The Immigration Situation in Canada

Philip O Reilly from Hoist the Black Flag joins me again to discuss a hot topic going on in Canada right now, immigration. A timely subject that has been a big topic in Canada coming up to our election in a year and with the political strife going on in the UK. We will discuss how we got here, current concerns and what may lie ahead.

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• 25:41 (Cont.) The Immigration Situation in Canada

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[00:02] Russell: All right, folks, and we're back. Russell here with the canadian conservative podcast. And today I have Phil O'Reilly back in the studio. Phil O'Reilly is a classic liberal. He is a writer on cultural, political, economic issues as well as writing about hockey. He's joining me from the west coast today, and we're going to talk about immigration. Welcome to the show, Phil.

[00:27] Phil: Hi, Russell. Thanks for having me back. Appreciate it.

[00:30] Russell: All right, immigration, hot topic right now in Canada. Lots of stuff come out. I believe it was the un talking about our TFW program possibly being a modern day type of slavery. I think there's an argument to be made there. In preparation for the show today. I actually went out and talked to some people I know that work in the retail sector, that own businesses now, that are doing other jobs now that did come to Canada on the TFW program. And some of the horror stories I've heard from them, I think would really emphasize just how corporations have been using this program and some of the abuses that have been built around it. So welcome to the show. And I know that you wrote on Substack about this, so I wanted to ask if you wanted to discuss your article. We'll go through it and then we'll branch into the next topic from there.

[01:31] Phil: All right. So I started writing on this last week, putting together the article, and I think it's going to end up having to turn into a series because as you know, immigration is a complicated topic. I didn't really touch on tfws or the temporary foreign workers program. I just started with the basics. Right. So there's a lot when you see the, especially the online debate, you get into this open border, closed border argument. And honestly, I think they're both bad policies. Right. So if you have an open border, you're going to overwhelm the infrastructure, you're going to overwhelm the social programs, you're going to overwhelm the culture. So it's just, it's a road to ruin. Closed border is also a road to ruin, but perhaps a little slower. Right. So the problem with closed borders is Canada, like most of the OECD countries, we do not have a replacement rate, a birth rate that meets replacement rates of, I want to say, 2.1 children per woman. The average OECD nation is 1.6, I think. So if you don't replace the population, one of the things that's going to happen is you're not going to have enough workers to support retirees. So in 19, something like 1960, I think there were about seven to eight workers per retiree most recently, or at least, I think it's 2022, that number is 3.43.5. So if we don't find a way to increase the working population, the number is just going to continue to get worse. Right. And the other way is the economy. If we don't have, if the participation rate in the economy continues to decline, the economy will slow down. So based on the current forecast is, I believe it would reduce the GDP by 0.2%, which doesnt sound like a lot, but works out to be about $160 billion a year. In $160 billion a year, its $160 billion. So youre going to see a significant decline in the economy, which is not only the private industry, but taxes as well. The fewer workers we have, the less taxes that are going to be collected, the greater impact on infrastructure, such as roads and hospitals, retirees transfer payments, it's all going to decline. So we do need immigration. The problem that we have is somehow the government has managed to turn what was a society or a nation that was very supportive of immigration even a year ago. They've managed to turn every. Well, everybody's an exaggeration. A large portion of the population is no longer supportive of immigration, or at the very least, they think it needs to be significantly reduced. So I haven't got part two of the article written yet, or I'm just kicking it around on my head, but that's where we are right now. Right. So, yes, we need immigration, but as it currently stands, I don't think it's serving Canada.

[04:31] Russell: Well, this is from the canadian website on Immigration says that Canada plans to welcome 485,000 permanent residents in 2024. 500,000 in 2025.

[04:46] Phil: Right.

[04:47] Russell: 26. The government will stabilize immigration levels at 500,000 to support economic growth while balancing with the pressure in areas like housing, healthcare and infrastructure. This worked out 1.3% of the population. I don't know, 500,000 a year. That sounds like a lot.

[05:10] Phil: Yeah. And that's not, that's not even counting the temporary foreign workers as well, which I believe was 200,000, over 200,000 recently. Right. We're not, if I recall correctly, with the, the housing starts are significantly below that level. So you're bringing in 500,000 people and you're already have a housing crisis. Right. So what is the plan? I would, you know, like I said, we need immigrants, but we need immigrants to be targeted. What are the jobs that we need? Right. So we all know that there's a primary care physician problem. I believe there's a nursing shortage as well. So. And then if we're going to build houses, they're quite possible that we have a problem with trade, right. Maybe we don't have enough plumbers, electricians, construction workers and things like that. So those are a couple of industries where we potentially need more workers. Is the government targeting this or is it just, you know, I don't, it's so complicated and so bureaucratic. I don't know what their focus is.

