Spurning Work for Welfare

"Our guys, from tip to tip, have tried everything, we've tried to bus employees from some of the bigger centres and on Monday you'd have 30 on the bus and by Friday you'd have three."
"The priority is always, from our end, to hire locals."
"The TFWs [temporary foreign workers] are really a Band-Aid solution to a big problem; we're at wit's end to figure out how to address this chronic labour shortage."
Dennis King, executive director, Prince Edward Island Seafood Processors Association

"It really is a matter of desperation. I've talked to enough people who ... have ads posted month after month after month, and just can't find anyone."
Luc Erjavec, Atlantic Canadian representative, Restaurants Canada

Victoria | Credit: Tourism PEI/John Sylvester

Roughly one in every sixteen Islanders were collecting employment insurance at one point. The rising gap between unemployment rates and imported labour is more complicated than simply Islanders unwilling to work, however, claims Josie Banker, a coordinator with P.E.I.'s Cooper Institute. Ageing populations and a rise in out-migration leave major employers like fish processing plants absent of nearby labour sources.

"From a profit point of view, that looks more favourable than workers who might have a family emergency or need time off for family", she said of employers' attraction to the prospect of bringing in workers without family commitments, "willing to work long hours".  The institute she represents published a fact sheet underlining that TFWs take jobs that "often do not offer enough money or job security for local workers who also have family and community responsibilities".




Belying that is the simple fact that businesses on Prince Edward Island, despite the province having one of the highest national rates of employment insurance collection, don't seem to be able to fill their job openings with the local population. Charlottetown's The Guardian last year revealed that P.E.I. employers were given clearance to fill 1,350 positions with TFWs, considerably more than the 220 in 2005.

Until an employer can prove the job they have vacant cannot be filled locally, a TFW position will not receive approval. One lobster processor, Beach Point Processing Co., actively searching for locals through an online employment notice promising a starting wage of $10.30 an hour plus 4% vacation pay, had applied to receive a total of 250 temporary foreign workers for their 2013 season.

Over 100 P.E.I. employers are listed as seeking applications for 2013 for temporary foreign workers. A culture of collecting welfare is deeply engrained in communities where it scarcely seems worthwhile to work for low hourly wages when similar sums can be had without exerting themselves. Applications for TFWs are dominated by restaurants, nursing homes, farms and large-scale fishery operations.

Even the province's Department of Health has come up negative for local workers. As has the College of Piping, and even the Anne of Green Gables Store. The province has an 11% unemployment rate, placing it alongside Newfoundland and Labrador to represent Canada's highest rate of joblessness. But then, the situation represents a tradition of entitlement, of working just enough hours to qualify for unemployment insurance, a practise of long standing that seems to suit the requirements of Islanders.

Working, truth to tell, would simply spoil Paradise.