The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Should Canada Have a Temporary Foreign Worker Program?

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Recently, the federal government announced changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program by reducing the number of workers employers can hire in an effort to weed out what it considers misuse and fraud in the system. To discuss the implications of these changes on businesses, workers, and the economy, we are joined by Mike Moffat, Director of the Smart Prosperity Institute; Dan Kelly, CEO and President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business; Elizabeth Long, immigration lawyer for Long Mangalji LLP; and Jim Stanford, economist and Director of the Centre for Future Work.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The federal government announced changes to the temporary foreign worker program, reducing the number of workers employers can hire in an effort to weed out what it considers misuse and fraud in the system. Joining us now to discuss the implications of these changes on businesses, workers and the economy, we welcome from the nation's capital Mike Moffitt, Director of the Smart Prosperity Institute. In the Willowdale neighborhood of Ontario's capital city, Dan Kelly, CEO and President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. And with us here in studio, Elizabeth Long, Immigration Lawyer for Long Mangalgy LLP. And Jim Stanford, Economist and Director of the Center for Future Work. And it's great to have you two with us back here in our studio, and to Dan and Mike in Points Beyond, we're grateful for your participation today as well.

This is one of these really controversial fraught issues, so Elizabeth, I often like to bring us back to first principles here and just give people a sense about what it is we're talking about. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program essentially is what? So the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, it's been in place for quite a long time, several decades. And what it is, it's a very small subset of the total numbers of work permits that people can have.

Essentially, in order to get a work permit under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, the employer has to go to the market, the labor market, and test the labor market through a process called the labor market impact assessment, LMIA. To get a labor market impact assessment, in general, they have to advertise and try to hire Canadians or they have to promise the government that they are going to provide labor market benefits such as hiring more Canadians or training Canadians as well. And here's what the numbers have looked like we got one of these fancy charts here and for those of you listening on podcast I'll read out

some of the numbers here so you can see how it's gone over the last decade. There were more than 160,000 temporary foreign worker positions in Canada in 2013. Then as the years go on, as we get towards 2016, the numbers start to dip. But then more recently, they achieve levels in the last couple of years of nearly 240,000. So, Jim, you have been following this for more than a decade. What story do you think that bar graph tells? Well, in general, it's employers who are trying to bring in workers from other countries on a temporary basis to meet their recruitment and retention needs. So what we have seen, particularly since the pandemic,

when number one, there was all the disruptions in retail and hospitality and other industries where employers had a hard time attracting back their workers when the economy reopened. Number two, the unemployment rate was relatively low, at least for a while. It's not so low anymore. So in that environment, employers were pushing hard to liberalize this program, to open it up and the government listened to employers. So particularly in 2022, they relaxed some of the rules and limits on the temporary foreign worker program.

And employers went to town with it. They took advantage of those openings and they hired a lot more people from overseas to come on a temporary basis. And this program, as Elizabeth mentioned, is just one part of a much bigger issue about non-permanent migration to Canada. So there are other programs, the International Mobility Program for example, or international students who are allowed to work here more hours than in the past, that in a way play a similar role in the labour market, helping employers meet their demands for low-wage accessible labour, but with some implications for how the overall labour

market is working. We have someone here who represents employers. So Dan Kelly, it's over to you. You saw that graph. What story do you think it tells? Well, look, I've been involved in each piece of that graph, both when it's going up and going down. Certainly in 2013, there was a big crackdown on the program and then the numbers dipped and now it's come back up.

Jim said it absolutely right. After the pandemic, the labor market was effectively broken. Employers were screaming for staff and I don't blame any of the staff who had been hired, laid off, hired, laid off as Canada's locked down more than virtually any other country in the world. So we needed people, we needed them badly.

The nice thing about the temporary foreign worker program is it is a dial. You can turn it up when the labour market is tight and turn it down when the labour market is a little bit softer. And effectively that's what the government has done. I worry that the turning down may be a little bit too swift, and I'm certainly hearing from a lot of employers who are pretty freaked out but we need a program like this because Canada's labor market is fairly finely tuned. Mike let me get your view on why you think that dial gets turned up or turned down. What what provokes the turning up or turning down

of that dial? Yeah whenever we have periods of low unemployment you know that's challenging for employers. And the federal government listens to those complaints and finds ways to bring in more workers. And I don't think that's necessarily a sensible approach that we should be looking at periods of low unemployment as a crisis. I think we should be looking at it as an opportunity to train people. But, you know, we have this situation where, again, employers complain to the government. The government listens

