Canada isn't interested in making temporary skilled workers permanent

Red Deer city council got it right with their extraordinary resolution calling to place foreign worker issues onto the agenda of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association annual convention.

The federal government passed quick-fix legislation on its Temporary Foreign Worker program, and our new premier promises to consult earnestly with the feds on how those quick fixes are creating new problems. But the brunt of the decisions made by higher-ups is borne locally.

Therefor, it is entirely right for cities to intervene, and get themselves at the table where national decisions are made on who can get a job here, and who can't.

I happen to do some part-time work for a local company whose job it is to bring skilled foreign workers and employers together. This company helps workers certify their skills, meet certified Canadian safety standards, and assist with the paperwork needed to get a new arrival into becoming part of the local economy.

That means getting them through the process of registration for a Social Insurance Number, a bank account, health care, a drivers licence transfer, housing and local contacts for social support.

The hardest part? From my limited involvement, it's finding affordable housing.

A group of welders and carpenters has just arrived in Red Deer, and most are expected to be out and on the job by the end of the week, on job sites across the province and into Saskatchewan.

Company representatives are currently abroad with about a dozen employers setting up a job fair where workers and employers can meet face-to-face. So we expect the next group of workers to arrive soon.

From my feedback, the employers involved can't get their guys onto their work sites fast enough. The pay incentives for good results are pretty impressive (starting out at a much better annual salary than the best I ever earned in in almost 40 years the news business).

My involvement in all this — helping to fill out forms, find housing and locate supports for new arrivals in the communities where these workers are going — leads me to agree with Red Deer city council's concern with the human equation of the temporary foreign worker program.

The biggest problem with the TFW is not that foreigners are taking jobs away from Canadians.

Do you want to work in heavy construction in Neilburg, SK? Find it on a map, drive out, and if you're qualified to work, you're in. The pay is great, and the people there are likewise.

Good luck finding a place to live in a Northern Saskatchewan town, population 500, far away from city amenities.

Not that interested? Didn't think so.

That's only one example of the challenges many Alberta and Saskatchewan companies are facing, while trying to sustain our employment boom.

Rather, the biggest problem with the TFW is the constant boom-and-bust cycle of our resource-based economy. I can only surmise, but I believe the people higher-up don't really believe in immigration and don't want outsiders to share in our prosperity, long-term.

My perspective tells me that when this boom is over, the government wants most of these skilled workers to be gone. Either that, or they can join the army of foreign-trained doctors and surgeons driving cab or serving pizza in our major cities.

In all my contacts with these workers, the overwhelming consensus is that they want to become Canadians. They want to come to stay, and to bring their families with them.

The talk around the table when they gather to talk among themselves and with us often drifts toward entrepreneurship. These are trained, motivated people who want to learn the rules and be able to use their skills to build a good life for their families.

These are the kind of positive, forward-thinking people we want in Canada.

No matter how much politicians cry about the current labor shortage in Alberta or Canada, I don't see much goodwill or desire to get these new arrivals onto the citizenship stream. That makes the TFW program cynically duplicitous.

There is an avenue whereby workers with the most-prized skills can achieve landed immigrant status, and bring their families in. In fact, I find that to be the prime motivator among the groups I have met.

Sure, the money is great — far better than anything they could earn at home. But good money isn't motivating enough Canadians into the jobs we're talking about here, either.

The motivator is the opportunity to build a good life. Opportunity is Canada's greatest selling point to people abroad.

I don't see a lot of eagerness in Ottawa for Canada to actually sell that. Hence the “temporary” part of this flawed program.

Only an idiot would refuse to vote

Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau settled in Edmonton with his caucus (MPs, not Senators) for a three-day policy retreat at the end of August.

Not much came out of the event, but one idea raised there got a Canadian Press treatment reprinted nearly word-for-word in online newspaper editions across the country.

Before the group trekked to their unfamiliar Alberta destination, Trudeau had polled his caucus for their views on a mandatory voting law.

It's a long way from an internal party straw poll on an idea, to its showing up on an election platform, but I hope the notion didn't just die behind the closed doors of the conference room.

As Saskatchewan MP Ralph Goodale noted, it's an idea well worth discussing.

Nobody seems to know why, but since Canadians got comfortable in the 1960s, notions of civic duty and voter participation in elections have been in steady decline.

