Paul Fromm is Back With "THE FIGHTING SIDE OF ME" Radio Show

Written by Paul Fromm

Thursday, 09 May 2013 15:30

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This email newsletter was sent to you in graphical HTML format. If you're seeing this version, your email program prefers plain text emails. You can read the original version online: http://ymlp332.net/zW1Gsn -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Fromm is Back With "THE FIGHTING SIDE OF ME" Radio Show starting today at 6:00 pm EST. Listen at themicroeffect.com ( http://themicroeffect.com/ ) "ALTERNATIVE NEWS FOR ALTERNATIVE THINKERS" TODAY: Amnesty Bill Before the Senate Israel Aggression Against Syria Temporary Workers Permit Scams in Canada _____________________________ Unsubscribe / Change Profile: http://ymlp332.net/ugmjhqsqgsgbbqgwwqgguewwmw Powered by YourMailingListProvider

 

Beware Jason Kenney's Cosmetic Reforms of the Temporary Workers Visa Programme

Written by Paul Fromm

Thursday, 09 May 2013 06:20

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This email newsletter was sent to you in graphical HTML format. If you're seeing this version, your email program prefers plain text emails. You can read the original version online: http://ymlp328.net/zms8Xh -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Beware Jason Kenney's Cosmetic Reforms of the Temporary Workers Visa Programme After months of controversy, the Canadian Government has moved to "reform" the Temporary Workers Visa programme that exists, allegedly, to address a critical skills shortage in Canada. This mantra about an alleged skills shortage has been repeated over and over until, at least in much of the media, it has become received wisdom, Our dumbed down population, brain battered with media that frequently just repeats the nonsense of the immigration lobby, has not been encouraged to consider almost intractable unemployment -- now at 7.3% officially, or about 1.4-million Canadians. Are these all unskilled dimwits? Then, one looks at the jobs where "skilled" workers cannot be found -- Tim Horton's, various fast food jobs. Then, of course, there was the scandal of IT workers at the Royal Bank having to train their foreign replacements as their jobs were about to be shipped overseas. In less than a decade during high unemployment the number of temporary workers visas has soared from 150,000 in 2007 to over 400,000 currently. As reported on the Canadian Government website -- http://actionplan.gc.ca ( http://actionplan.gc.ca/ ) , On April 29, cosmetic reforms were introduced: "The Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, and the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, today announced reforms to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). “Canada is experiencing significant skills shortages in many sectors and regions, and Canadians must always have first crack at job opportunities when they become available,” said Minister Finley. “The purpose of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program is to help fill genuine and acute labour needs and we have been reviewing the program to ensure that goal is met and Canadian workers are never displaced.” “These reforms will require that greater efforts be made to recruit and train Canadians to fill available jobs,” said Minister Kenney. “They will also help ensure the Temporary Foreign Worker Program is only used as intended—to fill acute skills shortages on a temporary basis.” Stemming from the ongoing review of the TFWP, and as announced in Canada’s Economic Action Plan 2013, the Government is introducing legislative, regulatory and administrative changes that will: * effective immediately, require employers to pay temporary foreign workers at the prevailing wage by removing the existing wage flexibility; * effective immediately, temporarily suspend the Accelerated Labour Market Opinion process; * increase the Government’s authority to suspend and revoke work permits and Labour Market Opinions (LMOs) if the program is being misused; * add questions to employer LMO applications to ensure that the TFWP is not used to facilitate the outsourcing of Canadian jobs; * ensure employers who rely on temporary foreign workers have a firm plan in place to transition to a Canadian workforce over time through the LMO process; * introduce