and deregulates it. Then we find ourselves in periods like today, like Jim describes, where unemployment gets high and then, you know, folks start complaining and parents like me start complaining that their kids can't get summer jobs and the government dials it back down again. All right let's go through what some of the recent changes are that the federal government has brought in and to that end I'll get again our director Sheldon Osmond to bring this graphic up and for those listening on podcast here we go. The federal government announced that by September 26th of this year it will no longer process its

assessments of the low wage stream, you heard Elizabeth talking about that, the low wage stream in metropolitan areas with an unemployment rate of 6% or higher. Now with exceptions in seasonal and non-seasonal jobs in food security sectors, construction and health care, employers should have no more than 10% of their total workforce through the temporary foreign worker program, 10%. And the maximum duration of employment for workers hired through the low wage stream will be reduced to one year, it used to be two years. Okay, we talked about the dial being ramped up and ramped down, It's a pretty clear ramping down in this situation.

So let's get some reactions. Jim, what does this look like to you? I'd say that's a pretty modest twist of the dial to tell you the truth, Steve. You want it turned harder? I think so in some areas. And remember, this is just one piece of a bigger temporary migration labor system that we have. We've still got those other streams. We've got the high wage stream. We've still got those other streams.

We've got the high wage stream. We've got the international mobility program. We've got hundreds of thousands of international students, in some cases, who come here mostly to work. So what would you have preferred the government do if this doesn't turn the dial enough in your view? Right. Well, I think that we should be eliminating the low wagewage option for some occupations.

There's just no reason why, just because it's hard for a restaurant to find somebody to work for minimum wage, that we should thereby say, okay, somebody from outside of the country is willing to accept that minimum wage, bring them in. Instead, we should be holding employers' feet to the fire to say, look, if you're having a hard time recruiting workers, offer them a better deal, Offer them better wages. Offer them better hours, which is often more important than the wage. Offer them some benefits. Dan, what do you say?

Look, there's zero employees coming into the temporary foreign worker program at the minimum wage or even near the minimum wage. The government sets the prevailing wage rate in the industry. It's often set at a rate that is higher than many employers pay their Canadian workers, especially for smaller employers

who struggle to meet some of these lines. The employer has to pay between 7,000, about 7,500 to 15 grand in fees and airfare to bring the low-wage worker in and out of Canada. This is not a low-wage program. There's zero evidence this is leading to wage suppression, which is one of the bogeymen that's often touted at this time. Employers need this because there are occupational categories and regions in the country that are really tough to find people. We've started to get our

heads around, and I think most people acknowledge that young kids are not lining up to take jobs on the farms in the summer, and so it makes sense to bring in seasonal agricultural workers. But that's increasingly true for other sectors of the economy.

I was just talking to a person in Newfoundland and Labrador that has no problems finding certain types of occupations but for their night shifts in their warehouse they can find no one even after they've jacked up wages and and they're struggling to find workers and it's the temporary foreign workers who have been a godsend in protecting the Canadian jobs in industries like that. Elizabeth in your view did the federal government turn down the dial too much, or not enough, or what? I think when we have blanket statements

such as we don't need people in certain categories, it really affects us when situations are very nuanced. For example, the situation in Newfoundland, in those cases, the employer just isn't able to do so. When we're talking about LMA, the employer really has to show that they just can't find people who want to work at the median wage that the government has set.

This is what the industry says is the median wage. They just can't find people there. And I like to talk about the broader picture because the temporary foreign worker program is just a very, very small, I think it's probably around maybe 10% of the total amount of people who are here on work permits or who are allowed to work as students.

And the vast majority of people who are here on the work permits are not affected by this area which is the most regulated area of work permits. Vast majority of people are here who have obtained their work permits after they've graduated from university or college or who have been granted humanitarian work permits such as the Ukraine work permit QAT, the Iranian, you know, the list goes on for that. For example, just on the Ukrainian QAT program, there was almost 300,000 people who have come to Canada under that program. From that one country. From that one country. So when we're talking about, oh, there's a lot of workers out there who are not Canadians or permanent residents, we have to look at the broader picture.

Okay, Mike, you are, I guess, going to have to break the tie here. We've heard one view which says that we haven't turned this program down nearly enough. We have another view that says well, don't you know pump the brakes a bit here. We need all this. Did the government find the sweet spot here? Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with Jim. Actually, I might even go farther than Jim. I always find the examples of why we need this program. Everybody mentions the sort of Ag stream and I can understand that. So, you know, my family's farmers, I get that. Or they mentioned, yeah, we've got some plant in rural Newfoundland that can't find someone.

