Juno News - Ending the temporary foreign worker scam

00:00:00.000 Hi, Juneau News. Alexander Brown, host of Not Sorry. Thanks for joining us here for another

00:00:09.840 week. The news of the week on my side of the fence is the continued work to fix immigration.

00:00:17.820 I've spoken about this extensively with Michelle Rumpel-Garner here on the show,

00:00:22.700 who was also on with Candace Malcolm last week. I've had trucking experts like Gord

00:00:28.100 McGill come in and tell us what the heck is going on with his industry and the connection

00:00:33.000 immigration fraud and exploitation has played in that regard. Cover the National Post this

00:00:41.840 weekend. It's a version of a too much too soon, a too much too fast. The conservatives are calling

00:00:48.480 to abolish this program. Myself and our guests today, Dr. Michael Bonner, are in the hub right

00:00:55.800 now, last week with a quick breakdown of why this call to abolish and sort of greatly ratify

00:01:03.480 the temporary foreign worker program. It does have its purposes in key sectors where it's actually

00:01:10.060 hard to find people and it's not just being used to exploit low-wage laborers. It's a good first step 0.94

00:01:16.060 and we have an even bigger feature coming in the hub this week that further expands on that.

00:01:21.880 This is, as you know, the moment to drive change where the charts are all going in one direction.

00:01:29.420 The feelings of the country are all going in the other. There's been terrific writing from Jamie

00:01:35.380 Sarkonic this weekend in the National Post. And this all ties back to just what we've seen the last

00:01:42.860 few years, what we're seeing in our job market, how concerned our young people are and our Canadian

00:01:48.000 workers that, for all that people like to now talk about by Canadian, we're not hiring Canadian.

00:01:54.960 Going into the summer, I put out a call to hire Canadian through the National Citizens Coalition, 0.83

00:02:02.160 where I'm the director, just saying that, you know, let's practice what we preach here. Now is the

00:02:07.260 moment to start foregoing this abuse of the temporary foreign worker program. And since then, I've been

00:02:13.600 really thrilled to see that take off because this is obviously a moment to return that to what its

00:02:19.540 original purpose was for, which was filling difficult, skilled roles for key industries,

00:02:25.460 not just as a low-wage replacement scam that it has now turned into. And that scam runs deep. You know,

00:02:32.400 they're dodgy characters, you know, all but running a slave labor market now for international young males 1.00

00:02:41.760 and young women who are being treated abhorrently. And that's got to stop. Michelle Rempel-Garner has 0.98

00:02:46.660 taken on a big leadership role with this. And there's more to come. There's more to come on that

00:02:53.100 front. Jamil Javani has taken on a large leadership role on that front as well. And Jamil, as you might

00:03:01.200 have seen, is back in the news with some strongly worded comments for Ontario's premier and the Ford

00:03:07.880 government and, and let's say sort of the consultants who, who run, um, who run that government. I want

00:03:15.740 you to take a look. I don't think Doug Ford or the people in his administration, um, believe they

00:03:23.780 have an ideology. I don't believe they have come to a rational conclusion that there's a better way to

00:03:31.580 be a conservative than what I or you would, would say. In fact, I'm not even sure they would be capable

00:03:38.620 of having a conversation about conservative ideas or principles. Um, it's weird when you talk to someone

00:03:49.340 as you might, if you've spent time with people in the current incarnation of Ford nation,

00:03:55.340 and you, and, and they think that because someone put a good poll out for them that you're supposed

00:04:02.700 to be happy. Like, Oh, you got a good poll. I guess that's good. And not to diminish the fact

00:04:12.460 that that's a reality of our business. Like we need to get public support, but if you're popular,

00:04:18.780 but you're not doing good things, why am I supposed to be happy about that?

00:04:23.180 And that's a valuable point for, for him to focus on, which is that, you know,

00:04:28.700 popularity only goes so far when we've seen, you know, the records here, when we've seen

00:04:33.740 where that gets you. Ontario now has a great example to take a leadership role on, you know,

00:04:41.260 ratifying greatly, you know, this, this temporary foreign worker program and, and the use and abuse

00:04:46.540 of it and, and continuing to step in on the diploma mills and fraudulent colleges to,

00:04:51.500 to, to, to show some conservative principles here that have been unfortunately sorely lacking.

