a four-year limit on the amount of time a foreign worker can accumulate on the job in Canada before being prevented from working here for a period of six years, and promises a more rigorous assessment of the job offers.
The public has 60 days to comment on the proposals, which were unveiled in the latest edition of the Canada Gazette and which Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said were designed to ensure the program is "fair and equitable."
Still to come are new rules -- promised by Kennedy -- to provide better protection for the thousands of people, mostly Filipinas, who come to Canada to work as live-in caregivers. Those are expected sometime this fall.
Truscott, who immigrated from the Philippines 18 years ago and now runs a bed and breakfast in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., said that rather than capping workers' time in Canada, the federal government should allow temporary foreign workers the chance to achieve landed immigrant status and citizenship.
NDP MP Linda Duncan said the government should ditch the temporary program and concentrate on encouraging skilled workers Canada needs and wants to immigrate to Canada.
"When they (foreign workers) come here, they should have the full basket of rights and opportunities that all workers here fought for for so many years," she said. "What possible rationale can we have that we have second-class workers?"
The bulk of the more than 90,000 temporary workers allowed into Canada in each of the last several years was hired for jobs in Western Canada, most notably, Alberta.
Duncan said many foreigners hired to work in the oilsands, as well as in the food and restaurant business, have been left in a lurch as the economy soured and their jobs disappeared or hours shrank.
They now are relying on the food banks, church groups and the goodness of strangers to survive, she said.
The Canadian Labour Congress is among labour groups that have called on the government to hold those using temporary migrant workers to a high standard of workplace protection by, among other things, stepping up monitoring and enforcement measures.

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  Ottawa targets abusive employers (http://www2.canada.com/windsorstar/news/business/story.html?id=64215a51-9c3e-42cb-9d27-bf2ef6371189)
  

Agriculture and horticulture workers, Occupations in services - Domestic work, Sales and service occupations - general, Trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations - general, Natural resources, agriculture and related production occupations - general, Labourers in food, beverage and associated products processing, Dancers, and Other

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