But if we look at the low wage stream in particular, it's largely in big cities, you know, people hiring fast food workers and that kind of thing, right? So if there are these edge cases, then you know, we can keep those edge cases. But when you've got, you know, the ice cream shop next to Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, bringing in temporary foreign workers, we should be asking some questions. Bloomberg reports that there are over 700 temporary foreign workers that work at Tim Horton's locations across Ontario. I just, I don't think that that makes sense. And I think, you know, this, this argument about the median wage, I think it's just an

indication that the median wage is too low, right? Like I can't, I can't find a five cent cigar, but it doesn't mean that the government should be helping me find that. We have to understand how supply and demand dynamics work. And if there is a shortage, then wages should go up. That's what is supposed to happen in a capitalist economy. But for some reason, that dynamic that we accept for prices, when we say, okay, there's not enough carrots, so the price of carrots go up, all of a sudden, we don't allow the same thing to happen on wages.

When there's a shortage of fast food workers, then those wages should go up, rather than saying, no, no, we've got to keep the median wage where it is, and then fill in the blanks with temporary foreign workers. Dan, if we have a situation where the fast food place right next to Fanshawe College, is that the example you gave Mike now? I can't remember. Was it a Wendy's or a Timmy Horton's? Yeah, the ice cream place.

Ice cream place. That's the Fanshawe College. Okay. If temporary foreign workers are working there, is that evidence of the fact that employers may be abusing this program? No, not at all. Look, the example that was trotted out many, many times is that my kid had a difficult time getting a summer job, therefore it must be the temporary foreign workers that are taking

those jobs away. And even if there was some truth to that at all, what is the employer to do when the kids are back in school? Like how do you find as an employer, how do you actually prepare an entire roster of workers if you're just making them up of my 15-year-old son who works a four-hour shift once a week at the grocery store? You can't do that. You need to make sure that we look at the demographics of the country as a whole.

There are some huge benefits of the temporary foreign worker program, even compared to other of the immigration streams. For example, it allows the employer to be involved so the person comes to Canada for a specific job at a specific spot. It's not like a permanent residency program where everybody clumps up in a few of the large cities in Canada.

It takes away any of the credentials recognition issues because the employer has already said, yes, this worker is qualified to work in my business. I agree that there are some challenges to the program but to to dismiss it and say that there should be no program as some have suggested I think is is just really really naive and not a good sense of what's going on in our complicated labor market from coast to coast. Well let me put that to Jim, because I did see a piece, an op-ed piece, I can't remember what paper I saw it in,

about a week ago, economics professor at Carleton University said, get rid of this program entirely. It's been abused, it's not working anymore. Would you go that far and just get rid of it entirely? Well, there are special cases, as Mike indicated earlier, where it is sensible to use non-permanent migrant labour. And agriculture is the classic one.

So that's a no then. The agriculture one has been there long before what we now know as the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Same goes for other industries that might face seasonal demand issues and so on. One of the points Dan raised, that the Temporary Foreign Worker is tied to the particular job that they come for, is actually, I think, one of the biggest dangers of the program. Because they're here and their

status in the country mostly depends on that relationship with the employer it puts them in a very vulnerable position regarding fair treatment, wage payments, health and safety, accommodation, etc. Now in theory there are protections for these workers but in practice it often doesn't work that way. And the fact that their presence in Canada is tied to that one employer is a recipe for exploitation. So that piece of it should definitely be abolished for everyone. And we should actually, for the people who are in Canada now, we should give them a clear pathway to permanent status. That way we can continue to use their labor as part of our labor market but without that very insecure precarious

exploitive arrangement under the temporary foreign worker program. I should give Dan a chance to comment on how much of that exploitative situation that Jim just described happens in this country. Look, I have no doubt that there are some just terrible employers who treat their temporary foreign workers and, in fact, their Canadian workers really, really poorly. I have no problem with government agencies throwing the book at these employers, as we have rules in place right now to try to address them. We've got to root those things out.