In the 1958 federal election, 80 per cent of voters turned up at the polls. By the 2008 general election, voter turnout was a record low of 58.8 per cent turnout, rebounding to 61.1 per cent in 2011.

One news story I found noted the by-election in Fort McMurray last June, where voter turnout was 15 per cent. Nobody should claim a mandate to represent a region with a majority portion of a 15-per-cent voter turnout. But I guess it's enough to claim an MP's salary.

Here's the immediate harm: if you don't exercise your democratic duty, you can't claim the benefit of it.

Only one in four Canadians under 25 is a voter these days. Is it any surprise that Canadian tax laws and federal benefits packages disproportionately favour the disproportionately richer and more politically active senior demographic?

So in order to re-instill the sense that voting is not just your right, but your obligation as a citizen, perhaps we need to enforce your presence at a polling station.

Are you turned off by the machinations of the political system? I am, quite often. But I still vote.

Under a mandatory voting law, you would have four ways to say so:

• Ballots could have a box you can check labelled: None of the Above;

• You can spoil your ballot by scribbling on it;

• You can show up at the polling station and officially refuse to accept your ballot;

• Or, you just don't show up, and accept a small fine as the cost of your protest against the machine.

Wikipedia lists 11 countries around the world where voting is mandatory, and the law is enforced. There are another 17 countries that have such a law on the books, but nobody seems to enforce it.

Australia seems to be the poster child for a mandatory voting law. They've had one since 1924. Voter turnout is about 95 per cent, and about 80 per cent of voters polled say they support keeping the system.

If you don't show up at the polls, you get a letter asking why. If you can't say you were ill, observing a religious prohibition against voting or any other good reason, you pay a fine of $22. About one in three non-voters end up paying the fine.

Australian columnist Van Bacham explained it this way: “I'm not here to tell you to vote, I'm here to remind you that other people can't. Compulsory voting is the guarantee of voter freedom, not it's opposite.”

Democracy was supposedly invented in ancient Athens. They had one conference a year and every citizen (male, adult, born in the city) was expected to show up to hear the debates, vote on every election for office that year, and cast a ballot on every new law.

There were those who didn't show up, of course. And they were scorned, held to be self-absorbed people of low intellect who weren't invited to the nicer parties.

The definition for these people translates into today's “idiot.”

The benefits of democracy demand your participation in its function. Failure to vote leads to our having so-called representatives who are nobodies outside of their riding, mere trained seals who are expected to bark, clap and vote in Parliament under the total control and command of a leader most of us never wanted.

In a mature democracy, only idiots would allow that to happen.

If the FIPA trade deal with China is so good, why was it done in secret?

If you had a wealthy, powerful friend who constantly lied to you, spied on you and selectively applied arbitrary rules of engagement against you in secret, would you marry that person?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper would. He signed Canada into the Foreign Investment Protection Agreement with China.

In multiple turns, China has shown itself to be an unreliable business partner. Holding out the promise of access to billions of potential customers to lure Canadian businesses, China instead uses its powers of dictatorship to plunder abroad.

China claims the use of Western business standards to gain access to Canadian wealth, but has selectively applied arbitrary standards against Canadian business in China. Some Canadian businesses operations there have been forced to sell out to government-run Chinese businesses.

When aggrieved Canadian investors complain to legal authorities, their lawyers simply said, “well, that's how business is done in China.”

Would you marry your country into a relationship like that?

Stephen Harper would, and has. In secret, without notifying Parliament, without a public debate, much less an election mandate to do so.

And unlike NAFTA, which has a six-month opt out clause, Canada is locked in for a minimum 15 years.

When the deal was announced and analyzed, the notes of disbelief, shock and even outrage from business columnists and business leaders was hard to ignore, but thus far, Harper has managed it.

In the Financial Post, columnist Diane Frances, no lefty by anyone's reckoning, calls FIPA “a naive, shocking lapse of judgement.”

Which assessment is more telling, in your view? Frances said Canada displayed “the worst negotiating skills since Neville Chamberlain.” TV commentator Rick Mercer wondered in one of his rants: “Was Dr. Evil in the room?”

Compare Chamberlain's capitulation to Hitler to a James Bond plot containing an evil communist schemer. I call it a draw.