00:04:57.180 David Eby, the, the premier of British Columbia has, has come out and, and finally tested the waters

00:05:03.900 uh, out in the Pacific and, and, and realize, you know, it's warm enough for him to be able to say

00:05:10.220 he, you know, you're right. This program does need to be largely abolished and what has become of it.

00:05:15.580 And so this is a real opportunity to, to push these, these politicians. It's a real opportunity

00:05:21.420 to get behind this effort to fix immigration, to restore the Canadian dream for our present and

00:05:28.380 future, uh, working generations. And there's going to be a lot more to come from the Michelle 0.95

00:05:34.140 Rempel garners of the world from, from Jamil. And there's going to be a lot more to come from guys 1.00

00:05:38.060 like me and, and all those committed to, to getting, you know, this fixed. And so keep an eye out,

00:05:44.620 for all the work to come here on Juno news. Do take advantage of our promo code at junonews.com

00:05:50.620 slash not sorry for 20% off and enjoy this chat with Dr. Michael Bonner. Dr. Michael Bonner joins us

00:05:57.420 now here on Juno news. He is a former immigration policy advisor who once held the temporary foreign

00:06:03.420 worker, uh, in international mobility files in Ottawa, and is a former director of policy within

00:06:09.180 the government of Ontario. Thank you for joining us, doctor. Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

00:06:13.580 Now I was lucky enough to get to, to collaborate with you last week. We are in the hub right now,

00:06:19.180 and there is a larger piece coming, uh, later this week where, uh, your ex esteemed expertise along with

00:06:27.900 my, whatever the heck I do, uh, spoke about how Polyev's call, uh, to scrap the temporary foreign

00:06:33.740 worker program is a good first step. Why would you say it is a good first step? Um, uh, in relation to,

00:06:41.820 you know, your work you, you did on that file in the past and, and, and what more would you like to see?

00:06:46.620 Well, look, let's, we, we need to be, uh, totally clear about what we're talking about. We're talking

00:06:51.420 about low wage, low skill, mass immigration, such as we've never seen. We're not talking about say 1.00

00:06:58.620 a steel company having to fly in like an expert, like an absolute expert of which there's only like

00:07:05.420 three in the world to fix a boiler. The temporary foreign worker program is used for that. Like it was 1.00

00:07:11.660 originally designed for that kind of thing, but that's not the kind of problem we're talking about.

00:07:15.900 We're talking about a business model whereby Canadians, especially those trying to get into 0.97

00:07:23.100 entry-level jobs, getting their, getting, uh, their first, you know, career starting jobs,

00:07:29.180 that they are priced out of the market. They can't compete with cheap foreign labor that is largely, 0.97

00:07:35.340 uh, mistreated, discouraged from any kind of, uh, collective bargaining or actively prevented through

00:07:42.300 threats and so forth. The whole system is, you know, I hesitate to use the word. This whole system

00:07:48.700 is, is evil and it has economic consequences that, uh, have, that are very obvious. If you look at our

00:07:57.340 unemployment statistics, especially among, among youth. So getting rid of that absolutely a step in

00:08:04.780 the right direction. Yeah. I don't hesitate to use the word evil and, and I can appreciate the reticence

00:08:10.860 there. It might sound sort of bombastic to the audience. I wrote a piece during the waning days

00:08:16.380 of the campaign just called do good campaign against evil, because if programs like the temporary

00:08:21.820 foreign worker program, uh, abuse of the international mobility program are to continue, that means,

00:08:29.340 you know, 15 people to a basement. That means, you know, young people without hope. That means indentured

00:08:35.340 servitude servitude. That means, you know, more UN reports equating our program with slave labor.

