Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Justin Trudeau is betraying a whole generation of young people by taking away their jobs.
The prime minister, as well as the deputy prime minister, talks a good game about helping young people get ahead and giving them opportunities.
But the federal Liberals are refusing to abolish a disastrous policy that is spiking youth unemployment as well as giving Canada a bad name.
Trudeau is so wedded to the low-wage Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) that he refuses to end it even when his beloved United Nations calls it a form of slavery.
The end stages of a government are usually characterized as being old, then tired, then stale, and then moribund. The Trudeau Liberals have gone one further and entered the zombie stage, clinging desperately to a lifeless policy because that’s all they know.
The feds need to put a stake through the heart of the low-wage TFWP, or cut off its head, or whatever needs to be done to kill a policy that’s hurtful, unintelligible and is feeding off young Canadians.
It’s not as if Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland don’t know that young Canadians are hurting.
Before the budget this year, Trudeau tweeted, “When young people feel like they can’t get ahead in the same way their parents or grandparents could, that’s not fair. It’s our job to fix that.”
In March, at a housing announcement, Freeland said, “To the younger Canadians here with us today, and to all of you across our amazing country, I just want to say your concerns are real, you’re not making it up, your frustration is understandable, this isn’t your fault and it need not be your future.”
And in a podcast interview with advocacy group Generation Squeeze, Trudeau said, “There is something fundamentally shifted in our economy that young people don’t have the kinds of opportunity they had before.”
Let’s ignore for now how appalling it is that after nine years in power both the prime minister and the deputy prime minister admit they have left a generation of young people behind.
Is there anything that Trudeau could do right now to ease the burden of young people in Canada? Yes, kill the low-wage TFWP.
In an interview, Mike Moffatt, economist and senior director of policy and innovation at the Ottawa-based Smart Prosperity Institute, said outside of 2020, the lockdown year, this has been the worst year on record for teenagers to get a summer job in Canadian history.
A big reason for that is the government’s attitude to the TFWP, in particular the low-wage stream. And the Liberals knew there were major problems with this program.
In 2014, as Liberal Leader, Trudeau criticized the Harper government for bringing in too many foreign workers because it “drives down wages and displaces Canadian workers.”
That year, the Harper government scaled back the program. But in 2022, after the pandemic, the Liberals ramped it up dramatically. In 2019, there were 98,025 temporary foreign worker permits issued. In 2023 that increased to 183,820.
“I think there are better solutions rather than just allowing firms to bring in large numbers of foreign workers, which takes job opportunities away from people who are already here,” said Moffatt.
“But it also suppresses wages. These firms, Tim Horton’s or whatever, if they’re having trouble finding workers they can always raise their wages. But instead we’ve created a system where they don’t have to.”
This week the Liberals announced a partial rollback of the TFWP, but as the National Post’s Ryan Tumilty points out, many exceptions remain and the low-wage stream will still operate with some modifications.
“The low-wage, non-agricultural stream just doesn’t make any sense. It should be outright abolished,” said Moffatt.
What is infuriating is the government’s willful blindness on this issue.
“The TFW Program has been used to circumvent hiring talented workers in Canada,” said a government press release on Monday.
But Trudeau knew that ten years ago.
“The changes we are making today will prioritize Canadian workers and ensures Canadians can trust the program is meeting the needs of our economy,” said Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault. But the program is still betraying, not prioritizing, young Canadians who urgently need to enter the economy.
The unemployment rate for youth aged 15 to 24 was 14.2 per cent in July, according to Statistics Canada — more than double the unemployment rate of 6.4 per cent for the general population.
Moffatt accuses the government of being stuck in a mindset where the TFWP is seen as the only solution to a problem. He argues the government fails to see other opportunities such as increasing productivity through technology and innovation. And if rural communities need workers, Moffatt suggests a program where youngsters are sent there for several months to fill the vacancies.
“Let’s encourage young people to take those jobs, invest in skills and training. We could have used this as an opportunity, a chance, to give young people their first job. But we didn’t do that,” he said.
Canada doesn’t need zombie policies from a government of the walking dead. But that’s the horror story we’re left with.
National Post
English