ST. ALBERT, Alta. – A firm linked to a Chinese state-owned company was ordered Thursday to pay $1.5 million in penalties in the deaths of two foreign workers at an Alberta oilsands project.

SSEC Canada Ltd. pleaded guilty last September to three workplace safety charges in the deaths of the Chinese temporary foreign workers.

The men died in 2007 at Canadian Natural Resources' (TSX:CNQ) Horizon project near Fort McMurray when an oil storage tank they were building collapsed.

Alberta Justice spokeswoman Michelle Davio said the penalty is the largest ever imposed by a judge in the province on workplace safety charges.

"The penalty is made up of a $200,000 fine and $1.3 million payment to the Alberta Law Foundation that will be used to support outreach and education programs for temporary foreign workers and for workers who are new to Alberta," she said.

SSEC Canada is the Canadian subsidiary of Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company Ltd.

The case involved a total of 53 charges involving three different companies, including Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources and Sinopec.

Charges against Sinopec were withdrawn. All 29 charges against CNRL were stayed, meaning the government can reactivate them at any time over one year.

According to an agreed statement of facts filed in court, problems at the Horizon project began in 2006 when 132 Mandarin-speaking Chinese workers recruited by SSEC Canada were late in getting to the worksite.

Work on the large metal storage tanks fell behind schedule.

SSEC Canada proposed revised construction in which the tanks' walls and roofs would be built at the same time.

CNRL agreed to the revisions, but said the work should be done under its own construction management team which would supervise quality control and safety.

SSEC Canada began work using the new method before CNRL's team arrived on site, even though the procedures hadn't been certified by a professional engineer.

On April 24, 2007, about three weeks after SSEC Canada began using the new approach, a roof collapsed when the wire cables holding it up snapped after being kinked and torqued in high winds.

The two workers were crushed by falling steel. Five other Chinese workers were injured.

Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, called the penalty "less than a drop in the bucket."

"This was an opportunity for the Alberta government to send a clear message to companies like Sinopec that if they want to do business in Canada, then they have to observe and follow our rules when it comes to workplace rights and health and safety," McGowan said.

The case was delayed for years by uncertainty over which company was responsible and whether they would be responsible as an employer, contractor or prime contractor.

Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Co. went to the Alberta Court of Appeal in a losing effort to argue that it hadn't been properly served with legal documents, since it had no presence in Canada.

The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear a challenge.

ST. ALBERT, Alta. - A firm linked to a Chinese state-owned company was ordered Thursday to pay $1.5 million in penalties in the deaths of two foreign workers at an Alberta oilsands project.

SSEC Canada Ltd. pleaded guilty last September to three workplace safety charges in the deaths of the Chinese temporary foreign workers.

The men died in 2007 at Canadian Natural Resources' (TSX:CNQ) Horizon project near Fort McMurray when an oil storage tank they were building collapsed.

Alberta Justice spokeswoman Michelle Davio said the penalty is the largest ever imposed by a judge in the province on workplace safety charges.

"The penalty is made up of a $200,000 fine and $1.3 million payment to the Alberta Law Foundation that will be used to support outreach and education programs for temporary foreign workers and for workers who are new to Alberta," she said.

SSEC Canada is the Canadian subsidiary of Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company Ltd.

The case involved a total of 53 charges involving three different companies, including Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources and Sinopec.

Charges against Sinopec were withdrawn. All 29 charges against CNRL were stayed, meaning the government can reactivate them at any time over one year.

According to an agreed statement of facts filed in court, problems at the Horizon project began in 2006 when 132 Mandarin-speaking Chinese workers recruited by SSEC Canada were late in getting to the worksite.

Work on the large metal storage tanks fell behind schedule.

SSEC Canada proposed revised construction in which the tanks' walls and roofs would be built at the same time.

CNRL agreed to the revisions, but said the work should be done under its own construction management team which would supervise quality control and safety.

SSEC Canada began work using the new method before CNRL's team arrived on site, even though the procedures hadn't been certified by a professional engineer.

On April 24, 2007, about three weeks after SSEC Canada began using the new approach, a roof collapsed when the wire cables holding it up snapped after being kinked and torqued in high winds.

The two workers were crushed by falling steel. Five other Chinese workers were injured.

Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, called the penalty "less than a drop in the bucket."

"This was an opportunity for the Alberta government to send a clear message to companies like Sinopec that if they want to do business in Canada, then they have to observe and follow our rules when it comes to workplace rights and health and safety," McGowan said.

The case was delayed for years by uncertainty over which company was responsible and whether they would be responsible as an employer, contractor or prime contractor.

Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Co. went to the Alberta Court of Appeal in a losing effort to argue that it hadn't been properly served with legal documents, since it had no presence in Canada.

The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear a challenge.

The Canadian Press, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013

ST. ALBERT - A Canadian subsidiary of Chinese state-owned oil giant Sinopec has been ordered to pay $1.5 million in penalties for failing to ensure the safety of two Chinese workers killed in a 2007 tank collapse at a work site in northern Alberta.

Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company Canada Ltd. pleaded guilty to three charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act in September. It was given the maximum $500,000 fine for each charge in a St. Albert courtroom Thursday.

