Gil McGowan, Alberta Federation of Labour president, discusses the AFL’s concerns over the provincial government’s foreign worker recruitment efforts.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Michael Higgins: Let’s start on this issue of recruiting workers. You’ve written a letter to the premier demanding answers on this what? Why is this troubling from your organization’s standpoint?
Gil McGowan: There are two words that come to mind. The first is irony, because it was just a few weeks ago that Premier Danielle Smith was lambasting the federal Liberals for bringing in too many non-permanent residents to Canada, and she basically said that it was overwhelming our labour markets, driving inflation. And she’s right; she’s right on those points.
But now, just a few weeks later, we find out that her own government is organizing a recruiting trip overseas to the United Arab Emirates, and basically the (United Conservative) government is helping employers find temporary foreign workers in the Middle East to bring over here to fill jobs that could be filled by Canadians.
These are not low-paying jobs. The ones that they’re recruiting for are probably in industrial construction, so some of the highest-paid jobs in our in our economy, and I’ll tell you that we have the highest unemployment rate west of the Maritimes here in Alberta, higher than it’s been in years. We have the skills, we have the people and we have a government that is trying to fill those jobs with people from outside the country.
The second word is hypocrisy. This is hypocrisy. So it’s ironic and it’s hypocritical.
MH: A statement issued by the Smith government, and this goes back to Oct. 24 and attributed to the premier and immigration and multiculturalism minister, Mohammed Yaseen. It reads, “Ottawa’s priority should be on reducing the number of temporary foreign workers, international students and asylum seekers, not on reducing provincially selected economic migrants.” That was in response to the (Justin) Trudeau government recently announcing cuts to immigration targets. Is there not a need for attracting highly skilled people from around the world to our province?
GM: Well, sure. We’re a country that’s been built by immigration, and we’ve done really well with that, but the premier herself has identified a problem. Over the last few years we’ve allowed too many non-permanent residents into the country, and so what we’ve said in the labour movement here in Alberta, is that these jobs should be made available first to Canadians.
When it comes to these highly skilled jobs in the construction trades, we have high unemployment right now and there is an aging workforce, and that’s an issue. But if we want to train the next generation of trades, we should train them here instead of bringing them from abroad.
I thought that the premier understood this in her criticism of the Trudeau government, but now she’s doing the same thing that she accused him of, which is favouring looking at temporary foreign workers as a first choice, as opposed to a last resort. So as I said, this is ironic, and it’s hypocritical.
MH: Regarding the house clearing at Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) and the appointment of Stephen Harper as board chair, what do you feel the government has accomplished with that move?
GM: Stephen Harper is just a distasteful icing on top of a distasteful cake. For people who don’t know, AIMCo is a wholly owned investment manager, but wholly owned by the Alberta government. Their major responsibility is to manage assets on behalf of our big public sector pension plans, including the Local Authorities Pension Plan, the Public Sector Pension Plan and the Alberta Teachers Retirement Fund.
So those three pensions provide retirement security for literally 500,000 working and retired Albertans and AIMCo is supposed to invest the money that people have saved through these pensions to get the best possible returns. The focus is supposed to be on those retirees and potential retirees, but it’s clear to us that the government is looking at that as a pot of money that they can control. They have a political agenda for it, and so basically what they’ve done is replaced a professional board with a political one.
What we’re just trying to remind the government is: It’s not their money, it’s the money that 500,000 Albertans have set aside for their retirement. Our message is clear: Hands off these pensions. Appointing Stephen Harper just proves that they’re going to prioritize a political agenda rather than the best interests of all those literally hundreds of thousands of Albertans who are counting on those retirements, those pensions, for their retirement security.
MH: Real quick on this response to your demand, it’s how you framed it in a joint letter to the premier, not a request, but a demand, from several unions for seats on the AIMCo board. What came of that?
GM: Nothing came of it, and honestly, that’s what we sort of expected from this government. They acknowledged receipt of our letter, but they have not formally responded to our demand. And frankly, we don’t think it’s an unreasonable demand.
The AIMCo board manages the investments for all these pension plans, but neither the pension plans themselves, nor the workers who have their retirement savings invested in those plans, have seats on that board. It’s just political appointees.
There’s $165 billion of assets. $144 billion dollars of that pot is from money that people have saved in those pension plans, but the workers have no say, the pension plans themselves have no say. This seems to be becoming a political slush fund just for the UCP.
MH: Whether it’s striking postal workers, job action being taken by educational support staff in Alberta, contract negotiations for a number of unions, why is this such a contentious time on the labour front in our province right now?
GM: I’ll give you two words and those words are “wage repair.” I think every Albertan and every Canadian understands that we’ve just come out of a period of very high inflation, and in fact, the cost of living has gone up here in Alberta at a faster rate than any other province in the country.
We’ve seen the price of food, the price of gasoline at the pumps, insurance, you name it, everything is up. The only thing that’s not up is wages, and this is particularly troubling for Albertans. We actually have the distinction, the dubious distinction, of having the lowest rate of wage growth in the entire country.
In fact, basically every other province has seen wages catch up to inflation over the last year, but on average, wages in Alberta have lagged five per cent behind where they were before the pandemic, and that’s after adjusting for inflation. So in real purchasing power, we’re behind. It’s even more for people in the public sector.
There’s a crucial job of wage repair that has to go on. Wages have to go up, they have to catch up to inflation. It’s happened in other provinces, but it’s not happening here. That’s why workers in the public and private sector both feel their grip on the middle class slipping away. They’re concerned about their standard of living, and with good reason. So we’re seeing a lot of solidarity on the picket lines with them, with a multitude of unions.