In recent years, institutional measures at both the federal and provincial government levels have been geared towards a clear direction in favour of temporary migration in Canada. The increased use of temporary migrant workers is now a major trend in Canadian migration policies, as is the case in many Western countries. For approximately two decades, the expansion of temporary foreign worker programmes (TFWPs) as well as the multiplication of entry routes into Canada and Quebec have had the effect of reorientating certain fundamental principles regarding migration in the country. 2006 was a turning point. That year, the number of temporary migrant workers admitted to Canada exceeded the number of those present under permanent status. Even if historically, Canada has been among the countries with the most significant level of permanent immigration, new statistics reflect a specific orientation and vision regarding migration policy in this specific context.
But what does this imply in terms of fundamental principles? If there had been hope for a migration model that would allow each migrant worker to be recognised as a future Canadian citizen, the current migration system, which above all has been linked to economic needs, has cast a heavy shadow on this hope. Structural disequilibrium is not eschewed but embraced.
In my current role within a union organisation, I am required to visit our local sections and meet migrant workers who are increasingly arriving in Canada through the TFWP. My fieldwork allows me to observe that these individuals come to Canada with a temporary status, an employer-specific permit, but with a long-term project. This is why, as union officials, we find that our analysis leads to an urgent need to rethink the migratory process beyond work.
In recent years, there has been a significant militant movement in Quebec and Canada aimed at voicing out against the injustice and abuse that have resulted from the TFWP. We have observed migrant workers’ agency: many of them have played an active part in defending their rights and contributing to awareness campaigns that have highlighted these workers’ hard conditions: precariousness, discrimination at work, and in some cases, enactments of racism.
These issues raise concerns and new questions for union organisations. Unions will have to adjust their practices to new realities and learn more from real-life experiences that will allow them to rethink their ideational posture regarding justice and solidarity. Our objective is not to allow the percolation of differentiated categories of workers in our membership, and inclusive solidarity will have to be at the heart of our union work and renewal agenda.
From a union perspective, so-called temporary work calls for a revision of its premise: temporary as a status and work condition. While the migration status of a group of foreign workers is classified as temporary, these workers come to Canada to fill permanent work. Labour shortage is currently decried in Quebec and Canada; this is fertile ground to question the rationales that hinder more access to permanent residency for these migrant workers. TFWPs imply that workers are separated from their families – temporarily, but for those filling less qualified occupations, for a long time. In fact, whether to render family members eligible to join the individual worker in Canada remains an ongoing debate and an unresolved case at different government levels. Whenever improvement in this respect is announced, selective eligibility persists; only workers belonging to some occupation groups may henceforth have the privilege of bringing their families more rapidly to Canada. How these occupation groups and their respective values are institutionally defined, and whether such categorising is devoid of unconscious bias, has been questioned by academic research.
With a closer lens on the phenomenon, we observe a series of diversions. To start with, the TFWP seems to be serving a purpose that distances it from its essence and definition. It has generated a permanent situation of precariousness for a specific group of individuals who continue to arrive, join others or replace each other within Canadian society. In a similar vein, economic migration endeavours are subordinate to companies’ economic objectives, which in turn reduce social protections that, in some cases, were guarantees of health and safety and other social benefits for migrant workers. The availability of an external pool of workers has significantly altered employment supply mechanisms. In our union organisation, our analysis is based on fieldwork and visits where we observe a circular movement in the labour market: less qualified workers are granted temporary status; more qualified workers are carefully selected in view of employee retention, and this is supplemented with variegated and punctual use of asylum seekers as ‘back-up’ labour. The problem is that the phenomenon I describe here is, to date, underpinned by government institutions in Canada and its provinces and economically managed by Canadian employers. In other words, Canada is nurturing work and employment regimes that are systemically discriminatory, while tailor-made programmes for temporary migration persist as an economic solution. The phenomenon will have to constitute a core debate within Canadian society that is witnessing the legitimacy of industrial relations that are failing to maintain an individual’s fundamental rights as the social justice threshold.
In sum, our challenges as union organisations will pertain to constantly redefining our practices and actions in favour of inclusive solidarity and equal rights for all. The democratic principle will require recurring reinforcement based on new societal content and new consequences. This will not only require more activist and institutional work, but also the assertion of a legitimacy principle. To us unionists, this principle can only be that of the rule of fundamental rights above all. This is the only way through which we will be able to build stronger work and employment institutions for all in Canada.
Mouloud Idir is a union official at the Syndicat des Métallos. His current role focuses exclusively on the temporary migration question in the Quebec labour market.
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