The total penalty is the biggest workplace safety fine in Alberta's history and one of the biggest in Canada.

Two charges were related to the deaths of the two temporary foreign workers and the third was connected to two workers who were seriously injured.

As part of a creative sentencing agreement between Crown prosecutors and SSEC lawyers, $1.3 million of the fine will be used to educate temporary foreign workers on their legal rights.

Workers Ge Genbao, 28, and Lui Hongliang, 33, were killed on April 24, 2007 when the roof structure of a multi-storey metal holding tank collapsed at a work site 70 kilometres north of Fort McMurray. The site was part of the Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. $10.8-billion Horizon project.

Court has heard that SSEC Canada did not get the tank construction plan certified by an engineer. The wires securing the tank were not strong enough to hold up in even moderate winds, according to an agreed statement of facts.

"The accident almost had a sense of inevitability to it," said provincial court Judge John Maher. The judge said he was struck by the extent of the failure to comply by safety standards.

"This is a particularly egregious case," Maher said. "The size of the penalty is directionally proportional to the consequences of the act. It's hard to imagine in this case why it would not be a maximum penalty."

Crown prosecutor Marshall Hopkins said he was confident such a massive penalty would be an effective deterrent for other companies.

Kevin Flaherty, executive director of the Alberta Workers' Health Centre, said the money enables his group to "do some good work with a bad situation."

The $1.3 million will be used in a three-year program to train 45 people to educate temporary foreign workers about their rights and Alberta's workplace health laws. Flaherty said such workers are particularly vulnerable because they fear loss of their work visas if they speak up.

"They can't just walk across the street and get another job," Flaherty said. "We need to be a much better job of treating these workers as people when they arrive."

Flaherty expects the education program will reach 5,500 workers and spread further by word of mouth.

The Alberta Federation of Labour was not impressed by the court decision and called the fine "a slap on the wrist" that will not be a deterrent.

"One-and-a half-million dollars doesn't even amount to a rounding error in the annual budget of a monstrous global corporation like Sinopec," AFL president Gil McGowan said in a prepared statement. "This fine does nothing to dissuade them from playing fast and loose with the safety of their workforce."

SSEC was the direct employer of the workers and contracted by CNRL. SSEC recruited 132 Mandarin-speaking Chinese workers for the tank project.

The original plan was to build the tank walls first, then use them to support the roof while it was under construction. That plan changed when the project fell behind schedule.

CNRL approved the construction change, but SSEC did not prepare any formal written procedures that should have been certified by a professional engineer.

The construction of 13 tanks began on April 2, 2007. The collapse occurred three weeks later.

Hongliang, an electrician, was struck by a steel girder while standing on the partially completed wall. He died at the scene. His son, in China, was only a year old at the time. Genbao, a scaffolder, was on the floor of the tank and was crushed by falling steel. He died on the way to hospital. He is survived by four older sisters in China.

On Thursday afternoon, SSEC Canada issued a statement that expressed regret for the deaths and said it accepted Maher's ruling.

Sinopec had tried to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada on the grounds that it had no official presence in Canada and was not under the jurisdiction of a provincial justice system. The nation's top court refused to hear that appeal.

The Edmonton Journal, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013
Byline: Ryan Cormier

It has been, for Alberta, a dismal new year. With pipelines out of the province effectively full, Canadian crude has become a discount brand, and once-expected money is evaporating. The future looks little better. Alberta's Finance Minister has taken to dramatic language to describe the financial duress striking his province.

"This is not an ordinary storm," Doug Horner said this week. The dipping price of Canadian oil will strip some $27-billion from the Canadian economy this year, he said in a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce that was designed to soften the ground for what is certain to be a grim provincial budget on March 7.

Mr. Horner's argument hinges largely on "differentials." It's an industry term that describes, in the current context, price discounts. So for example, Canadian heavy oil – which is often traded as a blend called Western Canadian Select – has seen a differential of as much as $42 (U.S.) a barrel below the headline oil price numbers. In North America, the headline number is typically the "benchmark" West Texas intermediate (WTI) blend. A big dip away from West Texas intermediate means that Canadian oil is selling on the cheap – and cheap oil for buyers mean low prices for sellers, the reason Alberta is facing such dire straits.

Not everyone is buying it, though. Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, for example, says "the differential has been around for years, it's just now being used as a scapegoat to draw attention away from the government's failed revenue policies."

And it's true that differentials are nothing new. Canadian heavy oil takes more energy – and therefore more cost – to process into fuels like gasoline or diesel, so it's always sold for cheaper. According to Patricia Mohr, the Bank of Nova Scotia economist, that discount averaged $18.19 between 2005 and 2009. (Alberta budgets on a $15.97 differential.)

So a $40 discount for Canadian heavy oil is big – but nearly half that discount is perfectly normal. And over the past 12 months, the differential has averaged just over $25, which means it hasn't been much bigger than average.

Still, the current differential is obviously much bigger – and there are ways to sort out what it could be if there was plenty of space on pipelines. Take, for example, the differential between Louisiana light sweet oil (LLS) and Maya oil. Those two blends of crude traded on the U.S. Gulf Coast are roughly comparable to Canadian light oil and Western Canadian Select, respectively. In recent trading, the gap between LLS and Maya has been roughly $13. Some argue that in a logical world, the Canadian heavy oil discount would look more like that – a possibility that emphasizes how much is being lost today.