[06:16] Russell: Well, it doesn't seem like they have a focus. I mean, I think we need to, we need to look that there's, there's really, there's not just one type of immigrant to Canada, though. That's, that's, that, that makes it even more complicated. There's people following the immigration program, which is, again, supposed to target industries that are struggling. It's supposed to be for family reunification purposes and it's supposed to be for like, skilled trades and, and stuff like that, so.

[06:47] Phil: Right.

[06:48] Russell: I, so, like, there's very specific reasons for. Then there's the TFW program, which is supposed to fill labor gaps. So gaps in the labor. Now, the point of TFW, temporary foreign worker, is that it's temporary. So from what I understand, I've been looking into it, basically, the farming sector. There's lots of crops out there that have to be hand picked. They can't be picked effectively using machinery. You can use machinery, but some of these crops, handpicking them yields much more. So in Ontario specifically, they were having a lot of people come up during the summertime and work under the table illegally, and we're getting paid under the table. So the idea was, is they were going to bring in this program that was basically going to put people on the books for the summer. They were going to make the money. They could then go back to the country that they came from, and they've made money and helped out the canadian economy in the farming sector. From what I understand, that was the original sort of intent of the TFW program was to fill these manual labor jobs in the farming sector. And it just kind of grew from there. It became a big thing. So, like, I actually, when I was, when I was young, I actually worked one summer. Like many teenagers, I didn't really want to get a job at the time.

[08:20] Phil: Right.

[08:20] Russell: And then my parents said, well, you have to get a job. So I did what lots of teenagers do, and I told them I was out there passing out resumes, but I wasn't really doing all that much looking for a job. I was doing a big paper route already and I thought, well, I'll just keep doing the paper route. But, you know, I should have known that. Yeah, that wasn't going to pay for much, for much longer. My father saw this thing in the paper and looking for people to work in, like the fields, so he signed me up for it because he's a nice guy like that, and he told me, he said, oh, well, I got you a job. You couldn't get one, so I got you a job. You're going to be working, like, doing field work. And so every morning I left at about five in the morning. I caught a bus outside the mall, drove us out to the fields, and we detassled corn for the, uh, for the summer. And it was tough work. It really was. It's just, you're in the sun, there's bugs everywhere, it's, it's mind numbing work. And as soon as you're done one field, they just move you on to the next field. Like there's. And they're very strict on their brakes and that sort of thing. So it's tough. It's manual labor, it's tough. And I would say that of the people there, the vast majority of people that were there were not from Canada, and there were people there that they were like ex cons. They, they couldn't, they couldn't really find work in other areas, so they were stuck doing work that doesn't really require background checks or anything like that.

[09:58] Phil: Right.

[09:59] Russell: And then at the end of the summer, I got a paycheck for like a couple thousand dollars. Three, I think like three, $4,000 from a company that was just a bunch of numbers. And that was, that was my experience doing that. And, and it was funny because when I was working, doing this, I, it was kind of like a joke. They're like, oh, like, you know, they, they thought I was like a, I don't know, like a juvenile delinquent. I couldn't get a job somewhere else. And that, and that was kind of a bit of a joke. There is that, you know, this isn't the type of work that you should be doing. And that it was like, it was a, it was a bit of a joke and that I was too soft to be doing field work and I probably was. And that I definitely, definitely struggled, that's for sure. And I just, you know, I. There's this, just this idea with this program that it was supposed to be a way to bring in, you know, the ability to tax and. And have things tracked. And it's just grown and grown from there.

[11:00] Phil: You mean grown and grown with respect to the farmworkers or just the program in general?

[11:06] Russell: Well, the program completely has grown. It's now almost completely taken over sectors of the retail industry.

[11:14] Phil: Yeah. I'm looking at some charts here on a recent CBC article. Farmworkers appears to be number one. But, yeah, there's a number of things in here which I find somewhat odd. Cooks for food services supervisors, administrative assistants. That's odd. Retail sales supervisors. So, yeah, you've got a lot of these temporary foreign workers where you would think that we would have given the. I think unemployment is 6.3, something like that. I might be overstating it, but it's in the sixes. You would think that we would have people locally who would want to do those jobs. Yeah. Pitching. I mean, general farm worker, seasonal work, that's. That's a hard sell. I can imagine. I know that, you know, in the US, that's. They have the migrant workers that they generally argue that no one else will do the job. From the sounds of what you're experiencing, no one else doing the job sounds about accurate.

[12:14] Russell: I mean, I would. I would agree to. To a point for that. You know, I think no one wants to do the job. And I think there's a. More of a sociological argument to be made about, you know, how can. How Canadians view work and how we view people and the type of work that they do. I did one of my polls on X Twitter. Yeah. And I was saying, you know, in Canada, do you believe that we place value on people based on what they do for a job? And the answer was a resounding yes, and I can speak to that in Canada, when you meet someone, you say hello, mention your name. What's one of the first questions that people ask?

[13:02] Phil: Yeah. What do you do?

