Alberta’s perpetually dissatisfied restaurant owners find themselves in such difficult straits they’re investing their hard-earned dollars in a high-profile PR campaign to make sure we all understand just how tough they have it – and while they’re at it, maybe they can get us to elect a right-wing government that
Continue readingTag: temporary foreign workers
The Canadian Progressive: Canada, a welcoming country? The unaddressed issue of labour trafficking
The unaddressed issue of labour trafficking tarnishes Canada’s image as a compassionate and welcoming country. Temporary foreign worker programmes allow employers to violate migrant workers’ rights. The post Canada, a welcoming country? The unaddressed issue of labour trafficking appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Albertans hear the same old same old as fast-food restaurant owners grow hysterical over minimum wage
PHOTOS: Alberta Labour Minister Christina Gray, who is sticking to her guns on the provincial government’s plans to raise the provincial minimum wage to $15 by 2018. Below: Notable fair wage campaigners, Joe Ceci, finance minister of Alberta; Frankli…
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Why Thomas Mulcair Should Distance Himself From the CFIB and Why he Won’t
Recently, Justin Trudeau has come under fire for remarks he made suggesting that some small business owners used their concerns to avoid paying taxes. He did not suggest all, but that didn’t stop the media and his opposition from jumping on the bandwagon. However, leading the charge is a group
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Why Thomas Mulcair Should Distance Himself From the CFIB and Why he Won’t
Recently, Justin Trudeau has come under fire for remarks he made suggesting that some small business owners used their concerns to avoid paying taxes. He did not suggest all, but that didn’t stop the media and his opposition from jumping on the bandwagon.
However, leading the charge is a group called the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. (Former president shown above with NDP members, including Brian Topp).
However, in 2011, David Climenhaga exposed this group for what they really are:
Why does the so-called Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses push a far-right agenda that benefits the country’s richest corporations and individuals at the expense of independent businesses?
Well, it’s not that complicated, really. Like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which doesn’t represent the interests of Canadian taxpayers, it’s fair to say based on its actual behaviour that the CFIB is a typical example of pure, unadulterated AstroTurf pretending to serve the interests of one group while actually working against them.
In 2012, CFIB’s president, Christine Swift (above with Topp), was forced to step down because of her involvement in a group called Working Canadians. Don’t let the name fool you. This is actually another AstroTurf group, whose primary stated goal is to diminish the role of unions.
Since when were the NDP anti-union? I know in Quebec that Mulcair was, and it is he who suggested that the party move away from them, but still. It’s rather odd that they would be backed by an anti-union group, although everything about this party is odd these days.
That would certainly explain why most of their attacks have been against Justin Trudeau, despite the fact that it’s the NDP who actually benefit from union support. The only anti-NDP ad is against the B.C. Party, but they have left Mulcair alone.
Maybe it has something to do with this.
Their former president tried to explain here.
The Tories’ latest TV attack ad takes direct aim at Trudeau, ignoring Mulcair. Similarly, a group called Working Canadians, headed by former Canadian Federation of Independent Business president Catherine Swift, and funded mainly by donations from business owners, is airing radio ads attacking Trudeau’s “high-tax, big-government agenda,” but not taking aim at Mulcair—
She suggested that she didn’t think he would have electoral success, but given past polls, why are they still leaving Mulcair alone?
One of their television ads is eerily similar to those run by the Conservatives. They use the cherry picked “budgets will balance themselves” and a short clip from Trudeau’s teaching days.
Swift’s replacement, Dan Kelly, is also right-wing and has even called on businesses to boycott the United Way and supports the use of temporary foreign workers.
The Proof is in … Well the Proof
Ok. So you look at the above and might say that the links between the NDP and CFIB are weak, except that the NDP themselves have admitted to courting their influence.
Last week’s exchange in the House is just one small example of how the CFIB’s influence – with all parties – has grown substantially, particularly the NDP, one expert says. From question period.
“The political parties are looking at the CFIB as the only credible organization that deals with small and medium sized businesses. That’s an approach the NDP has been taking in the past few years,’’ says Gilles LeVasseur, a business and law professor with the Telfer School of Business in Ottawa.
“They’ve been dealing with unions. So now they (the NDP) are shifting toward business people because they see that they’ve missed out on that opportunity. You have to understand that the NDP is doing that because they have to show they can govern the country, and by governing the country you also need to have business on your side,’’ said LeVasseur, who was a member of the CFIB for a year about a decade ago.
They’ve been dealing with unions alright.
So the CFIB and the offshoot Working Canadians are overtly attacking Justin Trudeau with money from “small businesses”, and CFIB has an NDP MP as a former member. Did they draft Mulcair’s business tax strategy that benefits the rich?
They have set up Justin Trudeau and once again the media has become complicit. Don’t you just love the state of our democracy?
Trudeau is right to challenge them. He has heard the ads and he knows the players. He could pull an #NDPTruthTeam on them and ask why the NDP was being backed by a group that wants to stop money going to the United Way. Or is a strong supporter of the Temporary Foreign Workers program. Or wants to diminish the role of unions.