But the many different ways of calculating things have led to widely varying estimates of the missed revenues for energy companies today. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers did a back-of-the-envelope sketch and came to roughly $15-billion, based on current pricing. Martin King, a commodities analyst with FirstEnergy Capital Corp., pegs it at $18-billion.

The numbers are necessarily guesses, since they are based on estimates of what oil prices could be if pipelines weren't effectively full and product went to market unobstructed.

That said, the numbers can also be crunched to show much larger losses. If Canadian crude could make it to tidewater, it would access the kind of international prices that drive LLS and Maya. Compared to that, far more revenue is being forfeited – Mr. King puts it at nearly $30-billion, in the vicinity of the Alberta estimates. Still, that's far more hypothetical, since it's less certain that Canadian oil will achieve international prices, given the troubles industry has encountered building pipelines to the West Coast.

And at least part of the story is that the Alberta government didn't just underestimate differentials. It also overestimated the headline oil prices, expecting a WTI price of $99.25 when it's actually been about $93 over the past 12 months.

Either way, Mr. King said, current differentials are adding up to missed government tax and royalty revenues of about $4-billion to $6-billion. Most of that pain accrues to Alberta.

"You take the mid range of that; $5-billion that's wiped out just because we're taking a hit on spreads," he said.

The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013
Byline: Nathan Vanderklippe

VANCOUVER - The nationwide Idle No More movement merged with ongoing protests against oil pipeline projects proposed for British Columbia, to bring more than a thousand protesters out to greet the federal review panel conducting hearings in Vancouver.

The community hearings by the federal panel on the Northern Gateway project are scheduled to resume this morning, after a noisy start on Monday night.

First Nations from as far as the Haisla Nation on the North Coast, near the would-be tanker port of Kitimat, B.C., and from the Interior took part in a march to the downtown hotel where the hearings are being held.

"The Harper government has one of the most aggressive, high-carbon strategies in the world," Eddie Gardner, of the Sto:lo Nation, told the crowd as they mobilized ahead of the march.

He blasted the federal Conservatives for changes they've made to environmental laws that will affect oversight of the Northern Gateway proposed by Enbridge (TSX:ENB) and other projects.

"He implemented that legislation, it has become law, and he did it with crass and ruthless disregard for the environment," Gardner told the protesters.

"Stephen Harper is hell bent to expand the tar sands.

"Canada is coming alive to Harper's real agenda ... he is one of the biggest enemies of the environment."

Protesters were met by Vancouver police, who kept them from entering the building. They remained outside the Sheraton Wall Centre for a short time, drumming and chanting "No Pipelines" before moving on.

Kiera Corrigan, 25, said she is originally from Bella Coola, a small community on the central coast.

"I think it's really important that we don't put in this pipeline. My home town is right south of Kitimat, so it hits really close to home if we ever have an oil spill, which there will be," she said.

Protesters also took aim at a proposed expansion of the existing TransMountain pipeline operated by Kinder Morgan.

The pipeline moves oil from the oil sands to port in Vancouver, and a proposed $4.3-billion expansion would more than double the capacity of the 1,100-kilometre line.

The joint review panel, which is weighing the Northern Gateway, has scheduled eight days of hearings in Vancouver.

They're hearing public comment on the controversial plan to deliver oil from the Alberta oil sands to a tanker port on the North Coast of B.C.

Community hearings were held previously in Victoria, and a one-day hearing is scheduled in Kelowna later this month.

The panel limited access to the hearings room to participants.

"Given the large urban nature of Victoria and Vancouver and previous protests held in both locations regarding the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway project (the project), the panel has decided that it will limit access to the hearing room," stated the directive.

Members of the public are able to listen to submissions in another location. The hearings are also being streamed live on the panel website.

Access to the hearings remained closed off after the protesters dispersed.

Inside, the three-person panel heard from a range of interested members of the public, from First Nations and environmentalists, to a scientist who lamented telling her children and grandchildren about what she did about climate change.

"What will you tell your grandchildren?" the woman asked the panel.

Eric Doherty, a former Canadian Coast Guard marine engineer turned environmental planner, chided the panel for failing to consider emissions from the Alberta oil sands in its assessment.

"It's no longer controversial that global warming is killing people," he said. "It's no longer controversial that global warming is THE threat to our society."

The pipeline project has been incredibly divisive in British Columbia and as the end of the long regulatory process nears, both sides are trying their utmost to rally support.

The United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters decided to weigh in Monday, with a statement from Canadian director John Telford stating that the project "will provide jobs to members in Eastern Canada as well as the West."

"The regulation of the oil and gas industry as a whole ensures that the impact to the environment and native peoples will be minimal and the benefits should far exceed any possible drawbacks," the union said in the statement.

And Enbridge has been on a charm offensive in the province for months, with full-page newspaper ads and radio ads extolling the benefits of the project and assuring B.C. residents they will employ world-leading safety measures.

The panel held final hearings earlier in Edmonton, Prince George and Prince Rupert, where company experts and interveners answered questions under oath.

