Canada’s addiction to temporary foreign workers

by Julian Craddock, Ph.D., CSIA Level 3

The Canada West Ski Areas Association (CWSAA) and its members are addicted to temporary foreign workers and are blaming their withdrawal trauma on recent changes in the Canadian Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP). The CWSAA claims that they have been unfarily tarred by the same brush as the Candian fast food industry which has been found guilty of breaking the intent, if not the letter, of rules allowing Canadian companies to temporarily hire foreign workers when no Canadians are available.

“We feel the government should deal directly with people that are abusing the program and not institute a series of draconian changes that impact all of the people adversely, including those people who use the program responsibly.” [David Lynn, CEO CWSAA]

From my perspective the tarring isn’t unfair. If anything the CWSAA has behaved in a fashion that is more egregious than the fast food industry. It is disingenuous of the CWSAA and its members to suggest that its problem are due to an inability to fill positions with temporary foreign ski instructors.

The CWSAA and media have focused on foreign workers employed under TFWP. These workers are  only the tip of the iceberg. Many more foreigner workers are temporarily employed under programs such as the International Experience Canada (IEC) or enter Canada as sponsored employees. Under the IEC program young, unskilled, temporary foreign workers can be employed instead of Canadians without any of the restrictions imposed by the TFWP.

My Perspective

For several years I have worked for Whistler Blackcomb (WB) as a holiday part time ski instructor. The position requires me to to instruct clients during peak holiday times (roughly 21 days of each year). I get an annual ski pass at WB and when my services are required I get paid roughly $17 an hour. When they are not required I get called off or I if I haven’t been called off I receive a stand by wage for two hours. I’m happy with the arrangement and I think that it is fair.

I am semi-retired. I started out my professional career in the high tech industry where I was lucky enough to work with some great companies, and with the help of others, create some new ones. Finding and retaining skilled employees was always a challenge but one that we were able to overcome. A few years ago I started the certification process to become a Canadian Ski Instructor Alliance (CSIA) level 3 ski instructor.  I love working for WB as it allows me to follow my passion for skiing as well as share that passion with others. It’s a great job and WB is a good employer. However, it is a hobby. I do not require the job to put a roof over my head or food on my table. I’m lucky and I know it.

From where I sit as a business person and as a ski instructor, the CWSAA claims that new TFWP rules are seriously jeopardizing the coming season, as well as the “longer-term economic viability” of ski resort operators are nonsense. The CWSAA has a problem but it is one that shouldn’t be blamed on Canadians or on the Canadian Government.

The CWSAA’s problem is that they hire surplus ski instructors in order meet maximum peak demand in lessons. Many of these surplus instructors are from over seas and have entered Canada under the IEC. Many are under 30.  In hiring a surplus the CWSAA devalues the profession and its members, making it next to impossible for young Canadians to have a viable career in the industry.

Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada

Some background.

The temporary foreign workers program was put in place to allow companies as a “last and limited” resort to temporarily hire foreigners to fill positions for which qualified Canadians are not available. Excesses in Canada’s fast food industry led to changes in the TFWP which I think are relevant to the CWSAA.

1.) Under the TTWP the new Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) states that employees must be aware of the rule that “Canadians cannot be laid-off or have their hours reduced at a worksite that employs temporary foreign workers.”

2.) The revised TFWP considers jobs that pay below the provincial median hourly wage unskilled. Under the TWFP legislation these unskilled, low paying positions are not available to temporary foreign workers and are to be filled by Canadian workers in areas with high levels of regional unemployment.

The IEC program in contrast to the TFWP does not require a LMIA and in fact is designed specifically to allow employers to hire foreigners to meet their temporary work needs:

“By hiring a young foreign worker under International Experience Canada, you give that person an invaluable opportunity to live and work in Canada while complementing your own staffing requirements with temporary help when you need it most.”

