Kenney’s deft clampdown
Set against the backdrop of disasters and bungles perpetrated by the PMO on itself over the past two years, the employment minister’s move on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program looks positively brilliant.
The fact that some voices on the right in Alberta are raised in outrage won’t hurt the Tories in vote-rich Ontario, in particular. If anything, it’ll help them. Michael Den Tandt
Jason Kenney’s overhaul of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program was a deft, decisive, politically savvy move in a government not known, any longer, for such responsiveness. At one stroke the employment minister has lanced a boil that could have done the Conservatives much harm in the 2015 election. He has also further burnished his reputation as Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s go-to minister and, by extension, his hopes of one day succeeding his boss as Conservative leader.
The initial response to Kenney’s announcement last Friday, made in tandem with Immigration Min-
Set against the backdrop of disasters and bungles … it looks positively brilliant.
ister Chris Alexander, has been mostly negative, it would be fair to say. Kenney has been accused of smashing a fly with a sledgehammer, of applying piecemeal fixes, and generally of flying by the seat of his pants, in response to negative headlines. It’s fair to ask: Where have the Conservatives been on this file since 2006 when, according to reporting by the CBC, the first of many complaints about abuse of the TFW program began to emerge? Must the wheel always squeak before it gets the grease?
Having said that, this move is politically very clever, indeed. Set against the backdrop of disasters and bungles perpetrated by the Prime Minister’s Office on itself over the past two years, it looks positively brilliant.
Consider the sources of criti- cism of Kenney’s crackdown on the use of temporary foreign workers, which amounts to a phasing out of the program in its current form, in the food-service and hospitality industries over the next couple of years. Not surprisingly, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business is appalled. The Alberta Hotel and Lodging Association is upset. Alberta Tory leadership candidates Jim Prentice and Thomas Lukaszuk are displeased and offering their own remedies. But the Alberta Federation of Labour is supportive, the Edmonton Journal reports.
In other words, the very constituencies one would normally expect to be solidly in the Conservatives’ corner are coming out against them on this file. And groups normally unfriendly to the Tories are pleased. And why wouldn’t they be? In effect, Kenney has just boosted Alberta’s minimum wage. As he himself has said, fast-food operators short on staff because of the paucity of foreign labour will now have to offer better wages, benefits and working conditions to attract Canadian workers. High school kids in northern Alberta just became a hot commodity.
But now, let’s consider where that bloc of unhappy Alberta probusiness-owner votes is likely to go. The New Democrats? Um, no. The Liberals? Not them, either. Though Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have positioned themselves rightward of the NDP in several policy areas, this isn’t one of them. Income inequality, the expansion of low-wage service-industry jobs versus well-paying “middleclass” jobs, and the exploitation of foreign workers, are key battlegrounds for the Liberals, where they hope to differentiate themselves from the Tories. There’s no Reform party for disgruntled Conservatives to defect to; Alberta’s Wildrose party is provincial only.
That leaves Alberta business owners with bupkis in terms of alternatives. Whatever influence the wealthy few once had over the Conservative party is now history, because of campaign-finance limits. It’s not at all clear yet that Kenney’s move won’t win as many votes, among ordinary Albertans, as it costs among the business elite.
In an interview Tuesday with the National Post’s editorial board, he said as much. “Of course a few thousand business owners in Alberta will be upset that they will have to work harder to staff operations, but I am very confident that most people in Alberta will understand.”
In Ontario, in Quebec and the Maritimes, meantime, the clampdown is all gain, no pain. Columnists at the Toronto Star may rail that Kenney’s reform doesn’t go far enough. But most Canadians in the East, where economies are much softer than Alberta’s, and therefore less reliant on the TFW program, will take away from this simply that the Conservatives are forcing McDonald’s and other big food-service chains to offer better wages for work that is difficult, dull and poorly paid. The fact that some voices on the right in Alberta are raised in outrage won’t hurt the Tories in vote-rich Ontario, in particular. If anything, it’ll help them.
Meantime, the Liberals and NDP have lost an excellent club with which both parties would have beaten the Harper government soundly about the head and neck heading into the 2015 election, had the status quo remained in place. As a final touch, Kenney’s move can’t even really be called a climbdown; while under fire in the House of Commons since this story broke in April he has always avoided defending the program, saying instead that those who abuse it would be punished.
Alongside Foreign Minister John Baird, Transport Minister Lisa Raitt and Industry Minister James Moore, Kenney has long been considered one of the Harper government’s stars. This manoeuvre, following his reforms to the refugee system while sharply increasing his party’s share of the immigrant vote, begins to put him in a class of his own.