Those hearings will resume in Prince Rupert next month, and the panel must submit its recommendations to the Environment Minister by the end of this year.

Huffpost BC, Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013
Byline: Dene Moore, The Canadian Press

During the last month of 2012, Christian Paradis, Canada's minister of industry, announced on behalf of the Canadian government the approval of the $15.1 billion acquisition of Nexen Inc. by China state-owned enterprise (SOE) China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC).

The CNOOC deal was heralded as the largest acquisition by a Chinese SOE, and the media suggested that with this transaction the Chinese communist regime indicates its intention to reduce its investment in U.S. bonds.

CNOOC pledged to abide by free market standards, including "transparency and disclosure; commercial orientation, including an adherence to Canadian laws and practices ... and employment and capital investments, which demonstrate a long-term commitment to the development of the Canadian economy," as stated in a Dec. 7, 2012, Government of Canada announcement.

It is not known if a national security review, often required under the Investment Canada Act, has been completed in the CNOOC-Nexen purchase, especially as Canadian secrecy rules prohibit anyone from discovering that such a review took place.

The CNOOC deal is not cast in stone yet, as Nexen has assets in the United States, the United Kingdom (U.K.), and the European Union (EU), and thus still needs approval from the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Canadian regulatory agencies, and respective U.K. and EU government agencies.

"The U.S. approach is more specific, transparent, and integrated than the Investment Canada scheme. The U.S. CFIUS model also requires nine agencies to work together to carry out reviews," said Debra Steger, law professor at the University of Ottawa, in a Dec. 7, 2012, interview published by Maclean's.

Secrecy and Lack of Transparency

According to media reports, the Canadian government has not prevented the acquisition of a Canadian oil and gas company by any foreign SOE, because it could always find a net benefit for Canada. However, as of date, the government has not been transparent as to what it considers a net benefit and how it tests for the net benefit.

"There is no formal, transparent, judicial or quasi-judicial process. Rather, the process is an internal investigation conducted by Industry Canada officials in the case of a 'net benefit' review," Steger said in the interview.

There are actually two types of reviews: One is the net benefit review, and the other is the national security review. The latter could be ordered when the foreign buyer is an SOE. However, this type of review is shrouded in greater secrecy, and it is impossible to determine if such a review has taken place.

"In the case of a 'national security' review, the process is even less transparent ... and no written reasons are published. ... The national security process is shrouded in secrecy, there is no appeal, and ... no one knows what happened in a particular case or even if a national security review was conducted," Steger said.

Acquisition of Canadian Assets

The Nexen purchase isn't CNOOC's or other Chinese SOEs' first purchase of Canadian assets.

"In 2011, CNOOC made a major move into the oil sands by purchasing 100 per cent of OPTI Canada for $2.1 billion. Sinopec acquired Daylight Energy in 2011, and made a $4.65 billion investment in Syncrude in April 2010.

"China Investment Corporation (CIC), a sovereign wealth fund with an office in Toronto, made an investment of $817 million in a new oil sands joint venture with Penn West Energy Trust in May 2010; it also made a $1.5 billion investment in Canadian mining company, Teck Resources, in 2009. Petro China invested $1.9 billion in Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. in late 2009," according to Steger.

Concerning some of the above investments, Steger suggests that some of them were minority investments, and thus didn't fall under the Investment Canada Act requirement, even though some of the investments were for a large amount of money.

Chinese SOEs and the Trust Issue

The question remains, can the agreement between CNOOC and the Canadian Ministry of Industry be taken seriously?

"About two-thirds of the public (68%) say the U.S. cannot trust China too much or at all," according to a Pew Research Center Sept. 18, 2012, report.

"Unfortunately, as long as China is ruled by the communists, ... [their] words cannot be trusted," according to a commentary on the Eye Dr. DeLengocky website, a website by a Vietnamese doctor who immigrated to the United States in 1990

Quoting former president of South Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu, Dr. Tayson DeLengocky said, "Do not listen to what the communists say, just look at their actions."

Public Relations Ploy

Concerning the takeover of Canadian assets by foreign SOEs, Stephen Harper, Canada's prime minister, announced that going forward, Canada would put in force tougher conditions, which would nix acquisitions like the CNOOC-Nexen deal.

"Prime Minister Harper's supposedly 'tough new conditions' for foreign takeovers are nothing more than a public relations ploy aimed at masking the fact that he has just allowed a foreign government to seize unprecedented control over Canada's energy resources," a Dec. 7, 2012, article on the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) website suggests.

The AFL doubts any sweeping overhaul is in the making, especially since the process will be outside the public eye, and the industry minister will still be in charge of the proceedings.

"CNOOC is not your typical oil company. It doesn't operate on market principles, and it isn't beholden to investors. If they [Canadian officials] had been serious about defending the interest of Canadians, they would have nixed the deal outright," according to AFL President Gil McGowan in the Dec. 7, 2012, article.

Trying to Nix the CNOOC-Nexen Deal

"The Harper Government approved the sale of Nexen to a Chinese government-owned oil company Friday in part because critics of the deal couldn't make a good case against it," a Dec. 9, 2012, article on the Calgary Beacon website suggests.

