By ED Mayne, Nanaimo Daily | Link to Article
By ED Mayne, Nanaimo Daily | Link to Article
There has been much written about this temporary foreign worker program. To be open and transparent my wife and I do employ one TFW in one of our restaurants. We have had as many as five in the past.
This is out of a staff of 100 employees. The government has very recently decided that they will cancel the temporary foreign worker program for restaurants.
Recently Restaurants Canada has started placing newspaper and magazine ads through out Western Canada and Newfoundland attempting to explain that the foreign workers program is not meant to replace Canadians, but to supplement the work force in areas where Canadians are not available to fill the jobs.
It has been stated that there is actually a small percentage of all the restaurant employees in Western Canada and Newfoundland that are here under this program.
They acknowledge that as with any government program there are always those few people who will take advantage of, or circumvent the rules but considering the numbers of restaurants the abusers are very few.
Those people who do abuse the program should be severely dealt with as they are with any other government program.
The government hasn’t cancelled the collection of income tax because a few individuals have not paid their taxes. But instead of the government taking on its responsibility to handle these few exceptions, they have elected to stop all restaurants from using this much needed program.
Restaurant Canada would say that many honest, hard working restaurant owners will be hurt and some even put out of business, costing Canadians their jobs. Unfortunately, there are a number of one-sided stories being spread by parties with a vested interest in critiquing this program.
Each situation should be evaluated with a jaundiced eye until all the facts are known.
Over the vast majority of Canada there is no need for this program, but there is in the Oceanside area and many other parts of Western Canada.
In the 2011 census it shows that Oceanside has only 25.3 per cent of the population between the ages of 25 and 55, considered the normal ages of the work force, this is down from the previous census by 2 per cent (the provincial average is in excess of 40 per cent).
When you do not have the Canadians available to take on the jobs, you stifle the local economy.
The starting of new businesses or the expansion of operating hours are passed by.