The federal government declared, after ratifying the agreement in secret, that FIPA guarantees the rule of law in the event of dispute. I haven't seen the agreement — and neither have you — but informed commentators say that's just not true.

In fact, FIPA guarantees there will be no rule of law — on the Chinese side —in the event of a disagreement.

We are told that under FIPA, a Chinese company already operating in Canada (China's government controls more of the Alberta oilsands than Alberta does) can act as a Trojan horse for any other, simply by having the government merge them on paper. After all, the Chinese government owns them all.

That new entity can then undertake any project it likes, without any review by Investment Canada.

Gus Van Harten is an associate professor at the Osgoode Law School, specializing in international business treaties. He wrote Investment Treaty Arbitration and Public Law (Oxford University Press).

He says FIPA gives Chinese business the power override Canada's sovereignty over areas like resource management. Canadian firms will get no such reciprocity in China.

Under Article 4, we are told China can bypass provincial, territorial, First Nations, municipal or successive federal government decisions on resource or commercial management.

We can't even scale down or slow down a Chinese-owned project in Canada. If we tried, the company can sue.

If the company sues, the case is heard in secret and will be ruled on by judges who do not follow Canadian law — or any law. Van Harten says FIPA allows China to operate under “nonconforming” business measures — and Canada has no list of these measures, nor any idea of what they might be.

Taxpayers will not be allowed to even know how many millions or billions a future government will have to pay in compensation to a lawsuit from China.

Remember: Canada has never won any case brought by a U.S. firm under NAFTA — and those adjudications are at least done on a level playing field.

Frances employed a hockey metaphor here: Canada is only allowed to play on restricted zones of the ice, with a select few players. China plays whoever they like, wherever they like, and can appeal any rule, in secret, behind closed doors, while in the penalty box.

Stephen Harper signed this deal so it could become a major plank in the next election campaign. He signed it to last 31 years. In secret.

That he is not facing a lynch mob speaks to his totalitarian control of Parliament.

If this is such a good deal, we should have seen it and debated it and approved it, like we did with NAFTA.

Consumers are way ahead of CRTC

If nothing else, the federal government can recognize a populist proposal when it sees one. Consumer unhappiness with the way their TV watching options are sold to them was a pure gift.

So there it was in the last federal Throne Speech: a policy that Canadians should not have to pay for cable channels they do not watch, and that consumers should be able to select and pay for only what they choose to see.

A no-brainer, right?

So as part of that legislative effort, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission is holding two weeks of hearings in Gatineau, Que. Titled Let's Talk TV, it's our opportunity to give an opinion on how TV content will be delivered in the future. You have until Sept. 19 to make a formal comment to the CRTC, if you wish.

But as most conversations about no-brainers go, the reality is beginning to appear more complicated than the proposal.

People who stand to lose from a pick-and-pay billing environment are getting their message together.

The sum of their arguments is that giving individual consumers more choice in how they select TV shows and channels will probably ultimately result in less choice. Abandoning the “bundled” packages we have now will probably mean we will pay more, while having less to choose from.

We are told this discussion is being closely watched in the U.S. by legislators, TV content providers and consumer groups, where one expert has suggested we may be “two, three, five or 10 years” ahead of them in this process.

I think what we're going to find two, three, five or 10 years down the road is that this whole discussion is becoming irrelevant.

Despite the power of the multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry, the consumer eventually gets what the consumer wants.

What does the consumer want? I think the consumer wants the power of choice, not necessarily more choices. Consumers want to control what they purchase, in line with what they're willing to pay.

And we're not getting that now. Most Canadian cable customers are paying for a package of over 100 TV channels. In any month, they only watch 10-15 of them.

Yet a Forum Research poll of Canadian viewers this spring said half of respondents actually prefer the current model of content delivery. A third say they want a pick-and pay.

Doesn't that contradict what I just said about consumers wanting choice? Not necessarily. An actual study of the market suggests something more complicated.

One in six Canadian families buys TV shows online, outside of the cable universe. But that club is not an exclusive group.

Almost half of Canadian families watch both cable and online content these days. A bit more than a third watches cable content only. Another group has “cut the cord” entirely — and that group is growing. And about four per cent of us watch no television at all.

Those are the real numbers to watch. And, despite tales of woe that marginal or niche content producers are making to the CRTC, that is the universe we will soon live in — with or without the federal government legislating “more choice” to consumers.

