Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - October 2009
The Canadian Government is proposing changes to the foreign worker program that critics are saying will do little to help prevent abuse.
The Department of Citizenship and Immigration, under Minister Jason Kenney, has announced the intention of implementing a “blacklisting” system that would post the names of all employers found to break promises concerning wages and working conditions.
However, many immigrant advocates are unsure as to how the changes would actually function, let alone whether they would prevent abuse of temporary foreign workers.
“The problem is it [the change] could make an already cumbersome system less user-friendly,” says a Calgary immigration lawyer. “The (government) could have gone with fines or even imprisonment for abuse. Instead, they’ve gone with a model that’s based on denial of service.”
The lack of severe punishment makes it less likely for workers to come forward and report abusive employers, according to critics. The risk of losing their jobs is just not worth it to most, if there would be no change.
For its part, however, the government says that more efforts will be put into scrutinizing employers who do recruit temporary workers in order to screen out potentials for abuse – a move that may, in the end, also discourage legitimate employers who do not want to get caught in bureaucratic red tape.
Canada welcomed approximately 90,000 temporary workers last year, with 20 per cent of them heading to Alberta.
Source: The Calgary Herald