fees for employers for the processing of LMOs and increase the fees for work permits so that the taxpayers are no longer subsidizing the costs; and * identify English and French as the only languages that can be used as a job requirement. The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and other primary agricultural occupations will be subject to the reform that will increase the Government’s authority to suspend and revoke work permits and LMOs if they are being misused. However, they will be unaffected by the remaining reforms, as there are proven acute labour shortages in this industry and the unfilled jobs are truly temporary." It sounds impressive, but wait? What resources will be directed to enforcement? "A firm plan to transition to a Canadian workforce" sounds good, but what will be done to companies that don't implement their plan. A plan is just a plan: It might look good on paper. Jim Sanford notes in the Globe and Mail (April 30, 2013): "But those promises won’t be worth the paper they are printed on. Federal bureaucrats have no concrete basis on which to judge whether training or recruitment promises are realistic or not, let alone have power to meaningfully enforce them. So long as access to migrant labour remains open, companies can always come back complaining about 'shortages.' Even today, the so-called Labour Market Opinions which must be issued before employers can tap the program are no more than a symbolic ritual; approving employers’ 'training plans' will be just another rubber stamp." The soaring use by business of the Temporary Workers Visa Programme during a time of high unemployment is sadly just a tactic to keep wages low or even to drive them down. While temporarily beneficial to some businesses, the programme is a slap in the face to Canada's unemployed and under-employed. Canada must train the workforce it needs and ensure that they get first crack at any jobs. The article below is a cogent critique of Kenney's reforms. Kenney and Harper's Conservatives are committed to continued demography-changing mass immigration (and European-Canadian population replacement) as were the Liberals before them. These "reforms" are largely cosmetic gestures to dampen rising public anger against immigration so that the population replacement programme can continue. Paul Fromm Director CANADA FIRST IMMIGRATION REFORM COMMITTEE Ottawa's Not Fixing the Programme; It's Just Managing the Fallout Jim Stanford Special to The Globe and Mail Published Monday, Apr. 29 2013, 11:59 AM EDT ( http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/temporary-worker-program-changes-just-a-new-rubber-stamp/article11606920/ ) Labour advocates and immigration agencies have warned for years about deep flaws in Canada’s rapidly growing migrant labour program. Employers enjoyed wide leeway to tap desperate * The resulting surge of guest workers (who must leave Canada when their jobs end) gobbled up a substantial portion of the few new jobs being created in Canada’s labour market. In fact, more than one in five net new jobs created in the entire economy from 2007 through 2012 went to one of these temporary foreign workers. And employers, not surprisingly, wanted more; so Ottawa expanded the program with new measures (buried deep in last year’s omnibus budget bill), making it even easier and cheaper to bring in lower-priced foreign help. Indeed, the program spawned a new and odious cottage industry of migrant brokers: middle-men with a vested interest in promoting temporary foreigners instead of Canadians. The whole program was justified as helping to meet “skills shortages,” but this spin was self-evidently exaggerated from the beginning. Canadians are the best-trained workers in the industrial world, and 1.4 million of them are officially unemployed. Throw in discouraged workers, involuntary part-time workers, and those whose current jobs underutilize their training, and it’s clear that the so-called skills crisis is a self-serving myth. Even in limited cases where specific qualifications are genuinely hard to find, this is mostly the fault of employers themselves – for underinvesting in training, recruitment, and retention. A growing number of economists have roundly critiqued the program for inhibiting labour market adjustment, rather than facilitating it: by reducing the