LPC's Immigration Disgrace

Mon Fucking Dieu

Last week, Randy Boissonault approved a request from the Government of Quebec for a six-month pause to a large proportion of the low-wage stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker program. Not everywhere in Quebec, however, just in Montreal. Just Montreal. Nowhere else, just Montreal.

In completely unrelated news there’s a byelection in a formerly safe Liberal seat in Montreal on September 16th that senior Liberals are shitting bricks about.

At some point this government will stop finding ways to debase themselves, right?

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I’ve seen a lot of cynical politics in my life and I’m even vaguely an advocate for doing cynical political things to win. I’m fine with Kamala Harris not doing many interviews and I’d absolutely advise a candidate up 5 to take the pain of skipping a debate over risking it. But this has to take some level of cake.

The Federal Liberals have allowed immigration levels to rise so high that they have completely and utterly destroyed the cross partisan consensus that immigration is a good thing. They have given unbelievable amounts of ammunition to bad actors to co-opt legitimate grievances for a genuinely racist agenda. They have added gas to the demand-side fire on housing years before we will see the material benefits of their positive supply-side reforms. And most damning of all, they have made it significantly easier for Pierre Poilievre to win the next election, which given they keep calling him every negative superlative under the planet, is quite an accomplishment.

The government’s failures on immigration aren’t wholly responsible for the housing crisis. Their decisions in the Majority years, to focus on demand side help for buyers and not supply side reforms, were hugely responsible. That said, the increase in numbers hasn’t helped, and it’s at a point where it’s not merely exacerbating a housing shortage, but hurting a weak economy. Youth unemployment is above 10%, wage growth hasn’t seen the robust growth in the bottom quartile that the US has seen since the pandemic, and unlike the US we’re cutting rates because the economy needs monetary stimulus, not because the economy could do better, as in the US.

Those facts in isolation are not cause to bring up the drawbridge, but there has been enough anecdotes, and a Bloomberg report, that back up the idea that stores are hiring TFWs to do retail and service jobs that would otherwise go to Canadians. We saw in the US what a tight labour market did to wages and benefits for the lowest paid in society - it genuinely changed life trajectories for the better. In Canada, the Liberals have disgracefully allowed TFWs to save companies from engaging in wage hikes to attract workers. 

This policy has failed Canadian workers. It has reduced potential wage growth, helped businesses at the expense of workers, and has boosted existent homeowners’ equity at the expense of those who don’t already own. It’s been a tool to help entrench power and money in the hands of those that already have. It’s shameful.

The honest truth is that the fundamental claim of the 2022 reforms was fraudulent. There wasn’t a labour shortage, there was a labour shortage at the prices the market was paying. Saying there’s a labour shortage is like saying there’s a buyer shortage for $300 TVs being sold for $3000. Yeah, no shit there’s a shortage. If there’s insufficient labour for the market, the market should increase the fucking pay. When we talk about immigration being necessary to do the “jobs we won’t do”, the actually useful modifier is “jobs we won’t do for dogshit pay.” But it’s a good thing we have the Liberals here to cut the wage bills of grocery chains and fast food restaurants, right? No way that they’ve still raised their prices in spite of all of these saved wages, is there?

Less importantly but more likely to be listened to is the political argument. Sean Fraser, who was the immigration minister who fucked this all up, reiterated to the public some willingness to reduce numbers in some ways, but it’s not enough to try and put in a hard cap. Justin Trudeau has now repeated some of the talking points, but Boissonault is also publicly disagreeing with Mike Moffatt’s calls for radical action so who the fuck knows. 

The TFW program needs to be radically slashed, in addition to more sizable caps on international students. The low-wage stream needs to be functionally eliminated, and it’s only that sort of radicalism that can cut through. But they can’t. In 2014 Jason Kenney’s reforms to the program (and a general slowdown in oil prices) saw a 45% reduction in successful applications from 2013 to 2015. The problem is, a House committee studied the program in 2016 and the Liberal majority wrote up a report calling for the rules to be loosened again and the application fee to be functionally reduced in half. Hell, I once wrote crap questions for my then-boss to ask at one of those hearings, and I watched Muhammad Ali’s funeral on TV with a bunch of Liberal staffers as they were waiting for the draft report to get emailed to them.

The actual rationale for any of this was two-fold; the Atlantic Caucus wanting anybody who wants to move to Atlantic Canada to be let in, and Jason Kenney did it so it's bad. Now the Liberals are paying the price by letting Jason Kenney and John Baird’s protege into Rideau Cottage. If that angers people as much as their braying Twitter antics claim, then we should be really fucking mad at the government that has created these conditions. The Conservatives didn’t pop out to a nearly 20% lead by accident. Canada hasn’t been swept up in a mass fever for Poilievre’s bold policy vision, because there’s barely any policy announced. It’s all verb the noun, and yet, they’re cruising to a landslide. The Liberals have utterly failed.

Their failures on immigration are the worst kind of failure, however. Liberal failures on immigration have hurt the economy, exacerbated the housing crisis, hurt societal cohesion, and ensured Prime Minister Poilievre. Now it’s time to slash the numbers, fire Marc Miller, and enact the reforms you’re willing to give Montreal to try and win a fucking byelection everywhere. If it’s good enough for fucking LaSalle, it’s good enough for the rest of the fucking country. And let the Liberals’ Montreal exemption stand as this government’s most shameful act - a willingness to betray everything it ever stood for, solely for naked political gain.

Fuck this party makes it hard to not hate them.