Juno News - August 19, 2024


Slavery in Canada？! UN report exposes temporary foreign worker program

Topics
modern slavery in Canada
Hosted by
Harrison Faulkner
Mentioned
Tomoya Obakata Mark Miller Justin Trudeau Redberry Betrayal
Danielle Smith agrees — immigration is too high Majority of Canadians support DEFUNDING the CBC

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

153.2

Word count

1,870

Sentence count

103

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Since the beginning of 2023, the federal government has hired more than 300,000 temporary foreign workers in the agricultural sector. And according to a new report from the United Nation's Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, these workers are actually a breeding ground for modern slavery.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Last week, Canada's mass immigration train wreck was forced into the mainstream media spotlight 0.56
00:00:11.500 after a United Nations report into the temporary foreign worker system in Canada was released,
00:00:18.080 calling the system a breeding ground for contemporary slavery.
00:00:22.740 Well, that had to have been quite a shock to all the mainstream media journalists
00:00:26.120 who turned a blind eye to the expansion of the temporary foreign worker program
00:00:29.500 over the past few years.
00:00:31.480 Canada has relied on small numbers of temporary foreign workers in the agricultural sector for quite some time.
00:00:37.320 But thanks to an interactive map that any Canadian can use online,
00:00:41.220 we can see that the use of temporary foreign workers to flip burgers and pour coffee at fast food restaurants has skyrocketed.
00:00:49.220 No wonder youth unemployment is so high across the country.
00:00:52.720 Now, the blame for this should be going around evenly.
00:00:55.300 It's the federal government who greenlight the use of temporary foreign workers in the fast food sector.
00:01:01.780 But it's also employers who benefit from being able to rely on temporary foreign workers and to suppress wages.
00:01:08.680 And as if this story just couldn't get any better,
00:01:10.780 it turns out that British Columbia Liberal MP Suk Dhaliwal
00:01:14.820 actually hired temporary foreign workers in late 2023 for his own private business.
00:01:20.200 When even the United Nations is calling this system modern slavery in our country,
00:01:24.860 you know there's a big problem.
00:01:26.080 And it's also way worse than what we're being told.
00:01:29.080 Before we get into the show, be sure to drop a like on this video,
00:01:31.400 help us out by subscribing to the True North YouTube channel.
00:01:33.700 And the comment question for the episode is this.
00:01:36.540 Would you boycott a business that relies exclusively on temporary foreign workers as staff?
00:01:42.840 Let me know your answer in the comments below and let's get into it.
00:01:45.320 Since the beginning of 2023, the federal government greenlit the hiring of close to 300,000 temporary foreign workers,
00:01:52.960 294,000 to be exact.
00:01:55.200 And according to the United Nations, the system isn't going so well.
00:01:58.580 This was how the state broadcaster reported the news that Canada is actually operating a modern slavery system.
00:02:06.980 Canada's temporary foreign worker programs are the subject of a scathing report from the United Nations,
00:02:12.320 the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery says the programs for foreign agricultural workers
00:02:19.400 are, quote, a breeding ground for modern forms of slavery.
00:02:23.480 Tomoya Obokata says he heard accounts of exploitation and abuse from migrant workers
00:02:28.680 during a two-week fact-finding mission to Canada.
00:02:31.840 And his report comes about a year after Jamaican farm workers in Ontario
00:02:35.960 called attention to their own alleged mistreatment.
00:02:38.320 It wouldn't surprise me if the federal government knew that a report like this was inevitable.
00:02:44.360 After all, it was Mark Miller, the immigration minister, and Justin Trudeau several months ago
00:02:48.980 who called out employers for relying on temporary foreign workers and for driving down Canadian wages.
00:02:55.400 Suppressing Canadian wages and taking jobs away from young Canadians in the job market, that's pretty bad.
00:03:02.360 But modern slavery?
00:03:03.420 Well, that requires some serious damage control.
00:03:06.900 This was how Mark Miller last week addressed these rather serious allegations.
00:03:12.080 I object to the characterization.
00:03:14.020 I think to some extent it's quite offensive to treat people that have employees that are temporary foreign workers as slave owners.