The IEC is specifically designed to allow the employment of temporary foreign workers which contradicts the mandate of the TFWP to allow the employment of these workers on a temporary and limited basis only. One might ask if the excesses of the fast food industry are so abhorrent, then why does the Canadian government  allow the IEC to enable them?

“You can hire foreign youth workers from destinations around the globe without a Labour market impact assessment (LMIA) normally required by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. Canada provides either a one-year open work permit or an employer-specific work permit to all qualified applicants. (Under a pilot project, there is a 24-month permit for Australians.)”

The IEC allows employers such as CWSAA members to bring in large numbers of unskilled, temporary, foreign workers, to work at low wages. Under the IEC the same excesses that recent changes to the TFWP were designed to curb are unconstrained.

CWSAA’s Pespective

I am sympathetic to WB and the other members of the CWSAA. They are faced with a difficult problem. Their industry does not require any employees for a significant part of the year (over half). When it does require employees the required number of employees, particularly ski instructors, varies dramatically as a function of winter holiday breaks such as Christmas, Chinese New Year, Spring Break, and Easter.

WB, and other members of the CWSAA, have developed a business model in which they hire a surplus of ski instructors in order to meet peak demand, which is why they need so many ski instructors (approximately 1,200 at WB alone according to WB CEO Brownlie). Unfortunately hiring a surplus of ski instructors to meet peak demand means that WB, and other members of the CWSAA, are faced with a surplus of ski instructors outside of high demand periods. I am part of their solution to the problem in that I am employed as a holiday part time instructor because I help WB meet its peak demand without costing them money when its quiet.

In an interview with the CEO of Whistler Blackcomb (WB), a CWSAA member, the Globe and Mail reports that

“Resorts such as Whistler rely on international ski and snowboard instructors because not enough Canadians apply for the positions, they say. But now, the higher fees and stricter rules means it will cost employers up to three times [previously it cost $275 per foreign employee, it now costs $1,000] more to import the skilled ski labour.”
Again in the Globe and Mail:

“Resorts such as Whistler rely on international ski and snowboard instructors because not enough Canadians apply for the positions”

According to the Globe and Mail, WB is responsible for “$1.3 billion GDP in the province, but that’s in jeopardy of diminishing since Ottawa has tripled the head tax to $1,000 per year on foreign workers. WB CEO David Browlie told the Globe and Mail that the resort requires 90 international instructors, and they say the rule change has already cost the operator $4 million”. To save you pulling out your calculator WB is claiming that under the revised TFWP each of the 90 foreigner workers will cost WB $444,444.  Browlie needs far more than 90 international workers to make his business model work. In focusing on the TFWP the Globe and Mail missed the bulk of the ice berg which is those international workers  employed under the IEC and other programs.

The situation is apparently so dire that David Lynn, the president and CEO of the CWSAA, has written to Canadian Employment Minister Jason Kenney saying that the new rules are a threat to the ski and tourism industry in Western Canada.

A Ski Instructors perspective

Why can’t companies such as WB find Candians to fill ski instructor positions when it can apparently find temporary foreign ski instructors to do the work? To answer this question I’m going to describe the position of a ski instructor from two different perspectives, a temporary foreign employee called Mandy from Manchester, and a Canadian employee called Sam from Spuzzum (yes, Spuzzum exists and if you are from B.C. and don’t know where it is, shame on you).

Mandy

Mandy is in in her twenties and has recently finished an undergraduate degree in anthropology. Because Mandy is under 30 and from the UK she is eligible to work in Canada for one year under the IEC program. She learnt to ski in Europe and is able to link turns on a blue run (she is an intermediate skiier). Before returning to school to study law she and her family have decided that she would benefit from a gap year. Mandy comes across the websites for Yes Improvement and Alltracks. Both companies are temporary employment agencies. One is based in the UK. Both have exclusive arrangements with WB.

