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Catherine Hutt's avatar

I don’t know a single teenager who’s managed to find a summer job this year. All the usual summer jobs have gone to people who barely speak English. We need to completely overhaul the Temporary Foreign Workers Program so that Canadians are the first priority in hiring. Forget “Buy Canadian” - what we need is “Hire Canadian”! The current immigration system is broken and should be scrapped and returned to what it was 15 years ago. What we have now is like inviting 100 people for dinner when you only have enough food for fifty.

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Tim Dyck's avatar

The real problem is that the federal government subsidizes the wages of TFWs. Let’s say a job pays $16/hr so an employers has to pay that $16 plus vacation and basic benefits. But hire a TFW and the employer pays $8/hr, the government pays the other $8 and there are no vacations or benefits. Why would an employer hire Canadian?

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Catherine Hutt's avatar

So true! We have to make it more appealing to hire Canadians. I’d end the TFW program with the exception of farm and vineyard workers. Not very many people want jobs like that, although it’s good, honest work!

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Tim Dyck's avatar

Why put an exception on farm and vineyard workers. We should be promoting these jobs to our youth so they get experience with manual labour outdoors. We have to stop coddling our children, it’s making them weak in a world where they will need strength to succeed.

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Catherine Hutt's avatar

Vineyards need people with special skills, like tying and pruning vines. The winery I worked at hired crews of Mexicans, often the same people every year. But you do make a good point - farm labour is a great way to teach kids how satisfying hard work can be, when you get to the end of the day and you know you did a good job. I spent time working on a horse ranch as a teen, and I loved it! Didn’t even mind mucking out the stalls, and I learned a lot.

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