Trading jobs

Media sources as disparate as the Calgary Herald and the CBC have both written stories in the past few days about Canada's Foreign Worker Program. They both say the same thing. They have suggested that the program, which was designed to help Canadian companies in the short term find workers for specific jobs for which there were no Canadian workers available, is being used to find cheap labour from other countries in spite of the fact that there are Canadian workers available and capable.

The Foreign Worker program has always made some sense from the perspective of both industry and most Canadians because the imported workers were doing jobs that Canadians generally did not want. Picking fruit is a prime example. The farmer only needs workers for a short period of time, it is hard work and Canadians are generally not prepared to work for low wages and long hours. From the workers point of view however, it has not always been a great deal. Yes they get to come to Canada for a while and make what must seem to them like a fair amount of money; money that they can take home and support their families. But various advocacy groups have argued for years that the working and living conditions are substandard and that in spite of the fact that the foreign workers are obliged to pay into Employment Insurance (what an oxymoron that phrase is!) they are seldom eligible to collect it. As well they may not be eligible for health care depending upon how long they are in the country.  While they may (according to Citizen and Immigration Canada's website) have full access to all of  the protection that Canada offers to its citizens, one wonders how easily the information is available to those whose first language is not English or French and who may not have internet access. However the issues that have been raised most recently are not related to the protection of those temporary workers but rather to the protection of good long term jobs for Canadians. Bank employees and miners have both been affected the Foreign Worker Program.

If I understand the story, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has hired a company to supply IT workers from another country and has required its own employees to train those new workers before being laid off. It would be logical to assume that the bank was doing so because it needed to save money. Not a good reason or even one that is legal but it would be sort of understandable. Except that according to the Huff Post "the personal and commercial banking segment earned a record $1.1 billion, up 11 per cent from the same quarter last year". Nope they don't need the money. They are just being greedy.

On the West Coast, CTV news (amongst other media sources) has discussed the case of 200 miners from China who were allowed to enter Canada on temporary work visas because the owners of the mine (who happen to be Chinese) said there were no suitably trained Canadian miners. That is a bit hard to believe. There have to be 200 miners in Canada who would re-locate to the West Coast. What is unfortunately less hard to believe is that our government allowed this to happen. I think the important question is why?

For the companies in question it is a good deal. They are allowed to pay 15% less to the imported workers. It is also a good deal for both the companies and the government in that it is one more way that unions are being broken.  Quite clearly the message is to Canadians - if you won't work for lower wages - we will import workers who are so desperate for a job that they will accept reduced wages. And these workers will have fewer rights and  may never know that they are allowed to complain about work conditions. Sweet deal if you are a capitalist.

At the end of last year, CBC presented a story about the treatment of foreign workers at Tim Horton's.  Who knew that there were not enough students who wanted to work at Timmies ? It couldn't be because those imported workers would work for less...could it?

There is some good news. According to at least one employee at the Royal Bank, since the story broke he has started to get offers from other departments within the bank offering interviews. Brendan Behan (Irish Author) once wrote - there is no such thing as bad publicity" (The Quotation Page).  It looks like he may have been wrong.

Puppets and clowns

A week or so ago, there was a bit of a kerfuffle (what a lovely word) around the Canadian Parliament when a handful of Conservative MPs started to complain that they were not being allowed to speak; that the Prime Minister's office was restricting who could talk about what in the House of Commons. Initially my curiosity was aroused. Perhaps things were about to get interesting if members of the ruling party were expressing outrage about them not being allowed to their job. It is well known that the Prime Minister is a bit of a control freak and that all MPs are expected to stay on message all of the time. In my overly optimistic naiveté I thought, just for a brief moment, that perhaps- just perhaps people were thinking for themselves. My interest was quickly dashed when it became apparent that the parliamentarians were upset that they were not being allowed to raise the abortion issue (the fact there are still people who do not believe it is a woman's right to make that decision is another story in itself). Not surprisingly, the story seems to have disappeared into some dark crevasse of the medias' consciousness. Still it was a reminder of the fact that those MPs who are elected to sit but who for some reason do not attract the attention of the leader, are destined to be plodding back benchers for much of their lives. To call them puppets may be unfair but they seldom demonstrate any independent thought.