Arguments that China is a communist country are a political weapon, but not a sound argument to scuttle the CNOOC-Nexen acquisition.

The communist allegation cannot be seen as a valid reason for nixing the CNOOC-Nexen deal, as proponents will ask, "Then why does Canada do business with China?" For example, why does Canada continue to do business with the Chinese state? In 2011, Canada's trade deficit with the Chinese state was CA$32 billion and CA$24 billion from January 2012 to September 2012, according to the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

Concerning the argument that Canada is handing over its natural resources to China, the Calgary Beacon article disagrees.

"Under Section 92A of the Canadian constitution, the provinces own the country's natural resources and are given the responsibility for managing them," according to the article.

Many of the opponents to the CNOOC-Nexen deal point to the flagrant industrial espionage the Chinese state has been committing for years. No one doubts that the Chinese state has been known for years as a violator of intellectual property rights and has been linked to online spying.

"The counter argument is that CNOCC is state-invested, not state-managed, ... [and] has plenty of Canadian shareholders. ... CNOOC has also pledged to keep on the existing Nexen management team, which suggests that using the Canadian entity to commit espionage may be tougher than it looks," according to the Calgary Beacon article.

Epoch Times, Friday, Jan. 11, 2013
Byline:  Heide B. Malhotra

Social justice lawyer Fay Faraday says it's time for Canadians to insist on sweeping reforms of the federal Foreign Temporary Workers Program to protect workers from the kinds of abuses reported on in the three previous articles in this series. "It's a systemic problem and we will keep hearing those horror stories until we do something about it."

Faraday offers 22 recommendations in her Metcalf Foundation funded report titled "Made In Canada: How the Law Constructs Migrant Workers' Insecurity," which found that abuse of migrant workers is endemic. Faraday's proposals include allowing work permits to be tied to an industry or a province rather than a single employer. She also advises the government to "reverse" the trend of temporariness and allow all workers the chance to apply for Canadian residency.

Faraday, together with other lawyers, Ai Li Lim and Charles Gordon, and union leaders Joe Barrett and Gil McGowan, emphasize the need for enforcement mechanisms: a civil body or employment standards investigators to ensure labour laws are respected. It's not like it's not possible. In Manitoba, for example, all employers and recruitment agencies must be registered with the provincial government, and inspectors are sent to worksites.

Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan calls the Manitoba government's system the "gold standard" of protection for migrant workers. Because of the oversight, the federal government will not process an application for a migrant worker if the provincial government believes that an employer would break labour laws. To Faraday, this collaboration suggests that "national standards" can be accomplished to provide "front-end protection against migrant worker exploitation."

Manitoba also transitions many migrant workers into permanent residency through the Provincial Nominee Program, through which 90 per cent of its economic immigrants come. From 2005 to 2009, Manitoba granted residency to 13,089 foreign workers, representing 38 per cent of all nominees, whereas Ontario accepted only 1,247 in that same four-year span.

In 2011 the federal government introduced changes to the TFWP to "provide further protections for temporary foreign workers while alleviating temporary labour shortages." These three changes include:

• ensuring the "genuineness" of the job offer;

• banning employers for two years if they fail to respect wages and working conditions;

• imposing a limit of four years in which migrant workers are eligible to stay in Canada -- and they cannot return until another four years has passed.

The first change, say critics, is virtually meaningless, while the second is not being enforced. There is currently not a single employer on the blacklist -- and no regulating body exists to find and ban bad employers. Only the last change -- limiting stays to four years -- is actually implemented by the government, which, say critics, merely serves to heighten workers' disposability in Canada. Within four years, workers most likely would have improved their language skills, have learned their rights, and be more willing to unionize.

Protections do exist: government

An October report by Jeremy J. Nuttall in The Tyee that a recruiting company was asking Chinese coal miners to pay an illegal $12,500 recruitment fee to gain work in B.C. through the Temporary Foreign Workers Program raised further concerns about the mistreatment of migrant workers. Two Canadian unions responded by launching a judicial review to investigate whether the workers were given employment authorizations, also known as a Labour Market Opinion, that ensures Canadian workers were sought before recruiting miners from China. As the controversy over the HD coal mine in Murray River grew, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada announced that it was already investigating the entire Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

HRSDC says the government is concerned over the "integrity" of the program. "When Canadians are not available to fill vacancies, temporary foreign workers who are hired must be treated fairly and the same as Canadians doing the same job," says Marian Ngo, press secretary for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley.

The other federal department that oversees the TFWP, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), says it has plans to further protect workers. In an email, CIC communications representative Paul Northcott told The Tyee that the government introduced "new legislative authorities that will allow for inspections of employers, including site visits, to verify their compliance with program requirements" as part of the Economic Action Plan 2012. He also highlighted separate efforts of provincial governments to prevent abuse, such as Ontario's June 2012 inspections of recruitment agencies, Manitoba's and Nova Scotia's requirement for employers and recruiters to be provincially registered, and Alberta and Saskatchewan's new legislation to crack down on unscrupulous agencies and improve transparency.

Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan isn't impressed. The provinces took responsibility because they had to "fill the vacuum" of inaction on the part of Ottawa, he said.

