Letter: “The solution is not to weaken the rights of temporary foreign workers”

Opinion letter submitted by Marie, union representative

A few days ago, Premier François Legault announced a six-month moratorium on the granting and renewal of permits under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). The moratorium is aimed at “low-wage” jobs. While the temporary foreign worker system is highly questionable, the solution of not renewing the permits of some of these workers already in Quebec is even more so.

The TFWP allows employers to hire temporary foreign workers for certain positions when they are unable to fill them from within the local workforce.

Not only do TFWs occupy jobs that are highly undervalued by Canadian citizens and residents, but they do so with a precarious status and far more limited rights than Quebec employees. For example, TFWs have a “closed” work permit that binds them to a single employer and a specific job, making it virtually impossible for them to change employers and jobs within the company that hires them.

François Legault's announcement is questionable for several reasons, mainly because it makes no reference to the fact that it is intolerable for a country like Canada to allow workers to be chained to a single employer without being recognized as permanent residents.

The problem is that we knowingly accept that people who contribute to Quebec society by working in the least desirable jobs are not recognized as full-fledged citizens.

The hypocrisy of the Quebec government should be pointed out, given that many of these temporary foreign workers have stepped forward at a time when the problems associated with the labor shortage were being decried on every podium just a few months ago.

While we are more familiar with the unfortunately well-publicized cases of agricultural workers returning to Quebec on a seasonal basis, many temporary foreign workers hold jobs in the food processing, trucking, warehouse, restaurant, healthcare and construction sectors, to name but a few.

These workers often stay in Quebec to work for a few years. Mr. Legault would also be amazed at how quickly these workers learn French in their workplaces if he bothered to really address the issue for anything other than partisan and electoral reasons.

You'd really have to have never come into contact with TFWs to ignore the inordinate efforts they make to integrate into Quebec society.

Temporary foreign workers' time in Quebec is marked by bureaucratic hell as they juggle the renewal of their work permits, Certificat d'acceptation du Québec (CAQ), Labour Market Impact Study (LMIS) and passports, which are not all of the same duration, yet are dependent on each other. All this, in a system they are only just beginning to familiarize themselves with.

Nor can we pass over in silence the odiousness of this announcement, which comes less than a month after the publication of UN Special Rapporteur Tomoya Obokata's report on contemporary forms of slavery.

The UN Special Rapporteur, who issued his report on July 22, argues that the PTET creates a major imbalance of power, as workers who lose their jobs can be deported to their country of origin.

Employers therefore have little reason to guarantee decent working conditions as workers have no real alternative. Mr. Obokata adds that most workers are reluctant to report problems to their employer, or to denounce exploitative working conditions, for fear of being perceived as people who like to complain.

The solution is not to reduce the few rights TFWs already have in Quebec, but rather to recognize the rights they should have enjoyed since their arrival.

In passing, let's criticize the mass media, who have raised the only dissenting voices to François Legault's announcement, the opposition governments, who are also turning this into a partisan issue rather than a real human rights issue, and the employers' council, who, for all intents and purposes, are demanding the right to continue exploiting these temporary foreign workers as they see fit.