And Jim's right, the program, given that the visa is tied to that that job it does lend itself to that there is there's no question that that there is that risk a greater risk in that situation than a Canadian who has full labor market mobility. But we don't just like there are risks from the employer perspective as well and we've certainly seen fraud the other way. there are risks in every single stream of our immigration program, and we don't suggest that we just shut her down as a result. Where Jim went to though, I agree with,

and we have suggested for decades that the temporary foreign worker program can be best used as a pathway where needed to permanent residency. So if you had that person come to Canada for a year or two where the employer that sponsored that person to come in paid for their return airfare to and from their home country that went through all this the fees to get them there. If they had that immigrant they could rely on that person for a couple of years

help them then transition to permanent residency as is happening in some cases through the provincial nominee programs, that we believe is the right way to balance the rights of the migrant and the rights of the employee and the needs of the employer and the economy more broadly. Okay, Elizabeth, let me get you back in here. Since the announcement was made by the federal government, what changes have you seen, either in your practice or more broadly, out there on all of this? To be honest, it's not that much because this program is a very small subset of the broader even LMIA program.

The broader temporary- LMIA, you keep using that acronym. Yeah. Labor market impact assessment. There we go. And the temporary foreign worker program. So low wage. First of all, I'd like to say low wage does not

mean low skilled. Low wage is basically anything that's below the median wage. And many, many places, many provinces, that's around the $28 to $29 an hour wage. That's not minimum wage at all. And for many employers, if they had to raise the wages to that level for their businesses, they're going to have to close up shop. Elizabeth, the low wage program allows employers to pay less than that median. So

we don't know that they're making that median. That is how the low wage program is defined. So we know that in the 230,000 workers in the low wage program, they're making less than what you just described. We don't know how much less. Correct. But if you shut it down completely, then the only way forward is to go high wage, which is to hire workers above that wage. And so if you're expecting most employers

to be able to go above that wage, then you're probably looking at a lot of businesses having to close. Mike, can I get your view on whether or not you believe these changes announced by the federal government, again, trying to find the sweet spot between what employers need and what employees want and need, whether this mix will work? I think they need to go a lot farther. And to the government's credit, I think they acknowledge that. They mentioned that they're going to do a 90-day consultation where they talk to

stakeholders, talk to businesses, talk to labor to figure out what the next steps are. And I think that's entirely reasonable that you don't't want to over-correct, make some changes, and then realize they don't work and have to scale them back. But I do think we need to go a lot further, that there are legitimate uses of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Like if we're repairing a nuclear power plant and we need to bring in some specialist from overseas

with special skills that we don't have here, absolutely. We should do that. That's an appropriate use of the program. But when we're seeing job categories, even in the high wage categories, like administrative assistance, which have gone up something like 20 fold in the last few years,

I think again, we need to start asking some questions. If there really is a shortage of administrative assistance in the city of Toronto, shouldn't that be an opportunity for us to train people who are out of work for those positions? And, you know, I think overall that, you know, we can talk about 28 bucks being high or low and what that means for employers, but let's just remember how much it costs to live in the City of Toronto right now. 28 bucks an hour is not going to get you all that far in a high-cost city. So I don't think it's unreasonable to see wages in Toronto rise to that median level

or even higher. Having said all that, you know, youth unemployment in June of 2024, Jim, was 13.5%. Does that suggest to you that there are a lot of young people nowadays who simply don't want to do the difficult, backbreaking jobs that have been referenced on our discussion here? Oh, I don't think the unemployment rate reflects a lack of interest in work by young people.

I think it reflects the lack of jobs for young people. And in fact, for this summer, this past summer, it was the worst summer for returning students since the 1990s. Barely 50% of returning university students could find work in the summer. Now I don't think that's the fault of the temporary foreign worker program. And one thing I'm cognizant of, Steve, in this whole discussion is we've all got to be very careful it doesn't become a sort of immigration bashing sort of discussion. That would be very dangerous.

We've seen that happen in other parts of the world and immigration has been a great thing for Canada and absolutely is. But it should be supported immigration where we welcome people, give them the full rights that everyone else has and full supports to integrate into Canadian society. We have got a bigger unemployment problem that results from high interest rates that we've had, the slowdown in the economy, and that's why unemployment has gone up to 6.4%. The temporary foreign worker program, I don't think has helped that, but it's certainly not the main cause of it.

Well, Elizabeth, let me follow up on that with you. What do we think about the optics or what it says to the rest of the world, which obviously is looking at Canada, you know, as we turn the taps a little more open or turn the taps a little more off, what do these changes do to our international reputation as a place for temporary foreign workers to come? Well, I think it really speaks to, when we're talking about people as commodities,

it really puts a negative spin on our policies. When we invite people to come to our country and say, hey, for example, come to our country. You can come here and work, and eventually you can come here and stay. And then later on, you say, oh, yeah, actually, we changed our mind. We don't really need you here anymore.