incentive for employers to train Canadians, and suppressing the wage adjustments that would be a normal response to any true “shortage.” All these facts and figures were less influential to the public discourse, however, than revelations that RBC (and other large, rich employers) were accessing the program (either directly or through contractors) to displace Canadian workers – at a time when our labour market is still mired in post-recession funk. The Conservative government feigned outrage over so-called “abuses” of the program, and promised changes. But in fact, the program was not being abused at all: this is exactly what it was designed for, and everything RBC and the others did was fully legal. Hence the public’s ire was correctly shifting to Ottawa (in addition to big business). So the Harper government is now moving to avert a political disaster in the making. Advance coverage ( http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/ottawa-set-to-unveil-sweeping-changes-to-foreign-workers-program/article11601857/#dashboard/follows/ ) in the Globe and Mail indicates its proposed changes will include a new fee for temporary foreign worker permits, and requirements that employers promise to step up their advertising and training to eventually recruit Canadians for the jobs. But those promises won’t be worth the paper they are printed on. Federal bureaucrats have no concrete basis on which to judge whether training or recruitment promises are realistic or not, let alone have power to meaningfully enforce them. So long as access to migrant labour remains open, companies can always come back complaining about “shortages.” Even today, the so-called Labour Market Opinions which must be issued before employers can tap the program are no more than a symbolic ritual; approving employers’ “training plans” will be just another rubber stamp. If we really want employers to find qualified Canadians instead of importing cheap replacements, the whole loophole must be closed down. The low-skill window currently allowed under the program should be cancelled completely (along with the provision allowing employers to pay 15 per cent less-than-going wages). There is absolutely no legitimate reason unemployed Canadians can’t be tapped to fill every one of those jobs: from coal mines to factories to hotels to donut shops. Employers in these industries tap the program only as a handy source of cheap, compliant labour. This whole section of the program gives the lie to the claim that we need migrant workers for their “skills” in the first place. For genuine, specialized high-skill vacancies, the guest worker program must only be used as a temporary stop-gap, with hard caps on both numbers and length. Specialists should be allowed in for six months only, with a maximum of one renewal. That gives employers ample time to recruit Canadians – so long as they are willing to pay them. Employers who use the program for skilled-trades positions must set up their own apprenticeship programs to meet future needs. Every migrant should be entitled to normal employment rights (including access to EI and CPP benefits), as well as having access to normal immigration opportunities. After all, if their skill truly cannot be replaced from within Canada, then they should be invited to live and work here like the rest of us, with full legal protections (instead of being fenced off in low-wage, unpoliced job ghettos). Finally, full transparency should be required – regularly publishing which employers hire temporary foreign workers, in which jobs, and for how long. Apart from providing unemployed Canadians with a valuable source of information on job opportunities, this sunshine would help ensure that companies use the program for true skills shortages only. Early indications are that the “sweeping changes” promised by the Harper government to this whole boondoggle will accomplish none of these goals. Instead, it seems that the government’s true priority is managing the fallout from a program which it rammed through Parliament last year – and which employers have merely been accessing in exactly the way it was intended. Jim Stanford is economist with the Canadian Auto Workers union. _____________________________ Unsubscribe / Change Profile: http://ymlp328.net/ugmjhqsqgsgbbqgwwwgguewwmw Powered by YourMailingListProvider

