Tagged: economic policy
[Podcast] The Working City: Canada’s Foreign Temporary Workers
There were 300,111 migrant workers in Canada in 2011 – a more than three-fold increase over the previous decade. Another 190,769 entered that year, creating a temporary foreign workforce of nearly half a million. In 2010, the government accepted one and a half times more migrant workers than permanent Canadian residents.
–Krystle Alarcon, in her four-part series, Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Controversy: Years in the Making
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What is the impact of Canada’s foreign temporary workers program on urban/regional economies? Are these workers more likely exposed to exploitative conditions? Did you know that Vancouver’s Canada Line was built with workers making less than minimum wage?
We continue the ongoing series, The Working City, by discussing Canada’s temporary foreign worker program with Krystle Alarcon, the author of a recent four-part series published by The Tyee, who explores the many problems with the program and the possibilities for reform. We pay particular attention to the urban dimensions of this program and the implications for urban economies and broader ripple effects throughout regional labour markets.
You can find other episodes of The Working City series here.
[Podcast] Differences That Matter: Social Policy and Quality of Life in US and Canadian Cities
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On the podcast, urban sociologist Daniyal Zuberi discusses the importance of social policy for quality of life for the working class and working poor in Canadian and US cities. The conversation centres around the socio-economic conditions of hotel workers in both Vancouver and Seattle and healthcare workers in Vancouver.
Professor Zuberi’s research is critically important because it evaluates how social and economic policies enacted at all levels of government – national, subnational, and local – ‘touch down’ at the urban scale and how policymaking at all levels can be implicated in shaping city life. Professor Zuberi joined me in the CiTR studio for a recorded interview in July 2012.
Dr. Zuberi is Associate Professor of Social Policy at the University of Toronto, and he is a research fellow at Harvard University. His focus has been on Canada and US comparative research around labour, education, health, immigration, poverty, and social welfare.
He is published widely on these topics and is author of Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada. He has two forthcoming books, Outsourced: How Modern Hospitals are Hurting Workers and Endangering Patients and Schooling the Next Generation: How Urban Elementary Schools Build the Resiliency of Immigrant Children.
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