00:08:41.260 I thought those were, you know, issues that we, we cared about in Canada. We've, we've decided to

00:08:46.700 lower the standard. It's not particularly liberal. It's certainly not conservative. And, and I believe

00:08:52.060 that in the case of the province of Ontario, there is an opportunity for, for better advocacy and,

00:08:57.980 and better leadership, uh, on these temporary streams. There's a lot being said right now online,

00:09:07.100 not just about the temporary foreign worker program, but it's now sort of reaching this sort of modern

00:09:13.740 lexicon is this, uh, international mobility program, the IMP. Until now, we've largely talked about,

00:09:20.380 at least within this sort of Canadian fixed immigration sphere, about the diploma mills, these sort of,

00:09:25.740 these, these schools that are dodgy beyond belief, uh, and, and the temporary foreign workers stream. 1.00

00:09:32.300 What could you tell us about the IMP, the, the sudden focus on it and what kind of reform would

00:09:38.860 be needed there as well? So the IMP is arguably more sinister than the TFWP, uh, for a couple of reasons.

00:09:48.140 The first reason is that temporary foreign workers are supposed to be, uh, allowed because you have

00:09:56.620 proven that you need them. You've shown evidence that you've advertised, uh, at or above the, uh,

00:10:04.540 prevailing wage in your region that you've gone out of your way to try to recruit people, um, and you

00:10:10.860 haven't found anyone. So that is the evidence you need to get what they call a labor market impact

00:10:18.300 assessment, LMIA. And that, uh, normally entitles you to, to bring in the worker that you hire from,

00:10:27.500 uh, abroad. Now, um, the IMP doesn't require even a token nod at, uh, prevailing labor market conditions.

00:10:39.180 It was designed to allow, um, students, international students who are already studying, you know,

00:10:47.180 they're studying at a respectable college or a university, uh, ostensibly, it would allow them

00:10:54.300 to work after hours, you know, a couple of hours here or there. That was the purpose. Okay. Um, and,

00:11:02.380 you know, we can ask questions about that or, or, or, or quarrel with the, the, the theory,

00:11:07.980 but it was meant to be just, you know, a tiny bit of work here and there in case anybody wanted

00:11:13.500 to do that. Like you finish your day of studying, um, engineering, and then you work at your local

00:11:21.900 cafe or something. You work, you know, 16 hours a week or something like that. Yeah. Very like tiny

00:11:27.820 amounts. Right. These fly by night, fake colleges though, uh, that have sprung up like weeds everywhere.

00:11:37.180 They recruit students for these sort of bogus programs, uh, in English as a second language or

00:11:44.620 some other thing. And there there's maybe some token studying and then a kind of, uh, phony degree at the

00:11:54.140 end of it. All the while these fake students are working often, uh, hours that shouldn't really be

00:12:04.700 allowed, uh, very low pay, just like the temporary foreign worker program. Um, that in and of itself,

00:12:11.740 I think is bad enough because it's kind of like a, you know, low level, like human trafficking,

00:12:19.820 like contract labor scheme. But in, in many cases there, there are actual human trafficking schemes

00:12:28.140 that these things are implicated in, uh, that was not just implicated. They're at the center of them,

00:12:33.740 that people are recruited from, uh, abroad. There's a kind of elaborate money system involving a bond

00:12:43.980 because you have to play post a bond to, to come in the country in many cases under these schemes. And then

00:12:52.780 you're brought in, you pretend to study there. And all the while the, the authorities that run your fake

00:12:59.820 college are confecting a scheme to bring you across the border into the United States where you then go

00:13:05.980 underground. Tens of thousands of, of, uh, there, there are tens of thousands of such cases which are

00:13:12.460 now being investigated, uh, by the RCMP as well as, uh, Indian law enforcement, uh, overseas. There was a

00:13:20.940 whole pipeline that hopefully has now been broken up from various institutions in India to the fake 0.79

00:13:27.180 colleges here and people across the border. There's probably also truck drivers involved there

00:13:31.420 somewhere. Uh, someone must be driving them. Um, you know, that's absolutely unacceptable. I mean,

00:13:38.140 you can talk about labor market distortions there too, but that's, that's human smuggling.

00:13:43.740 Yeah. There's no, there's no other word for it. So shut it all down, you know, shut it all down.

00:13:49.820 And that's, we expand on that in the hub and in particular in the, the larger version of this,

00:13:54.780 of this feature later this week, which is that it's not just an economic imperative, right?