 

A Caution About Imports from Red China

Written by Paul Fromm

Monday, 06 May 2013 15:26

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This email newsletter was sent to you in graphical HTML format. If you're seeing this version, your email program prefers plain text emails. You can read the original version online: http://ymlp236.net/zO2pax -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHINA FOOD SCANDAL: RAT MEAT SOLD AS LAMB MEAT Friday, May 03, 2013 by Mike Adams ( https://plus.google.com/u/0/108002809946749848449?rel=author ), the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) ( http://www.naturalnews.com/index-HRarticles.html ) 6,791 26 ( http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=http://www.naturalnews.com/040182_rat_meat_China_lamb.html&media=http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/300x250/Concepts/Fake-Meat-Scandal-Rat-Dinner-Plate.jpg&description=China%20food%20scandal:%20Rat%20meat%20sold%20as%20lamb%20meat ) (NaturalNews) When it comes to lying, cheating, deceiving and scamming people about their food, no country is more accomplished than China, home of the melamine infant formula scandal and foods contaminated with high levels of heavy metals. Now a new scandal adds one more milestone to the list: Chinese authorities say they broke up a 900-person criminal ring that harvested meat from rats and other animals to be modified and sold as lamb meat. This "rat meat" appeared in markets in Jiangsu province and Shanghai. Unwitting consumers routinely purchased the meat, not knowing they were eating "rat steaks" at home. Beyond the obvious gross factor of the discovery, the rat meat used in the scam was obviously never safety tested or inspected. It may have been, like many other foods in China, heavily contaminated with heavy metals and toxic chemicals. Rats, after all, don't live the cleanest lifestyles. "Despite years of food scandals -- from milk contaminated with an industrial chemical to the use of industrial dyes in eggs -- China has been unable to clean up its food supply chain," reports USA Today ( http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/05/03/china-rat-meat/2133157/ ). HERE'S WHY CHINA HAS AN EPIDEMIC OF FOOD FRAUD To date, Natural News ( http://www.naturalnews.com/ ) is the only publication to tell the full story on why this is happening. Perhaps that's because I speak a fair amount of Chinese and previously lived in Asia. I know the Chinese and Taiwanese cultures better than most. And the simple truth behind all this is that China ( http://www.naturalnews.com/China.html ) is a nation of spiritually void athiests who have no morals or ethics. Religion is outlawed in China, and as a result there is absolutely no moral compass taught to the Chinese people. I'm not saying organized religion is the answer to all of society's ills, but at least at a basic level, religion teaches a moral compass that simply doesn't exist in Chinese culture. Because of this lack of a moral compass, it is routine in China to find a street vendor of so-called "stinky tofu" (an actual food ( http://www.naturalnews.com/food.html ) item served on the street) using sewer water as their water source. It's routine to find foods from china colored with toxic ink to make them appear more valuable. (For example, sesame seeds are often doused with black ink to sell them as black sesame, which is more costly than white sesame). It is routine for chicken egg producers in China to feed their chickens toxic petrochemical food coloring chemicals in order to alter the color of the eggs. In China, the idea of killing thousands of babies in order to make extra money on infant formula isn't even abhorrent. It's normal. The idea of cheating your customer with fake meat is commonplace. Cheating, dishonest and deceit are the norm -- not the exception -- in China. COMMUNIST POLICE STATE Remember, China is a communist military dictatorship -- essentially a police state. They do not have a Bill of Rights. They do not allow freedom of religion or even spiritual practice of any kind. They quite literally arrest, torture and execute people who practice meditation (Falun-Gong) and yoga. China is a country of tremendous government evil, and that's exactly where Obama is trying to push America -- into a state of moral relativism where those who believe in moral values are attacked, demonized and eventually even arrested. This is why the Pentagon recently announced it will court martial soldiers ( http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/05/01/Breaking-Pentagon-Confirms-Will-Court-Martial-Soldiers-Who-Share-Christian-Faith ) who profess their Christian faith. In fact, a top athiest consultant to the Pentagon unleashed an astonishingly evil rant ( http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/atheist-accuses-christians-of-treason-over-beliefs/ ) against those of Christian faith that mirrored exactly the kind of condemnation you'd normally hear in China. He said: "We face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation's armed forces." A CULTURE OF DEATH AND DECEPTION DESTROYS EVERY CORNER OF SOCIETY I realize that to some readers it may seem like a stretch to go from rat meat in food to a discussion of religious freedom in a police state dictatorship like China, but in truth they are strongly related. This is about a culture of death and deception. China, after all, is a one-child policy country where millions of baby girls are murdered each year. China is a nation where organs are routinely harvested from political prisoners and where people are routinely tortured and executed for speaking out against their government. If all this information is new to you, that's because the U.S. press never reports any of these truths about China. In fact, all the movies produced in Hollywood today are reviewed and approved by Chinese officials ( http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/fearing-chinese-censors-paramount-changes-world-war-z-exclusive-83316?page=0,0 ) before being allowed to be released into U.S. theaters. This includes the new Iron Man movie and World War Z. China now determines what you see in the movie theater, and you're never allowed to see anything critical of China. It is no coincidence that this level of deception, destruction and death would creep into the food supply. After all, people who would murder their own baby girls in order to have a son under a one-child policy would think nothing of selling rat meat ( http://www.naturalnews.com/rat_meat.html ) as lamb meat. Where there is no moral compass, there are no limits to the indignity and injustice of human behavior. Where there is a culture of death, deceit, destruction and demonization of morality, you will always find dishonesty in every sector of society: food, finance, government, business, technology, education and everything else. So don't be surprised to find China selling rat meat ( http://www.naturalnews.com/meat.html ), or rat burgers, or even McRatguts with special dipping sauces made from human feces. In a culture devoid of all liberties, morals, religious freedoms and human dignity, the food supply will inevitably reflect the death and deception that characterizes the culture. Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040182_rat_meat_China_lamb.html#ixzz2SWRZ8fy4 _____________________________ Unsubscribe / Change Profile: http://ymlp236.net/ugmjhqsqgsgbbqgwwhgguewwmw Powered by YourMailingListProvider