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Business’s cross-Canada lament: We need foreign workers
The Globe and Mail ^ | April 30, 2013 | Kelly Cryderman, Richard Blackwell and Tavia Grant

Posted on 05/02/2013 8:22:00 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Straddling the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary, the fast-growing city of Lloydminster is surrounded by heavy-oil reserves. Oil field servicing jobs or work at the Husky upgrader is plentiful. Three hotels are under construction, as well as a mall and restaurants.

But business owner and Lloydminster Mayor Jeff Mulligan said the city’s expansion plans would be diminished without temporary foreign workers – accounting for up to one in 10 Lloydminster residents – and that the federal government’s move this week to tighten rules in bringing them is an overreaction that will hurt the local hospitality and food services sectors. “It would create a critical circumstance if we didn’t have access to the temporary foreign worker program in this city.”

The story is the same across much of Alberta, where small and mid-sized businesses – already struggling to compete with the province’s oil and gas sector for workers – say the more rigid new rules will make it harder to bring temporary foreign workers to their province. That’s a big problem for the province, which has a disproportionate share of foreign workers.

Elsewhere in Canada, though, tighter rules for the worker program drew a range of responses, with some employers concerned that delays borne of new requirements will hamper business opportunities, while others said it won’t hurt their operations.

There is a common refrain among businesses across Canada that Ottawa’s move to require foreign workers to be paid market wages will not be a significant hindrance – but that the new rule that firms produce a plan to transition to a fully Canadian work force could be a problem....

(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Canada; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: canada; economy; energy; immigration
Comments?
1 posted on 05/02/2013 8:22:00 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

...we can give them a street organizer...


2 posted on 05/02/2013 8:25:24 AM PDT by Doogle (USAF.68-73..8th TFW Ubon Thailand..never store a threat you should have eliminated))
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

America’s got 11 million plus illegal aliens we can send to our Canadian cousins. However, you’ll have to give them all sorts of welfare perks and you cannot expect them to obey Canadian laws.


3 posted on 05/02/2013 8:27:01 AM PDT by MasterGunner01
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Let’s sell them our 20 million illegal aliens (my best estimate). $10 apiece.


4 posted on 05/02/2013 8:29:33 AM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Cut off the social welfare given to healthy, lazy citizens, and they will work or starve. We need more “immigrants” like a bicycle needs a flat tire.


5 posted on 05/02/2013 8:32:54 AM PDT by soycd
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Just like American companies, they want the age and nationality labor arbitrage - younger or foreign knowledge workers who are willing to work harder and longer hours for less money than the native Canadian talent pool. Especially if the work needed is outside the organization’s core competency - then there is no desire whatsoever to pay domestic market rates.


6 posted on 05/02/2013 8:33:50 AM PDT by Mr. Jeeves (CTRL-GALT-DELETE)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I wonder if any of the tens of millions of unemployed or underemployed Americans would be considered for those “temporary foreign worker” positions. I’d guess not, for the same reasons they can’t get jobs here — the “temporary” status probably translates into a half-off sale on wages paid, regulations followed, etc.


7 posted on 05/02/2013 8:49:02 AM PDT by jiggyboy (Ten percent of poll respondents are either lying or insane)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Business’s Businesses cross across Canada lament: We need foreign workers

Does no one know basic English any longer?

8 posted on 05/02/2013 8:54:08 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter (Posting from deep behind the Maple Curtain)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I am an electrician working in lloydminster right now, if we didn’t have these foreigners, we would have no restaurants or coffee places open and no oh to work in the hotels. The place would get more miserable than it already is heh.


9 posted on 05/02/2013 9:15:50 AM PDT by Bulwyf
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

They have a different situation than ours. They have discovered tons of very valuable resources in areas with very small populations. They actually DO need to import labor in order to exploit it. In our case, I’m not so sure. We have over ten times their population.


10 posted on 05/02/2013 9:46:56 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

You don’t need *any* immigration as long as there is a single citizen actually looking for a job.


11 posted on 05/02/2013 9:52:25 AM PDT by RedStateRocker (Nuke Mecca, Deport all illegals, abolish the IRS, DEA and ATF.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I think if they changed the EI rules that allow Maritimers to work less and collect benefits longer, they’d have no problem filling those jobs with Canadians. When my dad came to Toronto from Nova Scotia, every family in the Atlantic provinces had members move west for work.


12 posted on 05/02/2013 12:33:35 PM PDT by Squawk 8888 (True North- Strong Leader, Strong Dollar)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; Clive; exg; Alberta's Child; albertabound; AntiKev; backhoe; Byron_the_Aussie; ...
To all- please ping me to Canadian topics.

Canada Ping!

13 posted on 05/02/2013 12:36:26 PM PDT by Squawk 8888 (True North- Strong Leader, Strong Dollar)
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To: Straight Vermonter

The original is correct. It just means something a bit different than your version.


14 posted on 05/06/2013 6:17:25 AM PDT by oldweesie
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