And people have been here for years. They have been working, and they are still in need by their employers to work for them, they come here and they have families here, and all of a sudden they say, oh no, go home. That is very, very negative. Do you hear those stories from your clients? Absolutely, absolutely. Do you want to give us an example? Give us a for instance.

For example, many of these work permits are going to expire soon. And you know, the temporary for worker program, it's used oftentimes for people to get permanent residence. So if you have a LMIAA, that can often... LMIAA? Labor market impact assessment. I'm sorry. This is an acronym-free zone here. A labor market impact assessment, then you can get 50 points, for example, for your permanent residency under a range of employment for express entry.

And so a lot of times we see the students who have been here studying and then they have their post-grad work permits, these work permits cannot be renewed. So what are they going to do in order to stay? They have to ask their employers to help them apply for something like a labor market impact assessment. And so as a result, that is one of the reasons why the applications for the labor market impact assessments have been going up. It's not necessarily that we're bringing that many more workers who aren't already in Canada to stay in Canada

You want to take a run at that one? Sure Yeah, look, let me let me give it a shot I think Elizabeth raises an incredibly important point and that is we don't want to have nobody Including employers wants to have what we see in some European countries where there's lots of people who are there long-term Without full labor market rights and they kind of live as an outside class in society. That's not where we should go in Canada and I've not talked to any employers who want that to happen. We have to look at some of the successes here. Where that migrants or the temporary foreworkers come to Canada, thrown down some routes in small towns Saskatchewan, rural Newfoundland, and then the employer is involved in helping them transition to permanent residency.

You can imagine that experience of that new migrant that's come to Canada is so much better and has led to many of these people staying in these rural communities, remote communities, where they would never in a million years have gone if they had come to Canada as a permanent resident. This is why, for example, my home province of Manitoba that has been an early adopter of the provincial nominee program has had so much success in changing the fabric of our labor market in Manitoba because they've used it strategically. We also have to acknowledge the temporary foreign worker program at the low-wage stream is one of the only streams that brings in people in some of the sectors that otherwise would be starving.

When my ancestors came to Manitoba from, on my mother's side from Ukraine, they didn't come to work in a lab or a university. They came to work as farmers. And we have basically lost any of the ability of people to come for jobs in entry-level occupational categories other than through the refugee program and the temporary foreign worker program because we bring in the best and the brightest. Huge strengths from that, but one of the downsides is that we have a lot of jobs, demographics are not on our side for people to fill some of the positions in heavier occupational categories with

physical demands, night shifts, where people around the world would love to come to Canada for these jobs. Canadians are saying no I have no interest in that whatsoever. This is a win-win and I don't want to dismiss that. This is important. Mike I should get you to comment on, since I think you want to dismiss that. This is important. Mike I should get you to comment on since I think you want to turn the taps off even more in this program on what kind of signal it sends to the rest of the world if that is in fact what we end up doing. Well I think we should be focusing more on permanent residency. When the United Nations calls our programs a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery, I think we should try and end that.

You know, we should not be a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery. Instead, I think we need to be looking at ways to get permanent residency. And I think we absolutely need to keep the experience of the workers who are coming here top of mind. We do them no favors and us no favors if we're exploiting them. So I think it's more than fair for us to be trying to reform these programs and putting a focus on the human rights of migrant workers, because right now we're not doing that and the United Nations has called us out for it. Dan, if there is, as there appears to be some indication that the NDP is ripping up the

agreement it has with the Liberals not to bring down the federal government and will as a result go case by case until whenever the next election happens, how much of all of that could affect what we've been talking about here on this program for the last half hour? You know, it probably won't affect uh... the temporary foreign worker program because it does seem that all parties right now are united uh... in wishing to either kill the program or to shrink it significantly and back to liberals were the ones that were that were trying to keep some

aspects of this going uh... but the conservatives have have cast shade on this program. And look, this has also gotten into big immigration politics more broadly, as we've talked about. This is a very narrow stripe of the immigration system, and yet all of the ills of the immigration system seem to be boiling down to the temporary foreign worker program, according to some politicians, and that, that I think is a mistake. Mike, it has become a political football. You're there in Ottawa. How do you see this percolating through the political season we're in now? Yeah, no, I agree with Dan. I think there's kind of an all-party consensus on this. And

I think the the clawbacks that we saw on the temporary foreign worker program was in part by how unpopular it is and how much trouble teenagers and people in their 20s had trouble finding jobs this summer. I wrote a few articles on this and the response I got was just overwhelmingly positive that this program needs to go. So I don't think partisan politics is gonna play much

a role in further reductions. I think there's an all-party consensus that this is problematic, just because that's where Canadians are right now. Jim, you're not stranger to partisan politics in these parts. How do you read it? Yeah, I don't think there's an easy gotcha in this issue

in terms of the politics. I have seen Mr. Poliev's messaging change lately in some nuanced ways towards more of a kind of immigration skeptical view than you would have expected in the past. But at the same time, it was the Conservatives, the previous government under Stephen Harper, that expanded the temporary foreign worker program so dramatically in the first place.