[13:03] Russell: What do you do? Now? It's not just to generate conversation. I don't think. And I don't think it's just to keep a conversation going. It's. I think it's the first value judgment that you're doing on someone, because in Canada, I think this. My opinion, that we place a lot of value on people's worth based on what they do for a living.

[13:24] Phil: I think there's a certain amount of that, yeah. But I do know that from my standpoint, I'm not the world's greatest conversationalist. So what do you do is, for me, just keeping the conversation alive? I think. I mean, you're right. And I think the Twitter polls, right. We do judge people to a certain extent on what they do, right? I mean, so if you're a doctor, for example, there's a certain amount of prestige with that, right? So some jobs do have higher prestige than others. I'd like to think most people don't judge a person's worth on the job they do, right. Maybe potentially, like I said, prestige versus worth two different, slightly different things, right? I mean, construction work is great work. It pays well. I don't see why that's necessarily has any less worth than that of a doctor. It might have less prestige, but that sometimes goes back to the stereotypes of our parents. Right. Where they want to brag, well, you might, my kid's a doctor or whatever. And just to be upfront, I'm not a doctor, so I'm not talking that up because I think it's a great job. I think it's not irrelevant. Sorry. Inevitable that you're going to have a certain amount of judgment. I don't know that that necessarily, I don't know what the negative impact of that would be on, on jobs, right. I think more of it has to do with, like you, I think you said what it was mundane, it was boring, monotonous. I can't remember exact words you used. Right.

[14:53] Russell: So it's, it's manual labor. And most people don't want to do manual labor. Most people like jobs where they get to talk, where they get to sit behind a computer and type, I'm not saying that's everyone. I don't want to make all or nothing statement there. But as our society becomes more and more leftist and that, and again, this is my opinion. This is actually based off of a conversation I had with another guest, Stuart Parker, who said that, he said, and he's, and this guy's like a pretty much a literal communist. And he said that the current value propositions for like the leftists is to do as little manual work as possible. That movement of the body is outdated and viewed with disgust and like a lower class type of thing, whereas they're the higher class. And so they want jobs where they don't have to move or do anything, but they get to tell their people what to do. And like I said, that's just, that was just an conversation.

[16:01] Phil: I'm just trying to digest that comment and come up with something to say about it. I mean, I think we need to distinguish between manual labor and varying degrees of skill in manual labor. Right? So farm worker, and without wanting to insult anybody, farm worker is probably fairly low skilled labor. Right. You have to be taught how to pick whatever it is you're picking, but that's the extent of it. Whereas if you're a carpenter, that's manual labor as well, but it's not low skilled. I have a lot of relatives who are carpenters, so I know it's difficult work. Same thing with electrician. These are all manual labor jobs. And there are people who like that. I'm not one of them, but there are people I know who. Nothing makes them happier than fixing things. So I think we. You're probably right. There's a certain amount of looking down their nose. Some people will probably look down their nose on certain labor, but some of it is just undesirable labor anyway. Plus, you got to wonder, what's the future in some of this, too, right? If you become a migrant laborer, it's not like you're going to rise up through the middle class in that sort of job. So not very many people are going to want to do it. But again, maybe we need to round back to the temporary foreign worker program, right? So what's. What's its purpose? What's it doing and what's the government doing with it? If there are jobs that we can't fill or which are literally temporary. Right. If it's. If you're a migrant farm worker, we don't need you in January. So it would make sense if we can't fill it. If Canadians are unwilling to fill the job and it needs to be get done, we need somebody to do it. Some of the other things I question why they're on the program.

[17:49] Russell: Well, go ahead. I'd like to. Well, you mentioned the stats earlier about unemployment, so, yes, unemployment is sitting at about 6.1%, which is scary enough. But then if you look at Stats Canada and in June 2024, youth unemployment rate is 13.5%. In May of 2024, the youth unemployment rate, specifically in Toronto, is 16.8%. The unemployment rate for students between semesters is 46.8%.

[18:30] Phil: Wow. Yeah, that's. That's something.

[18:32] Russell: So these are. These are official stats? Is. This isn't me just pulling numbers out?

[18:36] Phil: No, I'm not saying you are. I'm just saying. Yeah. That it's. That's. That's quite the unemployment rate. Do you believe that this is being driven by the TFW program?

[18:46] Russell: Well, 100%. I think that that is a. I think that's a factor. I think that's a major factor that needs to be considered, is that these entry level jobs, these, these jobs that maybe teenagers might do for a few years to help them gain experience. Because, I mean, working in retail, working in fast food, you have to learn how to talk with people. You have to learn how to follow directions. You have to learn teamwork, you have to learn all these different skills, counting money and how to properly complete processes and things like that. There's a percentage of teenagers that are either missing out on this opportunity to learn these essential early skills in life. And the soft skills that come with it, the confidence and the ability to persuade, negotiate, those are all the soft skills that come along with the hard skills. And then one day they're going to graduate or they're going to hit 1819 or leave their parents homes, that sort of thing. And then they're going to learn these skills while they're already entering into a more professional workforce in many ways. So there, to me, there is a lot of worry. And it makes me ask the question, are these companies that are utilizing the TFW program, are they rigging it or are they genuinely not able to find people that want to work?