Wait a minute. I think I just did that. Yeah, me. I’m for #RealChange.
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Why Thomas Mulcair Should Distance Himself From the CFIB and Why he Won’t
Recently, Justin Trudeau has come under fire for remarks he made suggesting that some small business owners used their concerns to avoid paying taxes. He did not suggest all, but that didn’t stop the media and his opposition from jumping on the bandwagon. However, leading the charge is a group
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Canada’s anti-union lobby is at the heart of the deceptive campaign for more Temporary Foreign Workers – why’s that, d’ya think?
Canadians need not apply? Actual Canadian store displays may not appear exactly as illustrated. But the intent of the AstroTurf TFW lobby is to bust unions and weaken the bargaining power of Canadian workers. Below: Employment Minister and former Canadian Taxpayers Federation operative Jason Kenney; former Canadian Federation of Independent
Continue readingMelissa Fong: Temporary Foreign Worker Program- “lifted the suspension of previously approved LMOs and introduced a new program regime.”
June 20, 2014. Dear Business Owner, Subject: Reconfirmation of previously suspended labour market opinions(s)- System file number(s): 8059947 On May 1, 2014, a letter was sent informing you of the […]
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Brent Rathgeber may not a be a Tory any more, but he still supports the Harper Government’s worst ideas
Edmonton-St. Albert MP Brent Rathgeber getting scrummed by the media in his St. Albert office the day after he resigned from the Conservative Parliamentary Caucus. (Photo grabbed from Mr. Rathgeber’s website.) Below: Mr. Rathgeber looking at the camera. ST. ALBERT, Alberta Notwithstanding his much-publicized break with the Harper Conservatives, Independent
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics: Underdog Liberal has a shot in Fort McMurray-Athabasca by-election
TweetFour federal by-elections will be held across Canada on June 30, 2014, including in Alberta’s Macleod and Fort McMurray-Athabasca ridings made vacant by the retirements of Conservative Members of Parliament Ted Menzies and Brian Jean months ago. While most general elections in Alberta can be counted on to result in broad Conservative sweeps, Albertans
Continue readingLeft Over: Canada’s Burger King Kenney Doubles Down
http://montrealsimon.blogspot.ca/2014/04/the-monster-burger-and-inner-torment-of.html It’s even creepier than you know, Simon..yesterday, our NDP politicians here in BC were speaking to the media after a meeting with the Victoria, BC TFWs that will “not be getting their work permits renewed or be able to apply for permanent status” now that their Golden Arches
Continue readingParliamANT Hill: Mickey D’s Cantada CEO calls foreign worker controversy ‘bullshit’
Inspired by this headline: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mcdonald-s-canada-ceo-calls-foreign-worker-controversy-bullshit-1.2621151
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: More Evidence that Temporary Foreign Worker Program Takes Jobs Away from Canadians
Yet another report, this time by SFU Public Policy Professor Dominique M. Gross, finds evidence that Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program is bad for domestic workers. The report looks at BC and Alberta specifically and concludes that the expansion of the TFW program between 2007 and 2010 resulted in an
Continue readingMelissa Fong: How to ABUSE Canadian Citizenship: Blame Temporary Foreign Workers for problems of a global Capitalist Economy
How to ABUSE Canadian Citizenship: Blame Temporary Foreign Workers for problems of a global Capitalist Economy: Once again, the media uses the wrong gaze to look at a program that does […]
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: The Temporary Foreign Worker Program and labour solidarity
Yesterday, I took a look at the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and how it helps enforce labour discipline on all workers, and low-wage workers in particular. Today, I want to explore the migration side of the migrant worker equation. The context of migration not only makes it easier for
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: The Temporary Foreign Workers Program and labour market discipline
While it is a truism that migrant labour built Canada, this same migrant labour has long been used to discipline domestic workers. Both facts are imprinted into the history of Canada. Today is no different and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) is at the centre of debates about migrant
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Making The World Safe For Capital
Complaints about the Temporary Foreign Workers Program keep piling up. This morning the Vancouver Sun reports: B.C. workers ranging from seasoned professionals to teenage fast-food employees are complaining about being dumped in favour of non-residents as Ottawa scrutinizes employers who abuse the Temporary Foreign Worker program. Vern Doak is a
Continue readingParliamANT Hill: McD’Antald’s foreign worker practices face growing investigation
Inspired by this headline: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mcdonald-s-foreign-worker-practices-face-growing-investigation-1.2607365
Continue readingParliamANT Hill: Temporary ForAnt Workers have better work ethic, some employers believe
Inspired by this headline: http://www.cbc.ca/news/temporary-foreign-workers-have-better-work-ethic-some-employers-believe-1.2600864
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Criminal employers are employers too, Alberta government spokesman says, but illegal strikes are still illegal
If feeding your employees to lions is outlawed, then only outlaws would be able to feed their employees to lions! Or is that the other way around? Whatever. In Alberta, we don’t think it would be fair to criminal employers either way. We also don’t think it’s fair not to
Continue reading