On the websites, Mandy discovers that if she is willing to pay between $5,400 and $16,500 Canadian (depending upon the length of the course and the desired certification level) she can become a Canadian Ski Instructor Alliance  ski instructor. If she signs up for the Yes $6,275 four week Whistler Blackcomb Snow School University Program (WBSSU) she will get three weeks of training. Upon passing the CSIA level 1 test she will then be offered a position as a temporary foreign ski instructor at WB for the season. Mandy has to be an intermediate skiier to apply. She is in luck and goes for it.

“As long as you are linking turns on a blue run [typically ski hills have green or easy runs, blue or intermediate runs, and black or hard runs] we can accept you on the course and turn you into a ski god or goddess”. [Alltracks]

$5,400 to $16,500 is a lot of money. However for Mandy and her family it is worth it (who knew that being a goddess came so cheap). In contrast if you attend the University of British Columbia (UBC) for a year, Canadian citizens pay $4,900 to $7,800 in tuition and students on study permits pay between $22,600 to $28,800 (see, UBC tuition costs ) which prorated over an 8 month academic year comes to between $612.50 and $3,500 a month.

Like me, Mandy is not pursuing ski instructing as a career. She wants a break and her family is willing to fork out the tution fee to attend WBSSU. She has a great time, defrays the cost by getting some work, and goes back refreshed. WB is happy because they get paid to train her, they keep some of their more skilled ski instructors employed as trainers, and they get an employee to help meet demand.

Under the IEC employees such as Mandy don’t cost WB anything near the $444,444 reported by Browlie. Instead they are a source of revenue.

Sam

Sam is also in his twenties. He has skiied almost all his life and has managed to get certification as a CSIA Level 3 instructor. He is an expert skiier. He can bang out short radius turns on a variety of terrain and drop off things that make his mother close her eyes. To do so he has paid the CSIA tutions and test fees. Assuming Sam is like me this cost approximately $3,000 to $4,0000.

Sam, like me, loves ski instructing. Last ski season, he made, before expenses, approximately $8,500 working full time. If you go to WB’s accommodation web site you will see that for shared staff accommodation for 2013 in WB he would have paid between $550 and $905 per month or assuming a six month stay, between $3300 and $5430. He would have had to have also paid for all his other costs including food so let’s assume $200/month for food or $1200 for his stay. In addition he would have required ski gear. His skis, boots, and poles would have cost about $1200. His jacket and pants are provided but he still needs gloves, a helmet, and warm clothing. So let’s add another $300 (I’m not being generous). Assuming Sam was in Whistler for six months (November to April), he would have paid between $6000 and $8000 to eat, sleep, and teach leaving him approximately $600 or less than $100 a month for everything else. Not a lot for prescriptions, clothes, or any other necessities. If he hadn’t already been a CSIA level 3 ski instructor, the likelihood that he would be able to pay WB $6,275 for WBSSUP tuition and a guaranteed job is nil.

Sam’s hourly wage is approximately $17/hour. If he was working a regular work week of 8 hours a day, five days a week, 12 months a year,  he could live on the wage.  However he is unlikely to actually make anywhere near this. First, ski instructors aren’t in demand until Christmas, and after Easter the season is almost done. When he is working he is frequently called off by his schedulers whenever demand is low. He may be called off the night or day before but he may also be called off in the morning. Even if he isn’t called off Sam may take the bus to work to be told that he isn’t needed and that he will receive a two hour standby wage for his trouble.

Mandy vs. Sam

Mandy and Sam are fictitious employees. I have used them to illustrate the economic differences between being employed as a temporary foreign worker and being employed as a Canadian.

Employing Mandy is a no brainer. She is paying WB for her training. She is paying WB for her accommodation and she doesn’t really care that her job is actually costing her and her family money. WB is happy. They have made some money and they have someone cheap and cheerful to help them deal with their peak demand.

Mandy is valued by WB. I don’t think that she is skilled. If the only training required to make Mandy a valued ski instructor is for her to take three weeks of instruction on top of her ability to link turns on a blue run, then the required skill level is low. I don’t mean to cause any offence to all the intermediate skiers out there.