[20:18] Phil: Yeah. And it's a good question. It's difficult to determine. Right. So presumably, I don't know the details of the process, but presumably to get a temporary foreign worker, you have to apply, to apply to the TFW program through the government. Right. So you have to show a need for the temporary foreign worker. What that is, I don't know. But you would think it would be related somewhat to the canadian unemployment rate as well as the number of job openings that they have. Right. There was some sort of balance. Or if you're showing you've got all these job openings and unemployment is very low, then, yeah, you could make an argument we need foreign workers. But if the unemployment rate is high and you have a lot of openings, then I think you need to pull, you need to start polling Canadians. One of the things, another one of these articles that popped up quickly. Well, just the inspections we're seeing fewer inspections, less compliance, more explaining for the temporary poor working program. Right. So in 2019, it looks like there was about 3000 inspections. And this year there's been, or we'll say last year we'll do 22, 23. There was just over 2000. So the government's hiring hundreds of thousands of workers for the government and the number of inspections they're doing is going down. Right. And so everything we look at just points to a broken process. Right. So we can agree that canadian Canadians, people living in the country, should be given priority of the jobs. And we should only be bringing in temporary foreign workers for positions nobody will take or when employment is so high that you can't fill the openings. But I don't see any evidence that's being done.

[22:17] Russell: No. And, and, you know, again, we don't have a lot of time and there's so many different ways we could branch into this because there's arguments to be made about, you know, you know, birth rate. There's arguments to be made about the amount of taxation being generated. I mean, we have to remember that the canadian public service itself, if you add in the municipal, provincial, federal and contractors, is like 40% of the canadian workforce rate there. That's already way too high to be able to sustain for a long term. Because public service jobs don't make taxes. They don't produce things that make taxes. They consume tax money, provide services. That tax money has to come from the private sector. And when you are, when you're, when you're that close, there's a, there's a big fear that, that kind of comes with that. I'm just going to share my screen here. I just, so, um, I saw on Reddit a post showing a SAS jobs ad from last year by the Marquis Inn and Suites in Prince Albert. The education requirement was a university degree for a housekeeper job. My first thought was, well, someone made a mistake. There were a few comments about how this was a tactic used for bringing in tfws because one could claim there's no local that wants the job. Still being skeptical, I searched SAS jobs and found this posting. So there's two postings that were found directly on SAS jobs. They were screenshotted directly from SAS jobs. One was a housekeeper for the Shellbrook Motel. It was $19 hourly. It was posted July 14, 2024. Two positions. Education requirement was a university diploma with one to two years experience. The next was a light duty cleaner and it was term of employment. Full time educational requirement was a university diploma experience one to two years. And that was the best western marquee in Prince, Alberta. So, I mean, these are real job postings that were posted. And you know, it's a little worrisome, you know, when you see that these are the job postings. So why do you need university diploma to be a housekeeper at a motel?

[24:53] Phil: Right? I mean, that's a good question. A couple, I mean, I have a couple questions. Is this, is this standard? Right. So we'd have to check out what the other competitors, how do they post the jobs? Are they doing the same thing? What's the explanation that's provided. I would agree with you. I don't, I don't see why you would need a university degree to be a housekeeper. And there's, but there's a lot of jobs where you, you would make the argument that you don't need a university degree. Right? So back in the, say, the sixties and seventies, most people didn't have university degrees. You took them out of high school and. And they were fine. Sometimes the university degree requirement is done just to eliminate. To sort of weed out the applications. But that's only a valid excuse if you end up hiring a Canadian for the job, right? If you've got. So if you get thousands and thousands of applications and you want a way to weed them out, then you make it a university degree and then you get down to a couple hundred and you can bypass it that way. I suspect that you're, that you're right. So they want to hire a temporary foreign worker and so they make it so that nobody is going to apply for it. Again, I'm, this is. I suspect. I say, I suspect. I don't have any proof.

[26:01] Russell: Yeah. Like, we're working. Maybe I should get, maybe I should get Kelly Osborne to spell it out for me here.

[26:12] Phil: We can see it. If you kick every latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet? Donald Trump? Oh, that's not in the sense that. No, you know what I mean? What I'm saying. There's more jobs to be in LA. They always. Donalds are.

[26:27] Russell: Not. Only.

[26:28] Phil: People mean it like that. Come on. No, I would never mean it like that. Okay. I'm not part of this argument with.

[26:33] Russell: I think what you're saying is, wow, yikes.

