Many of my jobs have involved working with kids. Among my favourite songs to sing with them is 'The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round':
The wheels on the bus go round and round,
round and round,
round and round.
The wheels on the bus go round and round,
all through the town.
The wipers on the bus go Swish, swish, swish;
Swish, swish, swish;
Swish, swish, swish.
The wipers on the bus go Swish, swish, swish,
all through the town.
The Driver on the bus says "Move on back,
move on back, move on back;"
The Driver on the bus says "Move on back",
all through the town.
I'm not sure how we can amend the verse for Calgary kiddies now that we will have temporary foreign workers (TFWs) driving the city buses.
The Driver on the bus is "Sent on back,
sent on back, sent on back;"
The Driver on the bus is "Sent on back",
get out of town.
The Calgary Herald provides a rosy report through the eyes of a CEO, but this excerpt captures some important info:
The City of Calgary's plan to hire temporary foreign workers to ease staffing woes will be monitored by cities across the country, immigration lawyers say.
"In the rest of Canada, the municipalities will watch this closer than the carbon tax," Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said Thursday.
However, Kurland worries that foreign workers hired to work as bus drivers in Calgary won't be able to handle roads encrusted with ice and snow.
Right now, the city is going to the United Kingdom to find workers, but is open to looking to other countries as well.
"The only hole in the fence is safety," Kurland said.
"In parts of England or the U.K., where's the snow? And who's going to be taking the risk?"
But Calgary immigration lawyer Michael Greene said newcomers from warmer climates can be trained to drive in Prairie winter conditions.
"We're going to have long-term, critical labour shortages in Alberta. And something has to be done about it," Greene said.
"It's no surprise that governments are experiencing exactly the same thing private industry is experiencing. In fact, the problem may be more acute for governments, because their wages aren't as flexible as private industry. They're often locked into long-term union agreements, they're locked into wage increases."
With municipal departments already short-staffed and numerous retirements looming, the City of Calgary plans to take advantage of the federal temporary foreign workers program and will search overseas for urban planners, heavy-duty mechanics and up to 200 bus drivers.
Mayor Dave Bronconnier and a contingent of 20 other city staff will travel to staff recruitment fairs in London and Leeds in June. The trail-blazing plan could soon be expanded to emergency medical workers and other government departments.
Eventually, the city hopes the temporary foreign workers will be able to stay in Canada permanently through the provincial nominee program.
The temporary foreign worker program allows outsiders to work in Canada for a limited period if employers demonstrate they can't find suitable Canadian or permanent residents to fill the job.
Provincial government forecasts say Alberta needs 400,000 new workers by 2015. Although private-sector employers have flocked to the federal temporary foreign worker program to deal with their shortages, Calgary is likely the first municipal government to hire temporary foreign workers directly.
Labour leaders and immigration agencies have raised concerns about the abuse and exploitation of some workers, who are allowed into Canada only at the behest of an employer. Union leaders have also said the program keeps wages artificially low.
But there are many fans of the program. Howie Kroon, CEO of Palliser Lumber Sales Ltd. in Crossfield, has hired 56 temporary foreign workers from the Philippines, and they now make up about a third of his workforce.
Continue reading about the 'fans' of the program here.
Strangely enough, even the right-wing magazine The Economist is critical of Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP):
Heeding the call of employers needing less qualified, lower-paid workers, the government has introduced a series of measures over the past two years designed to make the hiring of foreign workers simpler. No longer are employers obliged to place an advertisement in local newspapers for six weeks for local applicants before searching farther abroad; just one week in a federal job centre will now suffice. Instead of being allowed to stay for only one year, foreign workers are now often getting visas lasting two.
At the same time, the requirement for a “labour market opinion” (LMO) on whether a worker from outside the country is really needed has been scaled back. The federal government has launched a pilot scheme specifically aimed at bringing in low-skilled workers. And special teams of federal bureaucrats have been set up in Calgary, Vancouver and Montreal to help guide employers through the process of hiring foreign workers.
Over the two years to December 2006, these changes contributed to a jump of more than 40,000 in the number of temporary foreign workers in Canada, bringing the total to 166,000. This is sure to be dwarfed by the 2007 figures, when they are released; applications for LMOs (of which about 85% are normally granted) are already up nationally by more than a half since 2006. In Alberta they have more than tripled to over 60,000. “All of this has been allowed to happen without public debate,” Gil McGowan of the Alberta Federation of Labour says. “It was not discussed in Parliament. It was not debated in the last election campaign. It was just done, quietly.”
In the past, Canada's foreign workers have tended to fall into three categories: seasonal agricultural workers; live-in nannies and care-workers; and highly skilled specialists such as academics, entertainers and doctors. But foreign workers are now being sought, too, by small- and medium-sized businesses, particularly fast-food restaurants and hotels, which have trouble both in attracting and retaining local employees. In some of these businesses, anyone who lasts longer than three months is regarded as a “veteran”, says Dan Kelly of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Foreign workers are a “massive relief”, not least because they are usually tied to their employer for the duration of their visa.
But Mr McGowan and other labour leaders complain that foreign workers are “now a recruitment tool of first choice rather than last resort”. Once in Canada, they say, there is virtually no monitoring of their pay or work conditions, leaving them wide open to abuse. “Every foreign worker needs basic training in his rights and to be told that there's a place to go to if he's being abused,” says Wayne Peppard, a British Columbia labour leader. Last year his union came to the aid of several dozen Latin American construction workers, who were being paid as little as C$3.56 an hour to dig a tunnel for a rail link between Vancouver and the city airport.
Tell me, Mr. Bronconnier, shouldn't the neighbourhood bus driver be granted permanent residence in the neighbourhood?
Links:
'Temporary Workers Keep Business Rolling', The Calgary Herald
'Not Such a Warm Welcome', The Economist
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