00:14:00.060 It's a moral imperative. Yes. This, you know, the former governor of the bank of Canada, David Dodge

00:14:06.700 had pointed out that, you know, when we abuse this system, we're just propping up then unhealthy

00:14:11.500 economy, you know, unhealthy and unhealthy economy through sort of cheap, low calorie companies who

00:14:16.700 actually should be allowed to fail and should be allowed to struggle. But the, the moral one is,

00:14:21.660 is the big one for me. It's the one that I noticed when I leave, you know, my front door in the

00:14:26.700 morning, you see people being mistreated. You talk to young people who don't have any help.

00:14:31.020 You see scenes of, of squalor and incongruity and, and this, this, this whole mix no longer

00:14:37.100 sort of clearly, uh, is, is what it once was. And this program is not the success that it once was.

00:14:43.580 And you worked under Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney, you were, you were, you were able to, to, to,

00:14:52.620 you know, shepherd this file in a, in a much more, uh, comprehensive manner that seemed to serve the

00:15:00.380 country. What differentiated the leadership of the right honorable and Jason Kenney from what we've

00:15:06.860 witnessed from the liberals since 2015. Uh, Kenny, first of all, did not hesitate to throw the book,

00:15:14.700 um, at nefarious companies. First of all, he created a blacklist, uh, which, um, ought probably to be

00:15:28.540 revived. Yeah. Naming and shaming, um, delinquent companies. And, you know, we all know who they are.

00:15:35.020 We don't need to pretend that we don't, uh, you know, like Tim Hortons has, has the TFWP as a business

00:15:43.740 model. Yeah. Everywhere, everywhere. Um, and they'll, you know, you often hear people say things,

00:15:50.620 well, you know, uh, uh, a cup of coffee or a donut or what have you, you know, it shouldn't cost, uh,

00:15:59.820 exorbitant amounts in, in, you know, Northern Ontario or in, you know, none of it or whatever.

00:16:04.700 But if that's the case, why are you doing this in downtown Toronto? You know, why are there,

00:16:10.780 why is downtown Toronto where it's like, whatever, 16% youth unemployment? Why do you have,

00:16:16.220 why are you hiring from, you know, Manila and, and New Delhi there, you know, just doesn't,

00:16:23.180 it doesn't seem to really add up. The reasoning is, is, is, is flawed at best. Um, and, you know,

00:16:30.940 there are other companies that, that don't, uh, hospitality companies that don't use this as a,

00:16:37.100 don't use the TFWP as, as a business model and their prices are higher, but they at least employ,

00:16:44.380 uh, local people and, you know, they haven't gone out of business. So like the idea,

00:16:49.980 the idea that there's some, there's going to be some sort of economic catastrophe if you just,

00:16:54.460 if you hire Canadians, I just find that, I find that preposterous. And that was fundamentally, 1.00

00:16:59.740 that was fundamentally Kenny's attitude that it was time to just sort of put an end to this. It

00:17:03.900 had gone far enough. The, the boom times of the, of the, uh, um, great recession, because it was,

00:17:10.220 it was a great recession everywhere else. It was sort of a resource boom here. Those were coming to an

00:17:15.260 end and the bill was going to come due. Uh, it was time to sort of ratchet down the program, not,

00:17:23.340 not, you know, suddenly overnight, but a sort of gradually diminishing cap, uh, of a certain

00:17:29.660 percentage of your workforce that would diminish, um, over, over time. And, you know, that was,

00:17:36.380 some people didn't like that. Um, some people complained, obviously some people tried to, uh, get

00:17:43.820 around it or to, uh, uh, break the rules in various ways. And they were, they were punished and denounced

00:17:50.220 and so forth. But ultimately there was a consensus that this needed to be done. And that, you know,

00:17:55.900 the, the, the difficulty for these companies of sort of phasing it out was worth it. Um, and this

00:18:02.220 was eventually the solution also that the Trudeau government came round to finally at the end, they

00:18:08.620 just basically lifted our policy and brought it back. But in those intervening years, the program

00:18:17.260 was out of control as, as, as, as, as never before. And there, there sort of putting the brakes on it

00:18:23.580 was much more sudden and, and, um, uh, precipitous than, than what we had to do. So, um, the pain certainly

00:18:34.300 would be felt, um, just as acutely, I would imagine if not more so, hence Carney's remark that

00:18:41.340 he's constantly being asked about it, especially in Quebec, apparently, which I thought was a kind 0.77