[26:37] Phil: Yeah, you, you gotta watch what you say. It's a. Everything's a landmine. So where was it gonna go? So, yeah, so, yeah, there's gonna be abuse of the system, right? Companies wanna keep wages down. Right. They wanna make as much money as possibly can. So one way to do that, keeping wages down, doing it, hiring, using the temporary foreign worker program to exclude Canadians in order to keep wages down, is abuse. The government should be looking out for this. Right. And how they should be doing this is through inspections. They should be through the approval process and through inspections. Do we have government employees who are trained well enough to look at something like that and know to ask the question you asked, why exactly do you need a university degree to be made? Do they, are they, do they care? Do they know? I don't know. And then round back and the inspections right. There should be a certain amount of inspections that happen. We go in, we check it out, we interview the workers or whatever the process is, and we find out why it is that the job description was written this way. This is not. This is nothing. This is not rocket science. Right. So private industry does the same thing for all kinds of process, like ISO 9000 processes. You go in, you review the processes, you compare them against the standards, and, you know, there are auditors and things like that. This is not. This is not something that the government should claim they don't know how to do.

[28:07] Russell: Well.

[28:07] Phil: I don't know what. I don't know what the fix is. Let me restate that. We know what the fix is. I don't know why the government's not doing well.

[28:13] Russell: I'll use an example. This is actually from someone I spoke to because, like I said, in preparation for this interview, I spoke to people that went through the TFW program that are currently still in the TFW program. Some of them have gone on to get their permanent residency. Now, canadian citizens in a couple of cases. But I was talking to one person who came from a south american country.

[28:39] Phil: Mm hmm.

[28:40] Russell: To Canada, because the labor market where they were at was terrible. They just. They just. They did not feel like they were going to be able to get any type of meaningful work in their areas. So they heard about Canada. They heard Canada was accepting people. They went online, they started applying. They were able to find work, and they got some of their money together from their family. They hired a lawyer, and basically a lawyer helped them with all the paperwork and person got to Canada. Now they were living in Toronto, which is very common. And they were basically told in Toronto that if you stay in Toronto, it's going to be a long time unless you have connections before you can get permanent residency. So they got ahold of this company and they said, like, I want to. I want my permanent residency and that sort of thing. So this company said, yeah, you got to pay us a bunch of money. So worked a bunch of work, paid a bunch of money, got some extensions on their work visa, that sort of thing. Got sponsored by a company. They brought them out to Saskatchewan, said, okay, you're going to start working at Tim Hortons in this city in Saskatchewan. On this date. We've arranged a place for you to stay for now. All this different stuff. Paid a bunch of money to a. To a lawyer, flew out to Saskatchewan while came to. Went to the house that they thought they were going to be staying at, knocked at the door person had no idea who the hell they were, no idea who they were, no idea with no idea what they were talking about. So then they went to the Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons said, we have no clue who you are. And so they were scammed out of a bunch of money, and they ended up working under the table for quite a while. So despite what people may think, there's still a pretty underground job market, cleaning hotel rooms under the table and also apparently, cleaning out at a big grocery store under the table. So after the grocery store closed, there's a lineup of people in the back. They'd show up, they'd be let in. They would do a bunch of cleaning around the store, and then they were given cash on the way out, and then eventually did end up getting sponsored by Tim Hortons, went through a process, got ahold of a different lawyer, and that put themselves into some debt, had to beg, borrow from. From family, friends back in the home country, and started working at Tim. Tim Hortons and was officially working again. So you have to remember, too, there's a bunch of people whose work visas have expired that are waiting for renewal or are waiting to leave Canada as well. So we have to remember that that's a group as well that has to be considered. And so eventually started working in Tim Hortons. Said while they worked at Tim Hortons, that quite frequently they were told that they couldn't take breaks, frequently were called in to work extra shifts. They were. Concerns about safety were ignored. So employees got assaulted by, like, homeless people, and they had to clean up needles in the bathroom. So one of the workers that was there, another person there on a temporary farm worker permit, was handling a garbage bag and got a needle in their hand. So they had to use special gloves to start picking up the garbage bags to throw them out. And then the homeless people there, they had to install special lights in the washrooms for people shooting up in that. And people would go in the washrooms and sleep, and they call the police, and after a while, the police say, well, we're busy. We'll come when we can. And so the workers, they would basically have to arm themselves with, like, broomsticks and, like, go in there and, like, chase the people out of there. So you got to remember, this person is, they're not a canadian citizen, and they're here, and they're dealing with our crime problem just as much as the canadian citizenry are. And, you know, they said that there is quite a bit of racial abuse that they faced as well. People telling them to go back to their own country, you know, can't you understand? I can't understand you. But, like, not in like a. Can you just repeat that? But, like, really rudely and snidely about it. And eventually they did get their, they did get their permanent resident, and they ended up. Now they're working, I think, in like the, I think they're working in for some, like, insurance company now making like, pretty good sum of money. And that. That's just one story. I got multiple different stories. I want to clog up the time here. But that's, that's actually from understand. That's a pretty typical story.