So he doesn't have a lot to stand on there. And I think in a way, this is too important for politics. We're dealing with people's lives here and making sure that they're treated fairly. And I hope it doesn't become a political football. Elizabeth, you want the last word on this? I think it's very unfortunate that the temporary foreign worker program has become a scapegoat for all of the ills, unemployment, housing problem, when in fact immigration brings jobs. The fact that we even have people coming into this country who are taxpayers,

who are consumers, that brings more businesses, makes more jobs. And I think that it's going to be interesting, this coming election, as to how people who the government has brought in, has encouraged to come in, become the scapegoats as to all of the ills of the economy. All right. With a few minutes to go here, Jim, if we didn't have this program, let's say we do what the fellow from Carleton University suggested, we scrap this program altogether. What would that do to our economy? Well, incrementally, it would heighten the pressure on employers to find another solution to their recruitment and retention challenges. You know, Dan was just talking about how these are tough,

physical, unpleasant jobs, and in general, low-paying jobs. And Canadians don't want to do them. Therefore, we'll use foreign workers to come and do it. How about we try to improve those jobs? And that's partly through lifting the wages and the benefits, as we've talked about. But more importantly in the long run, frankly, it's also about through innovation and technology

and automation and investment in capital, make those jobs less unpleasant. And it won't be until employers have a hard time finding someone at the wage they want to pay, that they'll do the hard work to start thinking, okay, how do I get a different way, a different business model to use machinery and investment and innovation rather than cheap labor? Jim, I think, excuse me, Dan, I think I saw you nodding a little bit when Jim was in the midst of his speech there.

Does that mean you can sign on to some of that? Look, there's no question that employers are looking to automate where they can, but my worry about the direction that that is headed is that that is setting up Canada to be a country of large multinationals that can afford to pay for the innovation and the automation that is required. We're setting it up that Canada would move to being a branch plant economy with big industrial players coming in. And it seems in some ways that we have no problem

with those administrative assistants having those jobs completely offshores to other countries, which technology is now enabling much, much faster than if we actually brought somebody into Canada to pay all of the taxes in Canada. I don't know, we gotta look at this from a holistic picture, and if you look at the demographics as to where we're headed, yes, the unemployment rate has ticked up a little bit,

but long term, my goodness, do we need people in some of these occupational categories that are going begging, technology is great, but but it's not here and it's not widespread and it's certainly not easily adopted by SMEs who in rural remote communities will disappear if this program is shut down too hard. Acronym-free zone, Dan. Small medium enterprises is that what you're talking about? Small and medium sized enterprises, my apologies. There we go, there we go.

You know, I should ask Mike, I can't remember if your kids are of age enough to get summer jobs, but did they manage to get something this summer if they were of age? So my oldest is only 13, so she's not quite there yet, but some of my neighbor kids are having all kinds of trouble. This is the worst summer we've had for teenage employment outside of 2020, the lockdown year. I think we need to be looking at productivity, right? You go to a coffee shop and you see the opening the coffee things and putting them in and pouring the coffee and that kind of thing. Go, you know, can't we find machines to do that? Other countries, their fast food restaurants are far more automated.

And we should also be clear that this program is largely used by large employers. And many of the small and medium enterprises who use these programs are franchisees of a larger international conglomerate. So, yes, the person that owns the local Tim Hortons is a small and medium enterprise, they're a franchisee, but they're doing so under the auspices of a larger corporation. So we should be clear about that.

This is not just SMEs using this program. This is used by big businesses all across Canada and the franchisees under those large corporations. As I thank you all for joining us tonight, let the record show Dan Kelly shook his head when you just said that, Mike. So we'll put that on the record. Dan Kelly, CEO, President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Mike Moffat, Director of the Smart Prosperity Institute. We thank you for joining us in points beyond Elizabeth Long, LM Law, Jim Stanford, economist and director of the Center for Future Work. Thank you for joining us here in the studio.

Great to have you all aboard tonight. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you, Steve.