For several weeks, immigrants and foreign workers have been regularly discussed in the media. I was also struck by Rima Elkouri’s text published recently1.
I am a 47-year-old entrepreneur who owns three manufacturing companies located in Laval, Belœil and Victoriaville, which have several dozen foreign workers in their ranks, out of a total of 260 employees.
On August 20, François Legault stated in an interview that he knew the entrepreneurs well and that they were looking for cheap labour. The unionization rate in Quebec is over 40%, employers must apply collective agreements, regardless of the employee’s origin and nationality. This is not at all what I call cheap labour.
On the federal side, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently said: “To those who complain about the labour shortage, there is no better time to invest and hire Canadian workers.”
Such remarks offend me to the highest degree and are completely disconnected from our reality. I confirm to you that it is impossible to find Canadian workers, otherwise, we would have already done it!
We had to hire a qualified manager who speaks three languages to manage and supervise our foreign workers: transportation, permits, housing, bureaucracy, etc. It takes a lot of time! It is certainly less expensive to recruit Quebec workers and, believe me, much less complicated, as long as you still have to find them.
French classes cancelled
And to make matters worse, due to an absurd budgetary impasse at the Quebec Ministry of Education, hundreds of immigrants registered for French language courses have seen their return to school cancelled! Several of our employees who believed they would be able to continue their language learning have been denied access to school due to a lack of places.
On the one hand, we ask them to integrate and learn our culture and language, but on the other hand, we are unable to offer them this service! When you think about it, the only real use of our government is to provide French lessons, because everything else falls on the shoulders of the employer, whether in terms of cost, risk management, organization or time. We have to find them housing, provide them with transportation and fill out the administrative paperwork. These are certainly not the reasons why I went into business…
From the moment the government knows the needs in terms of francization, it should be able to meet them. To top it all off, my foreign workers affected by these measures received a letter from their school board that began with: “We hope this letter finds you in good health and good spirits”…
Quebec is not at all in good health or in a good mood! We are rather worried about the inaction of our governments.
1. Read the column “Caring for our immigrants”