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I can’t believe what I just heard. “Canada Strong” is Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s motto as he tries to cut overreliance on the American economy. But then he did something incomprehensible for anyone who claims to be working for the average citizen.
Carney has just announced a fast-track program for “skilled” foreign workers in “high-paying” jobs. Because Canada stronger means giving Canadians more competition for jobs that they already struggle to find.
Companies won’t have to go through the usual labor-market impact assessment process to get qualifying job offers recognized under the new Express Entry rules, or prove that they couldn’t find a qualified local.
And the list of “high-wage” jobs is massive, with many occupations in sectors where unemployment is already a concern. No one working in fields like public relations, public administration, marketing and advertising, technology, writing, broadcast technology or policy analysis - just to name a few - seriously believes that they’re swimming in excess opportunity. They’re lucky nowadays if their CV isn’t binned by AI recruitment software seconds after submission.
So who’s pushing this scheme? Big finance, clearly. “An older population and fewer immigrants are changing the economy by shrinking the workforce and shifting what people consume,” the Bank of Canada, which Carney used to head, recently warned.
So what? Reduce the size of the workforce and wages rise, meaning that people can afford to buy more things and keep the economy humming. How is that a problem? Unless the objective is to keep labor cheap enough that workers can only afford to eat on Costco sample day.
“Labor shortages could push up wages in some sectors, which could affect prices and contribute to inflation,” the Bank of Canada says.
Let me get this straight. Corporations need a steady supply of foreign workers to keep wages down because otherwise prices might rise? You’ll be lucky if anyone with a job can afford those supposedly “low” prices by the time this charade fizzles out.
Are companies really incapable of keeping prices in check by, say, accepting smaller profit margins or reducing dividends in favor of the working- and middle-class economic backbone of the country doing the heavy lifting?
“We’ve taken a step backwards on immigration,” said Carney’s immigration minister, Lena Diab.
You call 380,000 new permanent residents a year a downgrade? Then she started waxing about Canada’s “slowest population growth since World War II,” adding, “We are going to want to drive growth. We do need people.”
Bottom line: it’s still growing. Which is the problem. Not that any growth is slowing.
If it’s such a great thing, then why has the immigration boom of the past decade coincided with unmanageable pressure on the job and housing markets? If there were a simple, direct relationship between population growth and prosperity, then every country flooding itself with migrants would be rocketing to the top of the global economic charts rather than trying to reverse course.
Working- and middle-class voters across the Western world are now turning against leaders who continue to stymie economic growth while they struggle to find work, secure housing, and afford basic necessities. How about starting first and foremost with workers’ bank accounts.
“Canada Strong” shouldn’t mean that corporations get an unlimited supply of cheap labor while Canadians are encouraged to cheer against their own obvious economic self-interest.
If Carney and other Western nations want to compete with Trump’s America, they aren’t going to succeed by pretending that he’s wrong on occasions when he really does put the average citizen first.