Dear Editor,
I know Jasper, and Canada as a whole, need the temporary foreign worker program. That fact is undebatable. What is up for debate however, is how many of these workers are brought into Canada to do jobs that many Canadians would otherwise do. This fault does not lay on the worker being brought in. It is the responsibility of the employer to exhaust every option in the search for new employees. One of these options being hourly wages.
Jasper鈥檚 wages and the TFW program are very much intertwined. When you take into account the cost of living in Jasper, the wages just don鈥檛 compare, even to surrounding communities. If wages were higher, jobs in Jasper would become more enticing to Canadians, thus easing, not eliminating, the need for the TFW program.
Who did these jobs before? And why are people not doing them now? Is limited housing in the town a factor? Shouldn鈥檛 we be looking to find out the answers to these questions?
Jasper is creating its own problem in a way. It鈥檚 common in this town to hear, 鈥減eople come here to experience Jasper, not for the money.鈥� While this is true for the most part鈥攎ost people come to Jasper and take their low paying summer job, as part of the 鈥淛asper experience鈥濃�攖hat shouldn鈥檛 be the way it is. If you want to retain staff, you need to give them incentive to stay, and the view that the town itself is that incentive, doesn鈥檛 seem to be working.
The situation in Jasper can be summed up quite easily. If the wages are to stay where they are, then yes we will continue to rely on the TFW program for cheaper labour. But if we want to find a long-term solution to the problem, wages will eventually have to match the towns cost of living
With all of that said, the TFW program should be a last resort, not a first choice.
Kyle Gregory
Jasper, Alta.