00:18:45.980 of ridiculous thing to say. Um, but look at the end of the day, what is required is just the strength

00:18:54.860 of a government to reign this thing in, especially, especially from a conservative or sort of classically,

00:19:02.780 classical liberal perspective, allowing this subsidy, allowing this cheap, uh, labor and sort of contract,

00:19:10.940 you know, indentured servitude, again, is, is tantamount to a subsidy, to a kind of welfare

00:19:18.060 for unproductive businesses that cannot, uh, you know, that, that cannot market or sell their product,

00:19:25.180 uh, at its proper cost or, or it's like right value in, in such a way that people will actually

00:19:32.380 buy it. You know, it, it stifles innovation and it keeps wages, keeps wages artificially low

00:19:40.620 and, uh, perpetuates a kind of structural unemployment.

00:19:47.100 It does. And I, I do think of how the modern business lobbies now, and I'll, I'll just say

00:19:53.660 the name that the CFIB, um, uh, Dan Kelly has been out in media, uh, the last few weeks, um, talking

00:20:01.740 about how, you know, well, we can't, uh, Carney's parroted this line exactly, which is just, we,

00:20:07.580 you know, businesses are asking for this, so we can't get rid of it. And you're going,

00:20:11.180 well, how did businesses survive before 2020? Because we saw this as a response in some parts

00:20:17.500 to the COVID years, which is, oh, gee, we really messed up our GDP. What if we just throw, uh,

00:20:25.660 every young man we can find from, from, from the globe at this number. So this goes up, uh, and then

00:20:33.340 we can kind of maybe push off this recession that is, if not here, not so quietly is, is very much coming.

00:20:40.860 We used to let these businesses fail. We used to, uh, understand that free enterprise

00:20:47.500 uh, requires failure and that to, to succeed is you, you don't put this, this, this governor on,

00:20:55.900 on these endless subsidies and bailouts and, and what, what problems that creates beyond just

00:21:02.540 these sort of moral imperatives that we're, we're seeing increasingly. So, and so, I mean, you're,

00:21:07.580 you're, uh, uh, an author, a man of letters, an Oxford grad, a historian, uh, the, a political

00:21:13.180 consultant. I think some of those are fancier titles than political consultant, but

00:21:17.660 you know, you, you, you can look back at history and see some of the lessons of, of maybe what we're,

00:21:23.660 what we're, we're doing wrong right now. Like, is there a, is there some era or some, or some,

00:21:29.980 you know, ancient regime that, that did something similar that you could pinpoint and go, uh, oh,

00:21:33.980 here's a lesson from history for you. Yeah. I mean, the, the, the United Nations report that you,

00:21:39.980 you referenced, uh, a moment ago that, that included, this is in 2024, this included the

00:21:48.060 temporary foreign worker program as an example of modern day slavery. Okay. If that's an exaggeration,

00:21:54.620 it's a, it's a very small one. Um, people are not literally owning one another or they're not like

00:22:00.140 buying and selling people, but it's not, it doesn't fall that short of, of that you're recruiting people

00:22:07.580 from abroad, uh, basically attaching them to only one employer. They, so they, they can't move around 0.77

00:22:16.300 and, um, they're generally kept at a very low wage. In fact, when it works out, it works out to less

00:22:25.340 than minimum wage because they're working such horrible hours. They don't, they don't have, uh,

00:22:30.460 benefits most of the time they're discouraged or forbidden on pain of deportation and other

00:22:37.180 punishments from, from unionizing. And they have, you know, this is arguably the worst part of it.

00:22:44.540 They have just absolutely no stake in the society that they serve. Okay. So they're like slaves or

00:22:52.300 serfs, you know, uh, the word surf comes from the word, the old Latin word for slave. Um, they're

00:22:59.740 like indentured servants or the, like a participants in the coolie system, uh, like convicts shipped over

00:23:08.140 from, uh, from, uh, from, from Britain to work in the tobacco fields of Virginia. I mean, you, you name

00:23:15.980 it, it's just, it is the same kind of, of thing. And, um, I think that that's on its own, that's

00:23:25.340 intolerable. I mean, why, like there was a time probably when we had, uh, millions of, of, uh, of