[33:34] Phil: Well, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. So. So they were brought in fraudulently or the story they were sold was fraudulent. That got them in now is that.

[33:47] Russell: They came to Canada. They came to. They came to Canada legitly on a work visa, but then we're trying to get their work visa switched to a different company.

[33:57] Phil: Oh, okay.

[33:57] Russell: Because they wanted to get their pr sooner, so they worked with this company in Toronto that basically ripped them off from a bunch of money.

[34:06] Phil: Okay. All right. So, yeah, I mean, obviously there are lots of stories of abuse. There's no doubt about that. And you're going to get that, I think, with, with temporary foreign workers, unfortunately. I mean, the UN just came out with a report that compared the TFW program to contemporary slavery. Right. Which I think is an exaggeration. Not that there isn't corruption, but it, again, we're back to the government, right? This is a government program. So what is the government doing? It's their responsibility to oversee this. So if somebody is abusing them, if there's fraud, what's the hotline? Is there a hotline? Is there some means of a TFW worker to report this? I don't know the answer to that. There should be. What's the inspection process? What's the government doing to make sure that some of these things are legit? I mean, you're going to have abuse of any system. Right. And there's going to be a certain amount of corruption. Nothing is perfect. It's just like saying crime. Right? We're not. We're never going to eliminate crime. So there's a certain amount of crime, but there's lack of a better term, an acceptable level. Right. So, and so this is where we are with the TFW program. Right. So if this is happening frequently, if the. I don't know what the percentage is, but what is the government doing? We have an immigration minister. Right. And so it seems to be the immigration minister, from what I've read. It's just immigrant. The comments are just, immigration is good. And yes, we need to fix it, but there doesn't seem to be any action plan. Right.

[35:39] Russell: So they do have an action plan, do they? Their action plan is to make the TFW program into a pathway to citizenship.

[35:51] Phil: Well, yeah. Okay. Well, that's. All right. So that's a path to citizenship, but it's not an action plan for fixing what's wrong with the process. Right. So you're bringing people over. There's abuse within the system. There's corruption. Sometimes industries are. Industry is using it incorrectly or abusing it. Right. So like we said earlier, creating job descriptions to purposely exclude Canadians so that you can keep the wages lower. These are all forms of abuse. So it's not sufficient for the immigration minister to say, well, we're trying to help these people get citizenship. What is your plan to fix this? What is your plan to. How does this relate to the economy? How does this relate to housing? I think one in three was. I think I saw a stat. One in three temporary foreign workers are in insufficient housing. Why do we have an immigration minister if none of this is being addressed? Or at the very least, there doesn't seem to be a plan? And I'm not trying to discount the story you told because I think you're right. There's probably a lot of these stories. What frustrates me is the government's not doing anything, so they're hiring all these government employees. There's bringing all these people in. We have a housing crisis, our gdp per capita is declining, and we don't get any answers from the government. Right. So it's all well and good. You and I have a conversation. We can't fix it. We can come up with ideas, but this isn't rocket science, right? This is just standard, standard intelligent questions to ask. Any average canadian could probably do a better job as immigration medicine than the current one if he or she was motivated to actually fix the problem, which I don't see happening. I mean, I'm sort of going on a train of thought rant here. I apologize. But I mean, what, what would you suggest? What would your suggestion for moving forward? I know you've got. You've obviously talked to a lot more people than I have. I'm curious what you would you think the fix is?

[37:57] Russell: Well, I mean, I think the fix is the TFW program for right now should be shut down. I think I think there's too much going on the system. I think the program needs to be shut down. It needs to be rebuilt, reevaluated from the ground up. People can say that, well, we can't get enough workers and that sort of thing. Well, that's really. That's a problem that we may need to solve internally. You know, you talked earlier, you know, like birth rates. Right. We need to look at, you know, birth rates and Canadians aren't having enough kids and stuff like that. Well, that's a problem that maybe we need to do a little bit more internal solving on. So why aren't Canadians having a kids? Well, number one, we have relentless propaganda saying that having kids is bad for the environment. It'll make you unhappy, blah, blah, blah. That's all done by our state propaganda stations. Well, number two, saying that we don't have enough people, so we need to bring in everyone else to Canada to help solve our problems for us. And that's what I think it is, is the idea that we can't solve our problems. So we're going to solve the problem by bringing other people here to solve that problem for us.