"The federal government has literally spent tens of millions of dollars on expanding the TFWP and introducing mechanisms to speed approval for the employers but they spent barely a cent on investigation and enforcement [to protect the workers]," he added.

McGowan also expressed doubt about the CIC's announced changes, noting that he and the Alberta unions have been asking for changes for at least five years. "Given the Harper government's reluctance to spend on public services, I remain skeptical about whether or not they will actually put the resources in place to make these rules anything more than a paper tiger."

Temp workers and Canada's job landscape

Earlier in this series we met Costa Rican Jose Salguero, one of the imported workers who helped build the Canada Line railway for pay so low they took action by joining a union and winning a BC Human Rights Tribunal decision. We met Filipino Alfredo Sales, who fought to reclaim over $6,000 in lost wages from Denny's, and leads a class action suit on behalf of dozens more migrant workers the restaurant chain employed. Workers like Jose Salguero and Alfredo Sales require courage to stand up for themselves by filing legal action. According to McGowan and Faraday, low-wage workers in general tend not to complain to the authorities over employment violations until after they quit and find work elsewhere. Adding their temporary status to the equation makes it all the more risky.

Industry argues that Canada is a big country with a lot of tough or specialized jobs that need doing in hard places, and that foreign workers can be the only way to fill the need. But critics respond that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, wittingly or unwittingly, creates Third World conditions for migrant workers, and risks putting similar pressures on the domestic workforce. By moving entire employment categories, which Canadians will always have a need for, to non-resident workers, the TFWP encourages economic dependency abroad while discouraging the development of local job markets. It's outsourcing by insourcing from abroad, a two-tiered system wherein no one wins.

The lack of enforceable rules allows major corporations, medium-sized businesses and even middle-class Canadians who need caregivers to do as they please with migrant workers. Neither SELI and SNC Lavalin, who paid their Latin workers a fraction of what they paid Europeans, nor Denny's, who did not pay for Filipino workers' airfares and overtime work, -- nor even Sinopec, who was ruled responsible for the deaths of two Chinese oilsands workers, due to safety violations -- have paid any fines. Nor have they been banned from hiring migrant workers in future.

Becoming the 'Dubai of the North'

McGowan believes that the continued use of migrant labour will heighten racial tensions, as local and foreign workers are pitted against each other. "It flies in the face of Canadian values and it's being used as a tool to undermine the Canadian labour market," he says. The AFL believes that the system is broken, that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program should be scrapped and replaced with permanent immigration -- the way Canada was before.

"We're not saying that Canada should stop bringing workers from overseas to work in our economy, he says. "What we are saying is that this is not the way to do it."

The risk with the current loosely regulated system is that the hard-won rights to eight-hour work days, overtime pay, medical coverage and worker protections may be eroded by transnational corporations who have access to a cheap workforce that is more docile by the nature of the regulatory framework.

"If they can mistreat foreign workers I don't think it's long before they mistreat domestic workers as well," says lawyer Charles Gordon. He also says eventually migrant workers will want to stay – and they will, "legally or illegally." Other experts anticipate that the nearly half a million migrant workers present in Canada in 2011 could go underground when they are expected to return to their home countries after four years in accordance with new legislation.

"The United States is an example of that, where you have a lot of illegal foreign workers but they're working and they're a significant part of the economy," Gordon says.

McGowan draws a comparison to other countries. "We're becoming the Dubai or Saudi Arabia of the North, not only because we have oil, but because we're abandoning real immigration in favour of using an exploitative guest worker program to fill our most menial and undesirable jobs. We've joined a global underground railway trading in human misery. It's a shameful transformation and a betrayal of Canadian values and our traditional approach to immigration."

The Tyee, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013
Byline: Krystle Alarcon

CALGARY — The boom in U.S. shale oil and natural gas production threatens to cut off a key supply of skilled temporary foreign workers for Alberta companies, as more tradespeople opt to work on large infrastructure projects in the United States despite the lure of dramatically higher wages in Western Canada.

"There's going to be a battle between what goes up north versus what comes down south," said Mike Bergen, executive vice-president of Sugar Land, Tex.-based market research firm Industrial Info Resources.

Advances in drilling technology have unlocked new supplies of crude oil and natural gas from hard-to-reach reservoirs across much of the U.S. By 2025, shale gas alone could add more than one million workers to the U.S. manufacturing industry, according to a fall report published by PricewaterhouseCoopers, reducing costs for raw materials and energy by as much as US$11.6-billion annually.

"You get a big [liquefied natural gas] project that takes place and then you get several of these big refinery projects and then here comes a new ethylene plant," Mr. Bergen said. "That's going to draw a lot of labour."

Alberta's perennially tight labour market means average wages for electricians, boilermakers, plumbers and pipefitters, carpenters and structural steelworkers are anywhere from 70% to 136% higher than median U.S. wages, depending on the trade, according to a five-year outlook published Monday by Industrial Info.

The high wages contribute to an operating environment already seen as one of the most expensive regions in the world from which to extract oil, at a time Alberta's heavy blend of crude, Western Canada Select, is subject to steep price discounts in the U.S.

Larry Matychuk, business manager for the Edmonton-based Local 488 branch of the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, said the base wage rate for members is $43.77 per hour plus benefits.

