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The restaurant industry in BC is sounding the alarm overcoming changes to the temporary foreign worker program it says will only drive prices higher.Here is Global BC's legislative reporter Richard Zussman reporting on the story.
There's a program seen as a lifeline during the pandemic.Helping hire entry wage positions under the temporary foreign workers program to support British Columbia's restaurant sector.
Now changes to that same program could be the final nail in the coffin.
The rug is being pulled out from underneath us.
British expat Lewis Hart owns Laue in Vancouver's Chinatown.He's pleading with the federal government to reconsider those changes.
The current low-wage program, around $20 an hour, is disappearing, meaning foreign workers are only eligible in the sector under a higher-wage program.Starting next week, that wage goes up to just below $36 per hour.
Anyone wanting to keep their staff is going to see an immediate jump of over 50 percent in their labor cost.And once one person is employed at thirty six dollars an hour the rest of the industry will see that as the median income.
The alternative is to send those in-demand workers home, putting an added strain on the sector.The change will also impact the customer under what's known as the hamburger index.
When the wage for a kitchen worker was $10 an hour, a hamburger on the menu was about $10.Rising to $15 an hour, then $20 an hour, and now worries a wage of more than $35 an hour could see hamburger prices to match.
To spike that to $36 an hour because of policymaking, that is going to be passed on to the consumer.Otherwise, we're going to be facing bankruptcies.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the changes are coming to protect Canadian jobs, but also because pressure is being applied by immigration to things like housing and health care service delivery.
But the restaurant sector says it's being scapegoated.A slice and dicing that once again has the industry itself on the cutting board.Richard Wilson with Global News, Victoria.
That is GlobalBC's Richard Dustman.Reporting there in regards to the changes in wages that are coming soon.Joining me now to talk a little bit about this is Ian Tostenson, President and CEO of the BC Restaurant and Food Services Association.
Good afternoon, Ian.Hey, Jess.That was a really good report.They really put it in perspective.What are you hearing from your members?Is there any, I guess, sympathy from government or potentially changing this before it comes in?
We can't see that, and you know, it's almost like they need to find a way out to save face here.
And I think the important part is there's a misconception that the jobs in our industry are like, people phone me up and say, oh, these are low-paid wages and you're taking advantage of people.That's not what's happening here.
These are $20 an hour plus tip jobs. competitively paid, paid most in retail and stuff.So this is not a low-wage bring-em-in-and-replace Canadians because we do not have
Canadians to fill these jobs, and that's always been the criteria of this program, is that you need to go through six weeks of proving to the federal government that there are no Canadians that are able to take these jobs or willing to take these jobs.
We're talking about cooks and chefs here.So if you go to the culinary schools throughout the lower mainland, their enrollment for domestic students is just almost non-existent.We're short 20,000 people. in cooks and chefs in the province.
So that's the big problem here.I mean, if we could hire Canadians that wanted to develop careers in kitchens, that's your first choice.
Because bringing in a foreign worker, and I refer to them as skilled foreign workers, it's a process that takes about a year, and it's not inexpensive.It's on the cost of the employer. And it's a long time to wait.To your question, I don't know.
This is all politics.This is all about, it sounds good, housing, health care.Don't blame it on the immigrants.We're talking such a small percentage of the population of Canada are immigration.
And the fact of the matter is, is in our case, in other industries, that we just don't have the Canadians to fill the jobs.
So just to confirm here, the changes would bar low wage temporary foreign workers in regions with an unemployment rate over 6%.Is that correct?
Yeah.So over 6%, which in a lot of regions in BC are that right now, the workers are only able to come in now for one year versus two years. And it can only be 10% of your workforce.So they really put a lot of restrictions on this.
And they haven't sat down with the industry and said, you know, what is it we can do here?Because we are going to have immigration.So how do we tailor this that it's responsible immigration and it meets the needs of the hospitality industry.
I think it meets the needs, frankly, of the politics, the retail politics, and I think it's very vested in Ontario.And unfortunately, we've got
Probably 20 large organizations in Canada trying to get the attention of the federal government on this one.They don't seem willing to budge.
So someone listening to you right now says, wait a minute here, my son or daughter, teenagers in their early 20s, trying to find work, they can't find anything.We got too much immigration, too many temporary foreign workers.
You're telling me that that's the issue.You're looking for sort of native-born Canadians, you'd love to hire more people, that you have the jobs for them at this point?
