Ministry Looking into Allegations of Head Tax
Monday, October 22, 2012 @ 12:06 PM
Tumbler Ridge, B.C. – Minister of Jobs in BC, Pat Bell, says his staff has begun an investigation into a claim by the BC Federation of Labour that prospective Chinese workers who were coming to BC to work at developing a new mine in the Murray River region are being charged a head tax to get work.
Bell says "Charging fees to obtain a job is against the Labour Code of BC and there are heavy penalties." Bell says, "There are significant fines for this, charging people to obtain work”.
BC Federation of Labour President, Jim Sinclair, today called on the province to immediately suspend all temporary foreign workers permits granted to the company.
“We are confident that the jobs weren’t advertised fairly at going rates to workers in Canada" says Sinclair. He also claims;
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The recruiting companies in China are charging recruiting fees as much as $12,500 a head
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These same Chinese companies are making grossly exaggerated promises of immigration and family reunification rights to prospective Chinese participants in the program.
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The wages being offered to these workers are well below prevailing Canadian wage rates.
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The workers in China are being offered the ability to purchase a certificate of qualification and training for $160 dollars
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The Chinese company did not find a single qualified Canadian applicant among the 97 it has reported that it interviewed.
Sinclair says a full investigation is needed.
Comments
I wonder how deep pat will look. I am sure our government allready new this was going to happen.
It’s not often (if ever!) that I’ve agreed with Jim Sinclair but something stinks here.
Canadians first please and thank you.
The ads were wrong $21.00 hour must have grade 12 it was all crap, and you can bet toget these jobs the workers will have to pay all the in between scalpers, BC jobs Plan???????? thanks
Wasnt Bell the guy last week saying they are allowed to come in to work here due to their experience… what an experience they are having… Bell should be paying all of us for the “job” he is doing…
Speaking of rights…
So who has the most rights in Canada.
1. Criminals
2. Politicians
3. Immigrants
4. Police
128. Law abiding tax payers.
Wait a minute, you mean it’s possible that the Chinese businesses aren’t respecting BC laws and regulations? Geez, who would have ever seen that one coming!!!!
It’s a good thing we have such savvy leaders on the watch, LOL. Good grief.
It won’t be long before “made in China” will change to” Made in Canada ” by Chinese workers. If we are smart we will charge large royalties for the use of the resources . More that likely we’ll continue selling the country so we can buy shiny trinkets from Wal Mart and Target. Looking back 200 years ago , the scenario looks familiar.
Kick them out and hire Canadian.
Obviously not well thought through from the enforcement end of things.
Who cares what the fines are if there is no system in place to monitor compliance. Telling us what the fines are does nothing to addressing whether this is a false accusation or not.
Obviously Pat can’t say it is false, since he not only does not know, but can’t even tell us that they have a monitoring system in place, that it has been tested, and that there is at least 99% compliance.
So how long will it take to get some feedback regarding the veracity of the charge?
BTW, fines ….. forget fines ….. remove license to operate in this country ….. simple!!!!
They will get that message!!
Fines is a whimpy remedy.
fines are just the cost of doing business….
“BTW, fines ….. forget fines ….. remove license to operate in this country ….. simple”
C’mon gus, they wouldn’t be able to “create jobs” if they did that ;)
Check out Terracedaily.ca article posted on Oct. 11 titled State of the Art Chinese Mining Technology. They’re already here.
Well, if it’s happening, it should stop. I’m with all who’ve said to hire Canadian. Canadians need jobs!
From what I have seen and delt with up in Tumbler with these guys, there will be no Canadian Underground Miners that would want to work for these guys and if they did they wouldn’t work for them very long.
It sure doesnt say much for our canadian workers, the young kids dont get up in the mornings, they dont do jobs, pretty much
the way their raised. Computers all night,
earings and studs all over. They look like this so noone will hire them. Just saying. Maybe we need the chinese here. Oh and the unions dont help it either. Just saying,lol
And WorkSafeBC does not help either. ;-)
Then again, look at what happenedd with that state of the art Silviculture camp/work which evaded Federal and Provincial agencies responsible for overseeing standards for working and living conditions.
Those workers may actually feel working for the Chinese is a major improvement.
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You make a good point NMG.
BTW, is Harper’s office hiring Chinese yet, or is he sticking to Québécois? :-)
Hey, onemansthoughts, I used to have long hair and wore bell-bottoms just so I would not get hired.
Little did I know that all the junior people at the Architect/Engineering/Urban Planning office looked exactly like me.
Ended up working for my entire life simply because I guessed wrong what I had to wear to not get hired.
Next time I’ll know better!! :-(
It upsets me that we have to hire outside workers at all. It means we have failed to train our own young people to do the jobs.
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
“It upsets me that we have to hire outside workers at all. It means we have failed to train our own young people to do the jobs.”
Nothing to do with a failure in training but everything to do with the fact we’ve allowed a generation or two to grow up under the impression that the rest of society will look after them no matter what.
Wasn’t one of the requirments for application being fluent in Mandarin? Gee, no wonder no locals were hired. You can’t lay the blame on being lazy when the requirements are unreasonable.
Sounds like the history of Barkerville and the building of the CPR all over again. We are witnessing history. Thanks Pat. Hey maybe he was planning on hiring.
That is just what I was thinking, seamutt; it does indeed repeat itself: early coal mining, road and rail building…it all came down to greed then, too, on behalf of people that just couldn’t seem to get rich enough and where a cart of coal was worth more than a working man’s life.
If living next door to the US is like being in bed with an elephant, what is this continuous cozy’n up with China going to be like?
What a wimpy damn country we continue to be, in all the wrong places.
Please do the right thing, Pat, although this thing is so much bigger than you….
To the posters that b*tch about the younger generation, man that makes me laugh. Please don’t judge my kids, and others, by how yours turned out.
Perfect! bcnorth250
Hmmmm sounds familiar, is this the 1800’s?
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