He said the union regularly turns to its U.S. affiliates for additional tradespeople during "shut down season," a four-month annual stretch when refineries and bitumen upgrading plants shut down for maintenance, exacerbating worker shortages.

"We've had 200 to 300 of them up here at a time," he said of the U.S. tradespeople. "We expect that that's going to increase. We offer jobs to Canadians first. However, there is work picking up across Canada now. There's work in Saskatchewan; there's work in Newfoundland. Work is starting to pick up in Ontario and B.C. We don't have access to as many of the Canadians as we used to have."

ExxonMobil Corp. said last week it was moving ahead with its US$14-billion Hebron development offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.

The project, designed to recover more than 700 million barrels of oil from the Jeanne d'Arc basin roughly 350 kilometres southeast of St. John's, will employ up to 3,500 people during construction, the Irving, Tex.-based energy giant said.

That could spell trouble for Alberta oil producers. The latest figures compiled by the Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada suggest at least 9,500 jobs could go unfilled in the country's oil and gas industry by 2015.

Oil sands production is poised to increase 44% by then from today's levels, to 2.48 million barrels per day, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

An influx of U.S. tradespeople could help with facility expansions needed to boost production, Mr. Matychuk said, "if the Americans are available at the time when we need them."

Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, expressed concern about Americans filling Canadian jobs in the oil sands.

"We're not talking about sharing a cup of sugar with them," he said in an interview. "We're talking about jobs that pay in excess of $100,000 a year. We should not be allowing these jobs to go to people outside of Canada without first doing everything we can to provide opportunities to Canadians."

The point may be moot, as workers in the U.S. help rejig facilities to meet new sulphur specifications in gasoline plus accommodate soaring production of U.S. shale oil fields.

Refiners are "engaging in some pretty big projects" on the Texas Gulf Coast, Mr. Bergen at Industrial Info noted. "We're anticipating some pretty decent expansion work on distillate and crude conversions for taking the shale crude," he said.

Financial Post, Monday, Jan. 7, 2013
Byline: Jeff Lewis

Reports of exploited foreign temps have grown as fast as the federal program.

First in a series.

They hand you a soothing cup of Tim Hortons, pack frozen beef in factories, pick blueberries and apples on Abbotsford farms, serve fast-food meals and wipe tables, excavate mines and drill for oil in Western Canada, and raise your kids as if they were their own. Typically paid far less than Canadians, unprotected by labour laws, and disposed of when their contracts end, these migrant labourers have become ubiquitous while remaining all but invisible.

Under the Conservative government, the pool of migrant labour has expanded rapidly with almost no public discussion or oversight -- yet who benefits, and at what cost?

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.

Migrant workers have been cycling in and out of Canada since 1972, when the Non-Immigrant Employment Authorization Program was introduced. In 2002 it expanded to become the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) to service the oil and gas industries in Alberta.

Since the Conservative government of Stephen Harper came to power in 2006, the TFWP has expanded rapidly, becoming an unseen pillar of Canada's economic policy. That year, migrant workers admitted to Canada exceeded permanent residents for the first time. And for the first time, employers no longer had to advertise for a minimum of six weeks on a national job bank before being granted permission to hire a migrant, but could do so after just seven days. The shortened processing was a gift to employers, who were allowed to designate workers they needed under "Occupations Under Pressure."

So fast growing are such designations that between 2007 and 2011, the program created a total of almost 30 per cent of all new jobs -- this at a time when the government, grappling with the financial crisis, claimed that creating jobs for Canadians was a key priority. And in 2012, under a little-noted provision of the omnibus budget bill that managed to avoid public debate by sliding in with so much other legislation, the Conservatives introduced changes for high-skilled workers such as dropping application times from 12 weeks to 10 days and permitting employers to pay them 15 per cent less than the average Canadian salary for the same work.

Critics argue that such changes lower standards for all workers, and that it won't be long before the majority of migrant workers, who are considered "low-skilled" in fast-growing sectors such as construction, hospitality, caregiving and agriculture, can legally be paid less than Canadians -- a trend that is already happening, due to the lack of oversight. Many endure mistreatment that, in the most severe case to date, has cost lives.

On April 27, 2007, Canadians woke up to news that two Chinese migrant workers employed by Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Canada near Fort McMurray had been killed when a tank's structure fell on them. Charged with violating safety standards, Sinopec, a part owner of the pipeline transport company Enbridge, initially argued that the Chinese state-owned company "has no official presence" in Canada and therefore did not fall under Canadian jurisdiction. Only recently, on Oct. 10, 2012, did the company plead guilty to three safety violations.

Growing list of abuses

Reports of migrant workers being exploited by powerful corporations have increased almost as fast as the TFWP.

In Oct. 2008, migrant workers at Maple Leaf Foods in Edmonton went on strike with their Canadian counterparts for not receiving the $15 per hour promised in their contracts. Many relied on food banks during the strike as they couldn't survive on the strike wage of $230/week and could not, because of the nature of their work permits, work elsewhere.

On Christmas Eve of 2009, four migrant workers, whose names and the company they worked for were not disclosed, died when the scaffolding of the building they were constructing fell on them.