Yeah, absolutely.We said to the government, you know, give us some time here.I mean, if you're going to say the Prime Minister is saying hire Canadians.
let absolutes do that but you're going to have to help us you know recruit and train those canadians to get them into our industry we're not talking here about the the retail staff of a restaurant where you know your your your servers and your friend and stuff we're talking the skilled cooks and chefs and it goes a little bit even further because we don't train a lot of asian cooking here or south asian cooking here uh... you know all that specialty stuff and about forty percent of our industry
plus now, and it's going to even continue, is going to be a very strong ethnic mix.
And, you know, to think that we're going to fix, we're going to fill our industry with all this extraordinary, ubiquitous, different types of restaurants with people trained at Vancouver Community College is not real.It just is not real.
But we have to do it in a way that's responsible.And so We're in a real pickle.We've got businesses up in Worcester that are saying they probably have to close because they just don't have the cooks and chefs to manage the restaurants.And it is not.
And I had a gentleman call me and said, you know what, that person that serves my food at Tim Horton's, when I go to drive-thru, I'm tired of you know, cheap foreign labor coming into Canada taking jobs.
I said to him, I said, I can guarantee you she's a Canadian citizen.Her parents are Canadian citizens.She's 16 years old and she's not a cheap foreign worker.She's working because she's being industrious.
So that makes me sick because we can't go down those roads.That is a dangerous road to go.Being that immigration has always been such a part of the Canadian culture.
And I get your argument, but the federal government has done such a poor job the last couple of years in regards to opening the doors to too many people coming into this country, which has caused obviously huge challenges in our housing sector.
Add to that the rise of Trump once again and wanting to deport people.
There is a general sort of nativist pro-Canada, pro-US, anti-immigrant mindset out there that Trudeau perhaps is addressing or trying to address with these kind of temporary foreign worker policies that may hurt your industry, may hurt Canada over the short or medium term.
But it is, as you say, politics that you actually need to be seen doing this.
Yeah, I totally agree with that.I mean, B.C.'s labor forecast is a million jobs in the next 10 years, and it's identified that 30% will have to come from immigration.The question is what kind of immigration.There's 6,000 workers right now in B.C.
in our sector out of 180,000 that are here on work permits, and when they expire, they're being sent home.And what would normally happen is that they would apply for their Canadian immigration and assimilate into Canadian citizenship.
and that's another big problem so we we have a shortage already that we can't fill and now we have uh... you know six thousand people potentially have to go back
so it's uh... but i hear you saying but i i think you know i think it needs to have the problem is you know because you're in the business you're trying to get people understand honest communication is that people don't understand that you know they say all these are cheap workers are not cheap workers and they're not here to to to replace canadian workers and i think we have to educate and i and i'm all for it i don't think we should just be opening our borders i mean we had uh... refugees in canada what we actually did try
about five years ago.I think you were in government then, Jaz, when we were trying to train refugees in our kitchens and it didn't work because they didn't have the language skills and they didn't have the technical skills and we tried.
I'm involved in a project in the downtown Eastside where we take people off the streets and train them with culinary schools and we get them in restaurants.So we are trying to do that and that's life-changing, that stuff.
And we've done that 1,500 times in, I don't know, 15 years.We have culinary society.
and so we're trying to do as much as we can domestically so i feel very passionate when we say they don't exist they don't exist in canada and i think that we we can't just have it you know just give us an exemption let us carry on here i think there has to be strict strategy around this and and optics around this the public understand what we're doing but when you see a foreign worker in a kitchen in in british columbia they're making
a decent wage like everybody else and they are industrious and they're an incredible important part of our industry.
The new wage rates, they're into effect as of today?
November, that's right, yeah, November 8th, is it the 8th today?Yeah, today.So 36, you know, if you want, in this now high wage, it's $36 an hour, which is $72,000 a year.Like you can't run a restaurant in that.It's not built that way.
Yeah, so it's kicked in now.
So if you're going to bring in a temporary foreign worker where there's unemployment rate of 6% or higher in BC, whatever region you're in, you will now have to pay $36 per hour plus tips, I'm guessing.
Yeah.Well, that's right.And if you do that and your jazz is working, my restaurant making 25 bucks an hour, you're going to go, excuse me, boss, but, uh, you know, I've been here longer.I want to raise.And it just, so it's not workable.
I mean, I don't, I don't think very few people have any will even take that opportunity.
Well, it's going to be very interesting as, uh, as this, uh, program kicks in and what it does to the restaurant sector.Do stay in touch on this one.I think it's really important.Thanks so much.You can have yourself a wonderful weekend.
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