00:23:34.620 temporary work permits on the go, uh, at a, at a, at a particularly, uh, probably about this time

00:23:41.260 last year, there, there may be only slightly fewer now, it creates a gigantic underclass. And I don't

00:23:49.260 think that that's the society that, that we want to live in. I don't think, and I'm not sure our

00:23:54.220 elites have reflected on this at all. I mean, this is, this is genuinely not the kind of society I want to

00:23:59.900 live in. And I think that if you spoke to them, these sort of left, left liberal types, uh, very

00:24:06.140 few would, if any would probably acknowledge that this is the nature of the society that we've created

00:24:11.980 here, or that it's in any way similar to past examples of immorality or, or appalling abuse of,

00:24:19.180 of people. Uh, but if you proved it to them, I think they would probably be unhappy about that.

00:24:25.500 I'm unhappy about it. I'm not, you know, I don't live in the annex. I'm not one of these left wing

00:24:31.180 types, but it doesn't make me feel good. And I don't know why they defend it or appear to, or, or

00:24:36.220 appear to be complacent, uh, uh, about it. And if you, you know, when, when we think back to the days

00:24:44.780 of the Harper government, we didn't defend it. It was, you know, this was a, a situation that

00:24:49.900 unfortunately got out of hand. I was annoyed that businesses that use the program didn't make

00:24:56.460 any effort to defend it at all. Um, they expected us to do so, which is again, another example of

00:25:02.940 sort of lack of skin in the game or like a failure to, you know, put your money where your mouth is.

00:25:10.780 Uh, so, you know, I'm not surprised that business leaders think, well, how are we going to get on,

00:25:16.300 but what they're, you know, what they're missing or forgetting is that they're in this mess because

00:25:23.980 of the temporary foreign worker program. Like that is, that is what it is the cause of its own. 1.00

00:25:31.580 It's like Homer Simpson saying that alcohol is the cause and the solution to all of life's problems.

00:25:37.020 Yeah. It's, it's a delayed, it's a problem delayed, right? Like you can indulge on the temporary foreign 1.00

00:25:42.300 worker program, but you were just then creating a dependency and pushing off the fact that you still

00:25:48.300 now have this inefficient business model and, uh, increasingly sick economy. When you worked on this

00:25:55.340 file over a decade ago, is what has happened now, what has come to pass? Is that sort of the worst

00:26:02.140 case scenario for, for what you saw from the program? I mean, I've, you know, I had the chance to get to

00:26:07.180 know you recently to work with you and, and you've been a major advocate on the, the fixing all this

00:26:12.460 file, a terrific work, uh, for the Aristotle, uh, foundation as well for, for public policy, which

00:26:18.620 really kind of lit the way for many organizations on, on specific policy points. Was this always the

00:26:24.620 fear for you when you were, when you were working on this program that, you know, in the wrong hands

00:26:28.380 or for the wrong reason, this would just turn into a kind of exploitation network.

00:26:34.060 Uh, yeah. Um, I mean, I think that the worst, the worst case scenario is, I mean, what we're seeing

00:26:43.020 now is worse than probably anything we've ever seen before with the possible exception of contract

00:26:48.860 labor schemes in, you know, the late 19th century or early, early 20th before, before, um, immigration to

00:26:59.420 Canada was basically shut down, um, for 30 years or so between the wars. So, um,

00:27:09.660 excluding something like that within, within, you know, recent living memory, this is the worst it's

00:27:17.020 been the sense of, uh, uh, shortage and, and, and, and scarcity and competition for, uh, housing or, uh, crowded,

00:27:29.980 um, waiting, uh, healthcare waiting rooms, crowded emergency rooms, uh, the sense that the economy has

00:27:39.820 got bigger, but the portion that everybody has is smaller because there's more people, you know, the,

00:27:47.980 this, this is inextricably bound up with, with what has happened to the, the temporary foreign

00:27:55.020 worker program. Now there's the damage we've talked about to the economy. There's damage to our sort of

00:28:00.940 moral, uh, sense, but there's also, um, the, uh, the collapse of the pro-immigration consensus. Like

00:28:11.580 the idea that there's nobody left, as far as I can tell, who, who will tell you without qualification,

00:28:18.300 without some, without some kind of apology or equivocation that, um, immigration is on balance.