A week later Ralph Klein's  death was announced. Klein was the Premier of Alberta for about 14 years. I never liked him. I didn't know him of course but he always seemed to play the part of a small town hick. I expect more from politicians on the national stage. Part of my response to him may have been that he, in terms of statesmanship and presence, compared rather poorly to a previous premier, Peter Lougheed. Last night I listened to some of the things that were said about Klein at his memorial service. He was a small town politician (in spite of the fact that he had been mayor of Calgary); he liked people and they liked him. I suspect he was far more comfortable hanging out in a bar with some ordinary people than being a politically correct politician. He sometimes said things that were at best rude, insulting or outrageous. But he was true to himself and to the people that elected him. I think his politics were wrong, but I have to respect a person who says what he means and who does not lie to those around him.

We, in Canada, have had other similar politicians. In fact Canada is blessed with a long list of politicians (including perhaps the current mayor of Toronto) who have been opinionated and determined to be who and what they were. We have had leaders who may have been alcoholics, others who were poor fathers and even worse husbands, while others probably committed illegal acts while in office but they had opinions and they had a vision of how the world should work.  I don't have to agree with them and I certainly would not have supported some of them but at least they were not puppets.  At least one would know who one was voting for.

Unfortunately the days of the Ralph Kleins of the world are rapidly passing. What we now see though the media are orchestrated and all too predictable sound bites. We know how someone is going to respond to any question by the ideological colours they wear at election time. Their personalities are shaped by PR gurus and by professional handlers. It would appear that it has been decided that a real connection with the people, a personal empowering vision or even a personality is a dangerous thing. Maybe I would rather vote for a honest scoundrel as opposed to voting for someone who has allowed themselves to be shaped by someone else just to be elected.

I would rather have someone who on occasion acts the part of a clown than someone who is a puppet and does not know it or does not care.

Money and who gets to keep it.....

I may have, in the past, cast the occasional aspersion upon some of the decisions made by the Canadian Government. I think it would be reasonable to assume that I am not part of their fan club. However, until yesterday I would have argued that we, as Canadians, were far better served by our government then some of the countries that are EU members. I was thinking specifically of Cyprus.  In that country, bank depositors who have more than approximately $100,000 (Canadian) in their bank account could lose up to 60% of their deposit. The reason why - it appears that the banks and other big businesses including the government needed a bailout. The only way that the World Bank and the other European countries would help prop up the economy was if the Cyprus Government took some money from the citizens' bank accounts. It is suppose to be an investment. If the country and therefore the banks start to do better, the citizens can get some of their money back. I think the government should have been honest and just called it a tax or perhaps even out-right robbery.

$100,000 is not a lot of money. When one considers how much a president of a national bank in Canada makes annually (The Huffington Post reported that the President of  "TD Bank CEO Ed Clark took home $11.3 million, including base salary, bonuses and stock options in 2011" huffingtonpost.ca) it would seem that $100,000 is really somewhat less than a mere pittance. For many people that amount might reflect their life savings. A life time of saving up for a rainy day or their retirement- whatever came first.

Why the World Bank does not go after all of the arms dealers or the dictators or the capitalists who rape and plunder the resources of countries that are still developing could be the topic of a very long book. The fact is that they are not demanding that those individuals pay some money onto the common pot to bail out countries in trouble. If I were a Cypriot I would be more than just angry at the European countries demanding that I lose up to 60% of my savings. The fact that perhaps 50% of the money in Cyprus' banks is foreign money does not seem to be the point.

But I am a Canadian and I don't need to worry. My government would never dream of doing something like that. Right??

I am now not so sure. An internet article posted on Global Research (Centre for Research on Globalization)   is suggesting that within the 400 odd pages of the Canadian budget that was tabled last week, there are sections that open the way for the Canadian Government to do the same thing. They call it a "bail-in" (see pages 144-145 in the government's budget text). If the banks spend/loses all of their money it appears  that a "bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital". I think they mean that they can take the money that they have of mine ( it is a liability if they can't give it to me) and make it their own. Does that sound like what happened in Cyprus? I think so.

I am generally more than prepared to pay taxes. I would even be glad to pay more taxes if I thought that my money would (1) be matched by those bank presidents and (2) that it would go towards supporting those who needed support. But I will be damned if I will agree to my money being used to bail out a bank when the presidents and the shareholders continue to earn far more than me.