I wish I had more choice in the content packages provided to me. More real choice, I mean. I pay $40 a month for the basic bundle, and use about 10 per cent of it.

I'm not prepared to pay much more, though I am tempted by the Netflix siren.

I don't want more reality TV, more chef competitions, or a left-handed knitting channel. I don't want a dozen obscure digital music channels to play through my crappy old TV speakers.

Right now, we are told that the U.S. TV market (from whence the majority of our content originates) is funded 50/50 between advertising and cable rental. A subscription channel needs about 25 per cent of the market to survive. (HBO is the top subscription channel of them all, with about 30 per cent penetration.)

If “forced” subscription bundling were dropped, ESPN says it would need to raise its per/family revenue from its current $6 to $30, to maintain current revenues. Revenues of $7.2 billion, that is.

I would say, sadly, goodby ESPN in that scenario.

I'm the customer here. If you want my money, give me a product that I would value, for the money that I'm willing to pay.

Right now, I'm paying $40 a month for content which I judge to be 90 per cent not worth the power bill for the TV. And I don't think I'm an outlier in the statistics.

A legislated fix via the CRTC will take years. Meanwhile, the market itself will decide the winners and losers.

Jim Prentice, by the numbers

On Sunday, Progressive Conservative leader Jim Prentice became Alberta's 15^th premier since confederation. In all the years since 1905, Alberta's premiers have led just four different parties. At each succession, the losing party became a trivia question.

Two of those parties, the United Farmers and Social Credit no longer exist or are no longer on anyone's radar. The other non-Tory party to lead Alberta was the first of them all — the Liberals —whose dynasty lasted from 1905 to 1921.

The vast majority of Albertans today were not even alive or in the province when Peter Lougheed became the first Tory premier of Alberta. Prentice will be only the sixth Tory leader to sit in premier's chair in the 43 years the party has ruled the province.

Here are a few interesting numbers around premier Prentice's rise to power:

1 — The most crucial number of all. Prentice won on the first ballot, as expected. Had there been a second ballot required (which would have been held on Sept. 20), it would have produced a candidate who was a lot of people's second choice for premier. That lack of overt support, even in victory, would probably have doomed the party in the next general election.

23,000 — The rounded number of votes cast in the ballot Saturday. A new-fangled online voting system was used, which was supposed to make it easier for Albertans anywhere to vote in the leadership race. But it was subject to glitches, delays and breakdowns. Allison Redford won her leadership in a race where 59,000 votes were cast. For the campaign that elected Ed Stelmach, 97,000 were cast. Make of that what you will.

14 — The minimum age for someone to take out a party membership and vote for the leader. We'll never know how many parents paid for a party membership and had their teenage children vote the family line, but that part is interesting.

6 — The number of months you had to be living in the province to participate in the vote. It would also be interesting to know how many people bought a party membership and voted, who were not even in Alberta when Redford was premier.

20 —The number of digits in a PIN code your party membership gave you, to enter into your computer, tablet or smart phone in order to vote. Most banking PINs are shorter than that. The PIN also included the numbers in your postal code — but not the letters — which was the cause of a whole lot of rejected online sign-ins to vote. Whatever IT firm created this system will not likely be re-hired for future work of this sort.

$1.8 million — The dollar figure Prentice raised to finance his campaign, outpacing by far the combined tallies of the other two candidates. Money is important in politics, not just for what it buys, but for what it represents. The money goes to the winner almost all the time, because the money goes to the candidate perceived to become the winner.

50 — The number of elected MLAs who supported Prentice in this race. Right now there are 58 Tories in the legislature.

Smaller — The promised size of the next cabinet. How having fewer people hold the ultimate reins of decision-making improves transparency, we have yet to see, but a smaller cabinet is easier to control. Dave Hancock's cabinet had 17 members; Redford's had 18.

2016 — The next Alberta general election. Since 2011, elections must be held between March 1 and May 31 of the fourth year since the previous election. I wouldn't expect a snap election call before that. That leaves a maximum of 21 months for Prentice to preserve the Tory dynasty.

29 — The current percentage voter support for the Tory party, released in a Leger poll just prior to the leadership vote. Wildrose holds a 33-point support level. Given the vagaries of polling accuracy — especially recently — that puts the two parties pretty well even. Maybe.