00:28:25.100 Good. Those days are over. We're not, maybe, maybe the globe opinion section, but it's, it's,

00:28:30.380 Andrew Coyne will tell you. Yeah. Yes. Few and far between. Well, Andrew wants, you know,

00:28:34.780 his Uber Eats for even cheaper, you know, delivered by a guy who lives in a trucking yard,

00:28:39.180 who sleeps 17 to a crate, evidently. Yes. Keep, keep the fires of Taroni.

00:28:46.380 Yeah. The, the, the keep Yorkville, uh, bustling, but no, it's true. That's the, that's the concern,

00:28:51.980 right? Like I've, I've written about it recently as well, which is, we can all see where young men are

00:28:56.700 going with this, where alienated young people are going with this, you know, history has given us

00:29:02.700 constant lessons as you well know of, you know, idle hands and, and the disenfranchised. It's not,

00:29:09.500 that's not a productive mix. And so we can, we can choose to really act on this now to really fix this

00:29:16.060 now. Uh, or this gets a whole lot worse and, and you couldn't, if you were trying to, to radicalize

00:29:22.540 people to, to rob them of hope, to, to destroy this immigration consensus, you couldn't do a better 0.98

00:29:28.380 job than, than seemingly following the playbook of the last few years. Yeah. Well that, I mean,

00:29:34.060 and, and I think, I think this was widely understood within, uh, policy circles. I mean, one of the things

00:29:43.980 that, I mean, again, Jason Kenney was the master of this file that preserving the consensus, preserving

00:29:53.340 the, uh, uh, confidence of the public within, uh, the confidence of the public had for a system that

00:30:02.140 was not well understood and an immigration system is not well understood, which is kind of complicated.

00:30:08.140 And there are all these groups and subgroups and branches of this, that, and there's like an entire

00:30:14.700 program that's only for living caregivers and, you know, like, uh, intricate stuff, preserving, uh,

00:30:22.620 people's confidence that it was working in the public interest that, that was priority number one,

00:30:27.580 not making sure that, uh, a big Mac costs the same amount in, you know, every corner of the country.

00:30:35.500 Yeah. That's, that was not the, the, the, the, the priority. So yeah. Um, I think that it's certainly

00:30:44.380 radicalizing and I don't know how you would go about sort of building up that trust. Again, the last

00:30:53.980 time this happened, again, this was like the late, late 19th century, the time leading up to the

00:31:00.700 first world war, uh, it took until the mid 20th century for anybody to feel good about immigration

00:31:08.060 again in this part of the world. Uh, and that's, that's, uh, and the intervening years there were

00:31:15.980 not always very happy. So, you know, we're, we hopefully we can avoid something like that.

00:31:22.300 But what I do know is I know the result that I want to see. I want to see these companies forced

00:31:28.140 to invest in the workforce, to invest in, in training, uh, in, in hiring and training Canadians.

00:31:36.300 Of course, Canadians will cost more than, than foreigners. We live here. We have a stake already 1.00

00:31:42.060 in the country. We have had for a long time, people who have parents and grandparents here or children

00:31:48.620 where, you know, it's very different from those who, who, who don't and who are willing to work for

00:31:55.420 less and who will tolerate, um, what I would call exploitation. Of course, people who live here are

00:32:02.700 going to cost more. That's the way life is. And if you, you know, if somehow that's like too much for

00:32:10.140 you, maybe being in business is wrong, is like the wrong thing for you to be doing. If you can't be

00:32:16.540 profitable without this army of slaves or, or whatever, you know, like you've made a mistake, you've, you've

00:32:22.540 got it wrong. And one of the obvious roles for government, I would say would be to put a stop to this

00:32:29.980 and force them either to give up and try something different or, uh, spend some of the money that

00:32:38.380 they have been accumulating. Many Canadian companies are sitting on piles of cash still, uh, spend that

00:32:46.380 and hire and train people. It's, you know, in some ways it's very simple. Well said, Dr. Michael Bonner.

00:32:53.340 Thank you for joining us here on Not Sorry on Juno news. Pleasure. Thank you. Juno news.

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Juno News - September 10, 2025

Ending the temporary foreign worker scam

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