Dr. Mike P. Moffatt 🇨🇦🏅🏅 Profile picture
Aug 10 11 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Short thread time: How on earth did the number of low-wage temporary foreign workers nearly triple in 2022?

TL;DR - The federal government made some massive changes a mere 13 days after the Liberals and NDP signed the Supply and Confidence Agreement.Image
The low-wage stream allows Canadian employers to hire temporary foreign workers for jobs that pay less than the provincial median wage. Note that this doesn't include agricultural workers; that's a separate program. In Manitoba, that's $25/hr.

Source: canada.ca/en/employment-…
Image
On April 4, 2022, less than two weeks after the Liberals-NDP signed their agreement, the federal government massively deregulated the Temporary Foreign Worker program to "address current job vacancies across many sectors and occupations."

Source: canada.ca/en/employment-…
One impactful change was weakening the rule that an employer could only have 10% of their workforce be temporary foreign workers. That got raised to 20%, and in some industries like "accommodation and fast food services" that got raised to 30%.

Source: canada.ca/en/employment-…
Image
There had also been a rule that, for some occupations, a temporary foreign worker could not be brought in if the unemployment rate was 6% or higher.

That rule was waived, making employers in some high-unemployment regions now eligible.

Source: canada.ca/en/employment-…
Image
This was a deliberate move by the federal government to suppress wage growth for low-income Canadians, and increase the number of temporary workers, who have much weaker labour rights than permanent residents.
And I cannot stress this enough: This attack on labour rights happened a mere 13 days after the Liberals and NDP signed their Confidence & Supply agreement, which gave the federal NDP more power than they've had in my lifetime (and I'm nearly 50).

pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-r…
We should note how destructive this program is for the TFWs themselves. The UN has criticized Canada:

"Agricultural and low-wage streams of the temporary foreign workers program constitute a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery."

Source: cbc.ca/news/politics/…
I consider myself on the progressive side of the Canadian political spectrum, and I think we need to acknowledge that we've completely lost the plot on the TFW issue. Our side did this and needs to undo it. Refusing to talk about the problem doesn't help.

/🧵
One thing I should add is that @carastern and I recorded an episode of Missing Middle on Canada's addiction to temporary foreign workers.

I have to admit - Cara figured out what was going on here faster than I did. She was right, I was wrong.

Watch now:
If you like these threads and like our Missing Middle videos, could you do us a big favour and subscribe (for free!) on YouTube. It would help us out a lot:

youtube.com/@MissingMiddle…

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More from @MikePMoffatt

Aug 11
I got a lot of feedback and comments on this. Some great, some… not. But a few of you pushed back on the idea that this was a deliberate decision to suppress wage growth.

Of course it was. Thread time…
The response I got was “they weren’t trying to drive down wages, they were trying to get companies workers where there weren’t any”. But, remember, one of the big deregulations to this program was to expand it to regions with higher unemployment!
Let’s think about this for a second. What normally happens if a firm can’t find someone to work for $17 an hour? They raise their wage to $18 or $19 an hour, to get more applicants! But with the expansion of the low-wage temporary foreign worker program, they don’t have to!
Read 9 tweets
Aug 9
This is unbelievably cool - a new website that maps out who got approved to hire temporary foreign workers, and where. Here's the data for City of Toronto.

I'm surprised "Dairy Freeze Inc." couldn't find a worker locally. Image
Here is the tool that maps out Temporary Foreign Workers - Labour Market Impact Assessments. Thanks to the Missing Middle viewer who sent it our way.

lmiamap.ca
I really have trouble believing we can't find anyone to work at the Dairy Queen by Fanshawe College.

(Maybe they'd have more luck if they brought back serving ice cream in those upside down baseball helmets.) Image
Read 4 tweets
Aug 2
Thread time. I've seen a few tweets on here asking, "What the hell happened to Moffatt? He turned into such a doomer!"

It's not an unfair question (though it can be asked unfairly).

What happened: I genuinely believe things are getting much worse for adults under 30.
Look at rents, home prices, happiness indices, homelessness, opioid deaths, employment rates, polling data on questions like "are you better off than your parents were at your age, etc. etc." and they're all moving in the wrong direction.
And, I agree, none of these are perfect measures. Many of you really hate the "58th place in happiness" metric!

But when so many metrics, however imperfect, like food bank usage, are all moving in the same direction, it tells a compelling story. One we shouldn't ignore.
Read 10 tweets
Jul 31
Short thread time. TL;DR version: We underestimate how affordable housing was in the 70s and 80s and overestimate how affordable it was post-2000 because traditional analyses ignore saving for a downpayment. Image
Let's start with income. Here's how much nominal (that is, not adjusted for inflation) incomes have risen over time, for both single earners (that is, persons not in an economic family), and "economic families" (2 or more related persons, though not necessarily 2 earners). Image
Next, let's look at nominal home prices in Toronto. Note this graph has a much steeper slope, but is also more volatile. It's not a straight upward path. Image
Read 7 tweets
Jun 6
Thread time. And it's a bit of an angry one.

We'll never solve our housing crisis so long as our system is dependent on planning, but the federal and provincial governments refuse to give municipalities the information needed to make those plans.

🧵
Our entire planning system, from housing to infrastructure to schools is underpinned by population forecasts. Project out how the population will grow over 20-25 years, perhaps have a high-medium-low case, and use that to make decisions, particularly municipal ones.
The provincial government requires municipalities to do this in their official planning, which informs decisions around zoning, urban growth boundaries, etc.

The federal government requires municipalities to do this in order to receive infrastructure money.
Read 18 tweets
Jun 2
There's a fair bit of merit to the idea of shifting our property tax system to an LVT. But this gets the issue wrong.

An LVT makes it harder to build this kind of infill, not easier. Thread time.
The theory of change here is that greedy landowners are hoarding all the land. They could build, but it's more profitable not to. But if we taxed the land, their incentives would change and they'd build beautiful buildings like this. And that is a great building! Image
There's a pretty big problem here - the building, or buildings here, wouldn't meet code! There's no way you're getting a large elevator and two staircases in there.

Developers would either have to violate the laws of man or the laws of physics! Image
Read 10 tweets

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