Employing Sam isn’t so obvious. Sam needs to work. If he doesn’t make a profit he can’t eat and he can’t afford a place to sleep. When Sam gets called off work it isn’t just an inconvenience or an excuse to go and ski some laps, its an economic catastrophe. If Sam were my son I’d be telling him to find a different job. It isn’t that Sam doesn’t want to be a ski instructor. It’s the opposite. He wants to do it so desperately that he is willing to work at a job that makes the fast food industry look good by comparison.

Can the temporary foreign workers addiction be cured?

I don’t think there are enough Canadians to fill the jobs simply because the jobs as currently structured aren’t “real” jobs. The CWSAA through its addiction to temporary employees, both foreign and Canadian, has managed to significantly devalue a profession and its employees that I love. Did they have to? I don’t think so. Can they fix it? Sure, but first they have to  recognize what they have done to help create the problem and recognize alternative strategies for dealing with it. Blaming the TFWP and obtaining an exemption is not an answer that is good for the industry, its employees, or Canadians.

The CWSAA has abused the TFWP’s purpose as a “last and limited resort to allow employers to bring foreign workers to Canada on a temporary basis”.  They, and the federal government, have ignored the intent of the TFWP by allowing employers to bypass it using other programs such as the IEC. The CWSAA members have built their business model on their ability to bring in a surplus of young foreign ski instructors. They argue that ski instructors are skilled but then they turn around and make money turning an intermediate skier from Manchester into a ski instructor with only three weeks of training. They reduce the hours of their Canadian employees because they over- hire to meet peak demand. From where I stand the CWSAA has been tarred with the same brush as the Canadian fast food industry because they deserve it.

Like so many addicts, the CWSA’s addiction has clouded their ability to reason. To help them get started I’d like to provide the following as free advice. Mr Brownlie, according to your arithmetic each of those 90 foreign temporary ski instructors that you absolutely have to hire this year are going to to cost you $444,444 (and change). The cost of creating a ski instructor from an intermediate skier with some basic interpersonal skills is $6,275. If you were to offer free tuition to 90 Canadians that would represent a savings to you of $438,169 per person or $39,435,210. If you are feeling generous you can take that savings and pass it on to the 1200 members of your ski school so they will make an additional $32,862.68 this year. That’s not just a decent wage,its a good wage. At that wage I don’t think you will have any difficulties filling your quota and you will have the happiest ski instructors on the planet. That simply has to be good.

More seriously, Mr. Brownlie, Mr. Lynn, other members of the CWSAA, most ski instructors are young and our Canadian youth are hurting. According to the June 2014 Canadian job statistics employment decreased among youths aged 15 to 24. The unemployment rate was a staggering 13.4%. Our youth need work, but they need work that is viable. You can’t offer them jobs that don’t allow them to survive and then complain that they aren’t interested or available.

Mr. Brownie, according to Business week your total calculated compensation is C$1,125,081 or, assuming that you work the average number of hours as other Canadians, $661.81/hour. You make that amount because you are skilled and have a skilled position. I’m sure there are times that it would be nice if there two or three of you in order to meet high demand, but there aren’t and you and your employer have developed strategies such as your compensation for dealing with them.  Your ski instructors make below the median provincial hourly wage because you, and other members of the industry, don’t consider them to be skilled.  They make below the median wage because you have a surplus of cheap foreign labour to keep wages down. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous. We all know that most of them can be replaced after three weeks training by an intermediate skier.

If we are willing to abandon the position that ski instructors are skilled and you must have access to foreigners to save the ski industry then perhaps we can focus on what’s really important and that is helping Canadian youth find meaningful employment. You and other members of the CWSAA can help the Canadian youth. I’m not a human resources expert but there is lots of material available for coming up with situations such as yours which result in an effective labour force that has high morale. If you like I can share some of the strategies that I know about and have used in the past.

Give Sam a job we can all be proud of, don’t blame him for not being there when you need him. Sam, like Spuzzum, is in danger of vanishing.