In May 2009, youth and multiculturalism critic and Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla was criticized for allegedly abusing her caregivers from the Philippines, by forcing them to do work outside their contract and underpaying them.

In Nov. 2010, the UN's International Labour Organization found Ontario, and Canada, guilty of violating the rights of 100,000 migrant and domestic farm workers in the province by banning farm unions. In May 2011 three Filipino temporary workers, dubbed "the Three Amigos," were deported when their permits became invalid after their employers in Alberta laid them off due to the recession. They worked at a Manitoba gas station for another employer who promised to change their permits, but never did.

Roof collapse

Storage tank roof collapsed in April 2007 killing two Chinese migrant workers employed by Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Canada near Fort McMurray. (CBC)

In May 2012, a union staged a blacklist tribunal in front of the Mexican consulate for all the farm workers who have allegedly been sent home for attempting to unionize. Later in June, the exotic dancer stream of the TFWP was cut after the immigration and the human resources departments deemed that there were risks of human trafficking and exploitation within the stream. And this fall the premier of B.C. was severely criticized for advertising a Chinese mining project as a way to bring jobs to Canadians, when up to 2,000 Chinese migrant workers will be recruited to work in mines -- rather than offering the jobs to locals, including the First Nations from those areas. The job ads also listed Mandarin as a language requirement, ruling out most Canadians from applying.

It was also discovered in an investigation by The Tyee that Chinese workers were being charged recruitment fees of more than $12,500 in exchange for work in the mine. Two unions have challenged the Chinese workers' entries, through a judicial review that was approved by the Federal Court. As the controversy grew, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada announced it was reviewing the entire program.

XL Foods, based in Alberta, also came under fire for laying off 2,000 workers, 800 of whom turned out to be migrant workers, after the massive beef recall in September 2012.

And earlier in November four Mexican migrant workers filed a human rights case against their employer at Tim Horton's in Dawson Creek, B.C., who they say gave them the "double-double" treatment, by doubling them up in bunk beds and charging them double in rent, as well as withholding their passports and calling them, according to reports, "Mexican idiots" -- charges their employer said were "made up."

Alberta's two-tier labour system

Alberta currently has the highest per capita use of migrant workers, largely due to the oil sands projects -- 22 times higher than the rest of the Canada -- and their situation reveals troubling rates of mistreatment. As a 2010 audit by the Alberta Ministry of Employment and Immigration discovered, 74 per cent of migrant workers were mistreated by their employers, who typically violated labour laws on overtime, holiday and vacation pay.

Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, sees the treatment of migrant workers as an issue that affects Canadians directly. "They are being used as pawns to drive down wages and conditions across the board, especially in the service sector but also in higher income sectors like construction."

McGowan thinks the growing reliance on temporary foreign labour is a move backwards for Canada: "The Harper government is changing that model in a profound way without any kind of public discussion: to replace the citizenship-based model with a model focused on creating underclassed ghettos of exploitable workers."

He foresees future labour tensions, such as those in Western Europe and the Middle East where "guest workers" perform work their citizens refuse to do. "It set off a powder keg of resentments and animosities between the guest workers and the citizens of the countries in which they are working," he says. The citizens felt that the guest workers "were being used to undermine their wages and conditions, which frankly, they are."

Suncor Energy's attempt to randomly test thousands of its oilsands workers for drugs and alcohol is back under scrutiny as proceedings began again this week.

Arguments are being heard in a labour arbitration in Calgary, with proceedings between Suncor Energy Inc. and the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers union Local 707 that represents 3,4000 workers, the Globe and Mail reports.

Last November, Alberta's top court dismissed an appeal by Suncor Energy over its plan to randomly test thousands of its oilsands workers for drugs and alcohol.

Justice Jean Cote spoke for the majority at the time, calling Suncor's plans "a significant breach of worker's rights," while upholding an injunction that would prohibit the company from testing employees without cause.

New Brunswick's Irving Pulp and Paper is also looking to randomly test employees for alcohol as its mill operations , with the case reaching the Supreme Court of Canada, according to the CBC.

The outcome of these high-profile cases may determine if such testing expands to other workplaces in Canada, CBC adds.

Substance abuse among workers is already a concern in Alberta's oil and gas industry, as workers are exposed to heavy machinery. According to the Globe and Mail, Alberta's courts have been much more likely to allow drug and alcohol testing than in Canada's Eastern and Maritime provinces.

The union argued last year that random testing is an affront to basic human rights, and the Alberta Federation of Labour called the court decision a victory.

"Employers like drug testing programs because they give the impression that something decisive is being done about safety," Federation president Gil McGowan said in a news release at the time.

"But these programs don't improve safety. Employers know that, so it's little more than very expensive public relations."

Suncor spokeswoman Sneh Seetal said that the oilsands giant was disappointed in the court's ruling.

"We know alcohol and drugs are a pressing safety concern at our Wood Buffalo sites and we will present evidence to support this during the arbitration process."

She said three of the seven workers who died while on the job at Suncor's site since 2000 were under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time.

"Our view is one fatality is too many."

The union has agreed to certain types of drug testing in its collective agreement, including pre-employment screening and with-cause drug testing, and says there is no evidence that random drug testing makes workplaces safer.

The Huffington Post Alberta, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013
With files from CP