1684 replies to this topic

[Mike K.]

Is the labour market simply not responding to a lack of willing workers?

Matt tells us he cannot find a dishwasher, with meals, and benefits, for $26/hour.

[Victoria Watcher]

Is the labour market simply not responding to a lack of willing workers?

Matt tells us he cannot find a dishwasher, with meals, and benefits, for $26/hour.

 

SSI might be a bit of a unique labour market.

[lanforod]

Yeah, Matt's a unique case. No transit options (BCF does not count!), few residence options close by, generally still a high cost of living.

[Victoria Watcher]

They have 8 bus routes!

https://www.bctransi...-spring-island/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 26 August 2025 - 02:33 PM.

[Mike K.]

I think that sentiment is echoed across the entire industry locally, no?

Our high schools are over flowing, the number of restaurants is way down, but the service industry cannot find labour. Does that not tell us that young people are choosing not to work?

[Matt R.]

Yeah, Matt's a unique case. No transit options (BCF does not count!), few residence options close by, generally still a high cost of living.

There is a bus to my doorstep.

It’s a super weird demo, we work on convincing the local kids to get a job and stay until they graduate, then come back May to Sept. Fewer and fewer of them apply over these last few summers, I am basically the man yelling at clouds about it.

I am also puzzled where all these tfw’s are going, all I hear is how much harder it is now to get in. I have two contracts signed with tfw’s, one ghosted us, probably due to the 24 month delay, and another with a cook who actually left us for greener pastures in Saskatchewan and would like to come back, but he needs a new LMIA even though his name is on a contract with us. New work permits under the express entry program come with a 1 year max, used to be 2.

The points requirement in BC is such that these guys often cannot qualify for PR invite here.

Edited by Matt R., 26 August 2025 - 09:33 PM.

[Matt R.]

I think that sentiment is echoed across the entire industry locally, no?

Our high schools are over flowing, the number of restaurants is way down, but the service industry cannot find labour. Does that not tell us that young people are choosing not to work?

Now who’s the old man yelling at clouds. However, it’s true. I have hired a lot of youth who are content with their lot in life, barely subsisting, happy to chill in the park all day long. Maybe not a bad lifestyle? Poverty sure wasn’t my jam, but to each their own.

[lanforod]

sounds like a better bus system than Victoria

[Matt R.]

I think SSI is lucky to have the bus system we do. Mainly they service the ferry terminals and pass through town, and a summer run out to Ruckle Park as well.

[Mike K.]

It’s relatively new, right?

[Matt R.]

I think so, it’s been here as long as I have. 13 years.

[LJ]

Dan Knight

@DanKnightMMA

Pierre Poilievre said the quiet part out loud: businesses in Canada don’t need Temporary Foreign Workers—they just want them, because they’ll work for less. That’s it. No mystery. No labor shortage. Just greed. And the Liberals, under Mark Carney, are happy to oblige. So here’s the story. Booster Juice—advertises a job paying $36 an hour. Not bad for blending fruit. And who do they say it’s for? A Temporary Foreign Worker. Not a Canadian kid trying to pay tuition. Not a young person stuck at home because rent is unaffordable. Nope. A foreign worker. Are we really supposed to believe no Canadian teenager would pour frozen strawberries into a blender for thirty-six bucks an hour? Please. That’s more than most trades apprentices make. But under Mark Carney’s Liberals, Canadian youth don’t even get the chance. They’re cut out by design. And that’s the point. This isn’t about “labor shortages.” That’s the line the media repeats while nodding obediently. The truth is simpler: corporations don’t want to pay Canadians a fair wage, so the Liberals hand them a pipeline of cheap, desperate labor from abroad. It’s exploitation dressed up as policy. And the Liberal elites love it. Carney, Trudeau’s banker-turned-prime-minister, promised to be different. He’s worse. In just six months, he’s blown past his own cap on TFW permits—105,000 already issued. Keep that up, and Canada will import over 200,000 low-wage workers this year. Meanwhile, youth unemployment is 14.6%—the highest since the late 1990s. If you were trying to design a system to crush Canadian kids, you couldn’t do better. But don’t worry. Carney will tell you this is all very sophisticated. Globalization. Free markets. Necessary labor mobility. The kind of word salad elites recite while your rent doubles and your job disappears. The reality? It’s a scam. A scam for corporations, by corporations, with Liberals in Ottawa playing concierge. Poilievre called it what it is: scrap the program. Canadian jobs for Canadian workers. Period. Because if a Booster Juice gig at $36 an hour is “unfit” for a Canadian student, then nothing is. And the fact they said it out loud tells you everything about the contempt these people have for their own citizens. They don’t even bother to hide it anymore.

[lanforod]

I think there is a place for TFWs but the youth unemployment issue is a big problem and really needs to be fixed

[Mike K.]

Eby has now said the TFW program is a disaster for BC.

I popped into a McDonald’s on the weekend. I think I counted nine staff, eight of whom were older TFWs, one was a young teen. In the 90s, the entire place would have been staffed by teens, and an older manager.

Also, I stood for over five minutes at the counter waiting for a human to approach to take my order. In that time, Skip drivers came and went. I felt like a Luddite standing at the till, lol.

[Mike K.]

Also, another aspect to TFWs is they overwhelmingly send earnings abroad, impacting the local economy by removing those wages from recirculating back into the economy.

At a construction site at a District of Saanich property the other day, an entire work crew looked to be Mexican or Central American TFWs. They all spoke Spanish as they walked off the job site in a large group. This is a fairly new phenomenon for Victoria, at most a decade, but I feel like I didn’t really see TFWs at construction sites until just 3-4 years ago.

[Barrister]

Ebby seems to be moving a bit to the right when it comes to this issue. Suspect that he sees the economy slowing as tariffs start to show their first impacts. 

[Mike K.]

The tariffs haven’t done anything.

It’s a convenient ruse to cover for the incredible mismanagement of the Canadian economy and provincial economies. You really think a tariff on steel is imploding the BC economy? C’mon, man.

[Barrister]

MikeK, I agree that there is horrible mismanagement but in addition tariffs will start to take a bite out of lumber and some of our smaller manufactures. But you are absolutely right that they will be blamed for everything that is badly wrong.

[Mike K.]

The gig is up, because initially it was touted by Canada that the US was harming itself, and damaging its economy by tariffing Canada.

Today, the US economy is on fire.

We are in such economic trouble, and it’s heartbreaking to see how fragile Canada’s economy has become over the last decade. But only Toronto matters in our politics, so whatever Toronto wants politically, it gets. So here we are.

[Victoria Watcher]

We are in such economic trouble, and it’s heartbreaking to see how fragile Canada’s economy has become over the last decade. But only Toronto matters in our politics, so whatever Toronto wants politically, it gets. So here we are.

 

Not even Ottawa.  The cabinet is meeting in Toronto this week.

 

 

 

Carney’s itinerary says he’s planning to make an announcement about Canada’s “strategic sectors” at 11:00 a.m. ET.

 

https://ottawa.cityn...abinet-retreat/

 

 

On Thursday, Carney and his cabinet concluded their retreat at a hotel in Toronto’s North York area after two days of discussions about fast-tracking large projects and providing help to sectors suffering under heavy U.S. tariffs.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 05 September 2025 - 06:48 AM.