Had I not read in a news report that Prentice is considered a “red” Tory, I wouldn't have suspected it. Two of the members of his transition team have high-level insider experience in oilsands boardrooms. And Prentice himself has been tight with decidedly “not red” Tory primer minister Stephen Harper.

But Prentice did break ranks with the federal party as an MP on a free vote on gay marriage, withstanding extreme pressure within the party, and even threats of violence from the public.

That's the kind of grit he'll need, if he is to turn an over-privileged dynastic party into something humble enough to win our votes in the next election.

Air Alberta is a white elephant. Get rid of it.

I don't care a whole lot that Thomas Lukaszuk took his daughter with him on three Alberta Air Transportation Services flights while he was a cabinet minister. That would be to focus on a problem's detail while ignoring the problem itself.

The Alberta cabinet has been using the province's four aircraft as a limousine service for years, only patching up the rules when ethical problems crop up.

Remember in 2004, when then-premier Ralph Klein stonewalling questions of his use of government aircraft with: “You don't believe me? You don't believe me? You don't believe me?” This wasn't the first instance of questionable use of free flights, by a long shot.

The problem is that the Alberta government, registered as a Canadian airline, has four aircraft in the first place. That's a situation unique in all of Canada.

Public interest groups have scanned thousands of pages of flight manifests since 2007 (when they were first made public), to see whose spouse or family member got a free ride on a plane on which date. They cross-reference that information with cabinet itineraries to see whether individual trips were for government work, or for private or party benefit.

That's a heck of a lot of tedious work, and I'm glad somebody has the patience to do it and report back.

What bothers me is that the government has its own airline at all. Technically, the government isn't in competition with private business — until the tedious studies of the flight manifests are revealed, and one cabinet minister or another finds it prudent to pay back the estimated commercial cost of a flight that might have taken place outside the rules.

What bothers me is the line that's been overlooked in auditor Merwin Saher's report last August which says that if these flights had all been booked commercially, taxpayers would have saved $3.9 million.

Just before the Labour Day weekend, an anonymous tipster sent a report to CBC News that Tory party leadership candidate Thomas Lakaszuk took his daughter with him on seven flights. Lukaszuk has since narrowed that down to three, saying that as a single parent, he needed his daughter with him on “non-school” days.

When Saher's report was made public, Lukaszuk repaid the estimated cost of the trips — $1,400 — on his own initiative “so that no one could question my integrity.”

OK, it's a bit late, but I can accept that.

But consider how Lukaszuk dropped a party bombshell in an interview later.

“But if my cutting a cheque is setting an example, boy, there will be a lot of very large cheques (cut by other ministers),” he told the Edmonton Journal.

Think about the subtext there. These flights are approved under the rules of the Alberta Treasury Board. It's chairman is finance minister Doug Horner.

Horner is reported to have brought his wife with him on 23 flights since the 2007 reporting rule was in place. And his is only one example here.

I have a small problem with spouses accompanying elected officials on flights at my expense. I quite understand that the hours are long for cabinet ministers, that quiet time with a spouse may be at a premium, much less to have a meal together. It's no treat being a political spouse, either. All this is understood.

So filling an empty seat on a flight to a meeting in Grande Prairie and back, what's the harm?

None, really, if the flight was booked charter, and non-government passengers were not charged to the taxpayer.

Does anyone doubt that there is a charter airline in Alberta willing to be on-call to the government, at a significant discount? That, given a bit of notice, they could have the right type of aircraft at any given airport on any given day, at a competitive price, for a preferred customer?

That's pretty well standard practice in other Canadian provinces. And it would save Alberta taxpayers millions.

The unseemly manner in which the whole Tory party dog-piled on former premier Alison Redford for red-lining a standard government practice looks pretty hypocritical right now.

Lukaszuk says he wants all flights by cabinet ministers since 2007 re-examined. Boy, won't there be a lot of big repayment cheques made then, he said.

What does that tell you? It tells me that it's time to liquidate Air Alberta. It tells me that open bidding for charter services is a good idea, since all Tories believe private industry is better than public industry, 100 per cent of the time anyway.

About $3.9 million better, according to Saher's report.

The Air Transportation Service is a while elephant, fiscally and ethically. Get rid of it.