Speaking to reporters in Calgary, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his government will bring in a series of reforms "in very short order" to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to ensure there are no more abuses.
While not commenting on the specific RBC issue, Harper said he has been concerned about media stories of abuses of the program as well as the ballooning numbers of foreign workers brought into the country.
"I think it is important for Canadians and all businesses to understand that the purpose of this program is to provide temporary -- temporary -- help in cases where there are absolute and acute labour shortages. It does not have broader purposes than that," he said.
The mea culpa by RBC chief executive Gord Nixon and the government move follow a backlash after Canadian information technology workers at the bank complained they were being replaced by foreign workers, some of whom were being brought to Canada for training.
In an open letter to be published in today's newspapers, Nixon said the bank is also reviewing its supplier arrangements and policies to balance its desire to be a successful business and a "leading corporate citizen."
He repeated assurances that all the affected workers -- about 45 -- will be offered comparable job opportunities at the bank, Canada's largest by assets.
"RBC has been in the news this week in a way no company ever wants to be," Nixon said in a letter distributed Thursday afternoon.
"While we are compliant with the regulations, the debate has been about something else. The question for many people is not about doing only what the rules require -- it's about doing what employees, clients, shareholders and Canadians expect of RBC. And that's something we take very much to heart."
Critics were not letting RBC off the hook so easily, nor the federal government, under whose program the bank's contractor, iGate, got permission to use foreign workers to replace Canadians.
IGate brought its own employees into Canada on temporary-foreign-worker visas so they could be trained for the services they'll provide to RBC.
Online reaction on Facebook and Twitter was scathing.
"(Y)our apology first sounds like 'sorry we got caught' and second, we are shifting blame to the supplier. Disingenuous dirtbags," tweeted one user from the @securityintern account.
"Would this have happened if the public wasn't aware of the hiring practice in the first place?" read another from @MINITee.
The United Steelworkers, representing chartered-bank staff across Canada, said it was launching a legal challenge in Federal Court to Ottawa's approval for iGate to use temporary foreign workers. The Steelworkers argued the conditions were not met in the iGate case.
NDP finance critic Peggy Nash called on the federal government to also apologize and close the loopholes that allowed iGate to obtain the visas.
She noted that in a soft labour market, where the unemployment rate remains more than a full point higher than it was before the 2008-09 recession, the number of foreign temporary workers being brought into the country has exploded. According to Immigration Department figures, the number of temporary foreign workers in Canada as of Dec. 1 was 338,189, more than double the figure seven years earlier.
"The reality is Canada has lost hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs in manufacturing, IT (and) some value-added services in processing industries in a race to the bottom," Nash said.
Queens University law professor Sharry Aiken called the RBC apology a damage-control exercise, saying the company likely made the calculation it couldn't afford the public-relations black eye.
In earlier statements and an interview Nixon gave to CBC, the bank had said it expected and believed its outsourcing supplier complied with all relevant Canadian rules.
"Mr. Nixon is an intelligent individual and no doubt came to appreciate quite quickly that maintaining the line was actually damaging the reputation of the bank."
Original Article
Source: winnipegfreepress.com
Author: Julian Beltrame and Dave Paddon
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