[39:14] Phil: Well, I mean, you could you. I think there's. There's probably ways to encourage higher birth rates, but that is not going to help us today. Right. So even if we were to suddenly 20 years. Yeah. We're looking at 20 year lead time. So there's no reason why we can't do both at the same time. Right. And I encourage larger families by whatever means, tax breaks or whatever. But that doesn't solve the problem now, which is the problem now is that we have for so long viewed immigration as a net good. Regardless. We didn't even talk about the purpose. Immigration is just good, and people nod their head and move on. Immigration needs to serve a purpose, and that's to help Canada. Right. Ideally, it helps the immigrants as well, and I think it does. But there needs to be a plan, an immigration plan in place that takes into account that immigration is not a standalone issue. Right. Immigration is affected by the housing crisis. It's impacted by the economy. I mean, if we've got, like, very high unemployment, which we have high unemployment. We have very high. But if for whatever reason, the unemployment rate would have rise to 10%, we don't want to bring people in. Right. Because they would just be coming in and they would have. No, they wouldn't have jobs now either. In fact, I was looking at the stats earlier today, and the unemployment rate for recent immigrants and temporary residents is actually twice that of people born in Canada. So we're bringing in people and then we don't have jobs for them. I mean, that speaks to a government that doesn't have a plan. Immigration is not something you just turn on. Right. There needs to be levers. There needs to be triggers. There needs to be monitoring that says, okay, we're not having enough or we have too much. And the government's policy seems to have been, we're going to bring in 500,000 people a year for the next six years, regardless of anything. There's no thinking. It's just, we've made a policy, and this is what we're going to do. No, that's not. I'm sorry, but that's not going to work.

[41:27] Russell: Well, it's going to work for them, because again, to me, it's just do whatever you want at any cost. That seems to be the mantra of this government, because we have a government that's obsessed with identity politics. It's obsessed with being as woke as possible, as globalized as possible. And so, I mean, what's more, what's more in line with that than open borders? What's like, and when I say open borders, I mean, like, not open borders as in, you know, immigration, but open borders as in we'll bring in 500,000 people without building a new hospital and without building new homes, without building new schools or anything like that. It's just, you know, it's playing off this dead corpse of what Canada used to be. Yes, Canada has been a very welcoming country for a very long time. And for probably about 30 years or so, I would say the immigration system tended to work pretty well in this country. And then it's like people got in power, people that think that we have to be as woke as possible. And I'm not letting the Harper government off the hook, either, on this. Well, because the TFW program was in full swing under Harper, and years and years ago, they were still complaining about, you know, abuses in the system. Now, were they taken more seriously, I mean, we would have to use the wayback machine and really kind of take a look at things, but it, it just seems like, you know, everything is just accelerated because the government we have takes every issue that's a left leaning in nature and just brings it to the ultimate maximum of what we can do with it.

[43:21] Phil: Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I don't know. I mean, politicians want to be employed, right? I mean, they want to win elections. So I don't know that. I don't think that's going to win them an election this time around?

[43:35] Russell: You don't?

[43:36] Phil: No, I don't. I mean, we've reached the point where, like I said, they've met, the Liberals have managed to do something that I think most of us would have thought was unthinkable. They've turned immigration, which was something Canadians were proud of, to something that is now a problem. Right. Two or three years ago, I actually wrote an article about immigration a year ago and I was being careful what I said. I didn't want to be accused of anything because it was still a very popular process and I was pointing out that it's not going in the right direction. It's going to cause problems. And it took less than, you know, it took less than a year for us to hit that. So, you know, yeah, the liberals are a one trick pony, right? Everything is getting out there and just talking about how they're fixing everything and not actually delivering. And I don't think that's going to work this time around. The question is. So even the question is what are they going to do to fix it? What's the government going to do to fix it? Because at some point the conservatives are going to win the election. Right. Probably the next time, given where the polls stand right now, what are they going to do? Are they going to actually fix it or not? And what would fixing it look like? Now, you said you think maybe the TfW needs to be shut down. Like I said, I can see it needs to be overhauled. I think there's still room for some. Like I said, the migrant farm worker or the temporary farm worker thing perhaps needs to be in place or needs to be kept in place. But I think immigration needs to be tied to other economic factors. Like, you know, the main one right now is housing. We don't have enough houses and we're bringing in 500,000 people. That doesn't make any sense at all. So we should, the government needs to figure out what are the jobs that we're short of and have immigration focus on that and then build and build houses. And once we have the, the whole housing crisis under control and the economy is good, we may potentially ramp up immigration again. But this just blindly turning it on and looking away is a recipe for disaster.

[45:44] Russell: Well, and talking about housing, I know cases where there's 15 people living in one house. So a house that's meant for one family has 15 people living in there. People are living on mattresses, things like that, and that's their living conditions. And that's acceptable. And from what I understand, talking to people that work in these industries, that quite often the employer is encouraging them to bunk up with other people to save on costs and things like that. So when we're talking about what's the incentive here, this is a collusion between the private sector and the government towards something that's unethical and is a way for the corporations to maximize profit with very little oversight. It's a collusion between two of them from predatory corporations. They're looking at bringing in people that they can pay as little as possible, they can hold that pr card over their head and they're not going to be monitored that hardly, hardly monitored by the government resources. And I'm not sure, I mean, I'm only speculating here, my opinion, perhaps there's some trade offs that come with that. So maybe there's some donations to political parties that happen and things like that. I'm sure that may be a factor that may contribute to that as well. You know, we can say the system's broken. Perhaps the system is actually working perfectly as intended by the recipients. Not for the people, not for you and me and not for the people that are being brought over here. I mean, I was looking at some YouTube videos where it's just flat out lying, you know, in India and other countries where people are saying, oh yeah, come to Canada. It's easy, you can get this, you can get that. Healthcare is free here. Like the videos are on YouTube. It's not that difficult to find a. So at the end of the day we can say the system's broken. I do think it's a broken system. Or maybe the system is working perfectly as intended.

