Again and again, companies misuse and abuse the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program, leaving Canadian workers on the outside looking in while their jobs are given to lower paid and often lower skilled foreign workers. In nearly every case, there are skilled Canadians available to do the work, but instead these contractors choose to turn to lower cost temporary foreign workers to do the work.

Canadian workers have the skills to do the bulk of the work at this battery plant. Yet, with the TFW Program, the government has allowed a system that disadvantages Canadian workers and lets employers manipulate the process, all in order to save money, drive up corporate profits and provide ever increasing dividends to their shareholders.

The TFW Program has driven down wages and undercut hard-working Canadians trying to keep up with the cost of living – while also underpaying foreign workers. Instead of ensuring that the public dollars committed to these projects are used to provide construction jobs to Canadian workers, including women and Indigenous workers, who are traditionally underrepresented in construction, this government appears to have caved to international corporations who play off one government against another, seeking the richest public trough possible.

Significant public dollars have gone to securing the EV battery plant in Ontario, and companies have lined up to build a battery plant in BC, also using our tax dollars. Canadians demand that these investments be tied to creating employment, training, and apprenticeship opportunities for Canadians. Our tax dollars shouldn’t be used unless jobs are tied to them.

Put simply, there isn’t a project in Canada that our skilled trades workforce can’t build. Governments must ensure that local, qualified, skilled ironworkers are employed on this job in Windsor and on similar job sites across the country.