00:03:24.400 I have met a number of them.
00:03:26.060 I've been to farms.
00:03:27.000 The rapporteur general, the rapporteur in this first meeting, my understanding, actually never went to a farm.
00:03:34.360 It's something that I don't want to deny the underlying facts.
00:03:38.220 There are abuses.
00:03:39.320 I think the characterization is inflammatory.
00:03:41.860 Every single time a temporary foreign worker is hired, it has to go through the federal government.
00:03:46.880 It has to be approved by the federal government.
00:03:48.520 So it's all very strange when they pretend to be shocked about how fast this system has spiraled out of control.
00:03:54.720 Now, I don't really believe the UN has any right to come into Canada and lecture us on how to run our country, but this report does make some shocking claims.
00:04:04.840 Well, the United Nations Special Rapporteur assigned to investigate Canada's temporary foreign worker system, Tomoya Obakata, called the temporary foreign worker system a breeding ground for contemporary slavery.
00:04:18.740 In the report, Obakata says that he received reports from workers being underpaid and going without protective equipment and of employers confiscating documents, arbitrarily cutting working hours, and preventing workers from seeking health care.
00:04:33.640 Women reported sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse.
00:04:37.460 In addition, police have reportedly failed to take complaints seriously, claim that they do not have jurisdiction, and report workers to immigration authorities, rather than investigating their complaints.
00:04:49.100 As Obakata writes in his report,
00:04:50.960 The government defers a significant portion of responsibility for informing temporary foreign workers of their rights to employers, despite the obvious conflict of interest.
00:05:00.460 Unlike other newcomers, temporary foreign workers cannot benefit from federal settlement services, which would provide information on their rights and facilitate their ability to participate in public life.
00:05:10.360 Because temporary foreign workers are tied to closed work permits, meaning they can't work for anyone else than the employer who brought them into their country for the period of time that they're allowed to stay, 0.98
00:05:22.500 the report argues that this is a de facto debt bondage.
00:05:26.300 But despite whatever concerns activist groups and the UN might have about this system, the federal government seems to love it.
00:05:34.680 So you can get a better sense of just how frequently the federal government issues an LMIA to an employer.
00:05:40.040 This is the quarterly breakdown of LMIAs issued across the country.
00:05:45.700 And by the way, an LMIA is a, basically, it is an agreement between the employer and the federal government that that employer has tried and failed to hire a Canadian or a permanent resident for a job,
00:05:57.860 and must therefore rely on a temporary foreign worker.
00:06:00.600 In the first quarter of 2023, the federal government issued just under 60,000 LMIAs, 59,500.
00:06:10.840 The following quarter, that number went down to 41,000.
00:06:14.920 Following that, the third quarter of 2023, the number jumped back up to 47,000.
00:06:20.420 And then, in the final quarter of 2023, those numbers just completely took off.
00:06:26.340 78,630 LMIAs issued in the fourth quarter of 2023.
00:06:32.280 And in the first quarter of 2024, the federal government issued 68,000 LMIAs.
00:06:38.580 Now, between 2018 and 2023, the number of temporary foreign workers working in agriculture, working as basically farmhands,
00:06:47.480 went from 49,000 in 2018 to well over 80,000 in 2023, a 67% increase.
00:06:57.240 But the most outrageous number out of all of this is the number of temporary foreign workers hired to work in fast food restaurants, 0.99
00:07:06.120 to work as food service counter-attendants.
00:07:09.680 In 2018, there were only 170 temporary foreign workers hired to work as food counter-attendants.
00:07:17.840 By 2023, that number was 8.3,000, representing a 4,802% change.
00:07:26.320 The number of temporary foreign workers hired as administrative assistants went from 287 to 3.3,000.
00:07:36.720 From 2018 to 2023, there were now 3.3,000 administrative assistants who are temporary foreign workers.
00:07:45.200 And get this, there were only 16 temporary foreign workers hired to be nurses in 2018. 0.82
00:07:53.520 16.
00:07:54.680 By 2023, the number of temporary foreign workers hired as nurses in Canada was over 2,500,
00:08:02.400 representing a 15,613% change.
00:08:09.120 Why can't Canadians do those jobs? 1.00