[47:58] Phil: No, I mean, I don't think it's working as intended. I'm not saying that there isn't corruption. The problem we are faced with is that we need to rely on the government to do its job. And if the government is incompetent or corrupt, and I'm not going to say, which I think it happens to be at the moment, you're going to get situations like this right, where immigration is completely disassociated with reality. We need to make it, we the citizens need to make it an issue so that the next government comes in and fixes it. Right. If we don't care, if there's no penalty for doing this sort of thing, then it will continue to happen. If Canadians keep voting for, in this case the Liberals and we, and we as a, as a group or 40% of us, whatever percent needs to vote for them, for them to get elected. If 40% of them say we don't care, go ahead and abuse immigrants, then it'll continue. If we throw them out and it becomes clear why we threw them out of, then the next government will either learn that or they'll get thrown out when they don't fix things. And at some point politicians will learn that they have to listen to the voters. As it stands right now, a certain portion of the population, something like 65%, vote for the same party regardless. And I'm not picking on liberal voters here, too. There are people who vote conservatives regardless of what happens. There are people who vote NDP. Regardless of what happens to, you have to vote. You have to send a message with your vote. And sure, it's one vote and it's not a lot, but it's a democracy. It's got to matter. If it doesn't matter, then what are we doing here, right. And unfortunately, I think solving or coming up with a solution is a lot easier than getting the government to do it because we already know what the solution is.

[49:59] Russell: Well, I mean, there's some pressure that we can already, we can put already. So, for example, people are saying now that if there's businesses that employ tfws, that they won't shop there. That's really going to limit the number of businesses that they're going to be able to shop at. But that's, that's the private sector approach. Right. You know, the free market approach. I don't like the product. I don't like the way you treat the workers or the way you get workers to work there. So I'm just going to, I'm not going to shop there. I'll shop somewhere else. I'll find an alternative.

[50:33] Phil: Boycotts are a form of democracy. It's just an economic form of democracy. Yeah, by all means, yeah.

[50:38] Russell: And we are seeing some franchises that are, that are starting to really fail and high cost and things like that. But at the end of the day, we only have a few minutes left. So I don't want to get too down a rabbit hole on this. But at the end of the day, you're right. The conservative party will most likely win the next election if the polling is right. And as long as they don't, you know, screw themselves over, they are probably going to win the next election. And the only thing I can say about that, because there's been a lot of talk, the Conservatives are the unit party. They're not going to change anything. The conservative party in Canada should look at the UK very, very closely right now. If they get elected in and they just, and they do red Tory ism or they decide that they're going to just be liberal light and they're not going to take these issues seriously and it's just, you know, a change of color and, but the band still playing the same, they're going to get the UK treatment, I think. And there it'll, it'll be devastating.

[51:48] Phil: Right. I agree. The governments need to learn to listen to the voters or they will be thrown out because we saw the conservative party thrown out in Great Britain and we saw, I think, more of a centrist leftist government thrown out in France. So it's not a voters turning on the left or turning on the right, it's turning on the elite who aren't listening. Right. So at some point, like I said, politicians are self interested. Right. They all want to keep their jobs. At some point they will, some of them will learn. The ones that learn will be successful and the ones that don't will be thrown out of office. Just, it's unfortunately, democracy doesn't work quickly. Right. It just takes time.

[52:32] Russell: Yeah, no, I agree. And this government needs to get their, their heads out of their ass on this and they need to really, I don't know if they're even capable of coming up with the plan at this point. It really seems like they're completely lost in the weeds on what to do just about any, any issue that's being presented to them at this point. Speaker one.

[52:55] Phil: Yeah, I think it's writing off the liberals at this point is all you can do. They're not going to fix anything right now. They're just marking time as long as possible till the next election anyway. On that note, I guess.

[53:07] Russell: All right, well, listen, Phil, it's been great, the hours already flown by as they tend to do in these conversations. Chance here to plug your social medias, plug your sub stack and let us know your final thoughts. Any final thoughts you'd like to give, maybe something we touched on you wanted to build on or any final thoughts about this topic?

[53:29] Phil: The topic? No, I mean, I will obviously plug my site, hoist a black flag on Substack, would love to get more subscribers and more input. And I'll thank you once again for having me on because I think this sort of format, what you're doing is important. We need more people doing podcasts. We need more regular people talking out about politics, making it clear what we're willing to put up with and what issues we want to see corrected, so thank you again.