00:08:11.540 Why can't we find Canadians to work as nurses? 1.00
00:08:14.800 Why can't we find Canadians to work in fast food restaurants? 1.00
00:08:19.000 And thanks to a very patriotic Canadian who took Employment and Social Services Canada data
00:08:23.520 and put it onto an interactive map,
00:08:25.880 we can now figure out which businesses rely the most on temporary foreign workers,
00:08:31.020 which fast food restaurants rely on temporary foreign workers,
00:08:34.860 and who are the biggest abusers of the temporary foreign worker program.
00:08:38.840 Well, if you go to lmiamap.ca,
00:08:42.060 you can find your town, your city,
00:08:44.240 and figure out which businesses in your area are using temporary foreign workers,
00:08:48.540 when in reality, they should probably be hiring Canadians with better wages.
00:08:53.680 But we have the map in front of us,
00:08:55.320 and I've gone through the largest recipients of LMIAs in each province,
00:09:00.680 and I want to just highlight a couple of them for you so you get a better idea.
00:09:03.680 In the first quarter of 2024, the first three months of 2024,
00:09:08.640 a business called S. Sunder Orchards in British Columbia received 427 temporary foreign workers.
00:09:15.680 In Alberta, a farm business by the name of Big Marble Farms, Inc.,
00:09:20.760 well, they received 273 temporary foreign workers to work at their farm.
00:09:26.640 In the Greater Toronto Area,
00:09:28.440 Algoma Orchards received 167 temporary foreign workers in the first quarter of 2024.
00:09:35.760 But as you saw from that data we pulled earlier,
00:09:38.440 fast food businesses are hiring temporary foreign workers at an outrageous rate.
00:09:43.440 There are a couple of businesses that I want to highlight for you on the show
00:09:47.440 so you get a better sense of just how widespread this problem is.
00:09:51.240 For example, there's a company called Redberry Crown Restaurants.
00:09:55.960 Redberry operates what appears to be hundreds of Burger King and Taco Bell locations.
00:10:02.900 Now, in the first three months of 2024,
00:10:04.340 before the federal government approved 122 LMIAs,
00:10:10.580 122 temporary foreign workers to work for Redberry Crown Restaurants,
00:10:16.160 to work as food service supervisors and managers at Taco Bell and Burger King restaurants.
00:10:22.680 And I also just want to highlight this for you here.
00:10:25.280 We're going to pick on one Tim Hortons location in Collingwood, Ontario.
00:10:31.200 According to the LMIA map,
00:10:33.000 this one Tim Hortons in Collingwood has 18 temporary foreign workers.
00:10:39.680 One temporary foreign worker manager of the Tim Hortons,
00:10:44.080 eight food service supervisors,
00:10:47.340 and nine food counter attendants.
00:10:50.360 18 staff at one Tim Hortons location,
00:10:52.380 that's quite a large number.
00:10:53.200 You'd almost have to think that that's the entire staff.
00:10:55.780 Remarkable.
00:10:56.460 There are those in the Liberal government
00:10:57.680 who seem to want to get in on the action
00:10:59.640 of the temporary foreign worker system in Canada.
00:11:02.600 After all, with so many businesses enjoying the opportunities
00:11:05.940 of hiring low-wage out-of-country workers,
00:11:09.040 it wouldn't be a shock to find Liberal MPs
00:11:11.320 doing the same for their own private businesses.
00:11:13.720 Such is the case with Liberal MP Souk Dhaliwal
00:11:16.680 out of Surrey, British Columbia.
00:11:19.040 Turns out that actually Souk Dhaliwal's land surveying company
00:11:23.000 took advantage of the LMIA program
00:11:25.220 by hiring legal administrative assistants.
00:11:28.760 So with all these fast food jobs
00:11:30.520 and even administrative jobs going to temporary foreign workers,
00:11:34.240 what are young Canadians expected to do 0.99
00:11:35.800 when they want to get a job?
00:11:37.000 When they want to get a summer job
00:11:38.160 or break into the job market?
00:11:40.300 Well, they're actually just being left behind.
00:11:42.660 Youth unemployment in Canada has increased by 40%.
00:11:46.220 In April 2022, youth unemployment was at 10.2%.
00:11:50.820 That number is now at 14%.
00:11:53.060 It would not be a stretch at all to say
00:11:55.060 that the federal government has abandoned the youth of this country
00:11:57.900 in order to benefit employers
00:11:59.780 by providing them with an endless supply of cheap foreign labor.
00:12:03.780 Let's just call it what it is.
00:12:05.700 Betrayal.
00:12:06.700 All right, everyone, that's going to do it for us today on the show.
00:12:08.720 Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:12:09.780 My name is Harrison Faulkner, and this is Ratio.