Prince Rupert Safeway With An “80-90%” Foreign Staff An Example Of Canada’s Disastrous Immigration Policy

Sometimes I write about the big picture when it comes to Canada’s disastrous mass immigration policy: our national population growing by nearly 1.3 million in 2023, 50,000 international students who never showed up to class, a 49% increase in asylum claimants from 2017-2023.

At other times, it helps to zero in on how mass immigration is playing out in a particular community. Here’s a story from Prince Rupert, a port city with a little over 12,000 residents on B.C.’s north coast.

I will be quoting from a piece titled B.C. lives disrupted, economy threatened by new immigration rules published in various Black Press papers across the province. This article is meant to tug at your heartstrings, profiling numerous stories of the supposed victims of Canada’s recent immigration cut – the subtitle is “foreign workers and the people who employ them struggling to stay afloat after government moves the goal posts”. But between the sob stories, some truly startling details about Canada’s unsustainable, under-regulated immigration system emerge.

A Safeway where “80-90%” of the staff are foreign nationals, in a town with 17.1% youth unemployment

The following quote is from a “community dialogue” held at a Prince Rupert hotel on the subject of Canada’s recent permanent residency cut and crackdown on the international student and foreign worker streams.

“Ranjit Gill, manager of Safeway, made an emotional plea during the meeting, noting that 80 to 90 per cent of his staff of approximately 180 are international students and temporary foreign workers. 

‘Could you imagine walking into Safeway and you didn’t see all of them?’ he asked. ‘You’d be chasing me down.’

He also noted he is starting to see attrition in the staff as people are denied visas or seek better futures somewhere else.“

Let’s make a few things clear. This Safeway manager isn’t talking about immigrants who have come to Canada and obtained permanent residency or citizenship – naturalized citizens – he’s talking about non-Canadians. Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) and international students have neither permanent residency nor citizenship. Up to 90% of the staff working at this Safeway in Prince Rupert are foreign nationals.

What about his implication that, because of new rules making it harder for employers to hire TFWs and international students, locals will walk into the grocery store to find that it has become a ghost town entirely devoid of workers? The TFW program was established in 1973. While this may surprise the immigration lobby, grocery stores did in fact exist before 1973.

I live in a remote B.C. community with almost exactly the same population as Prince Rupert – we have almost no TFWs, and two well-functioning grocery stores with plenty of Canadian workers. Because they don’t rely on international students or TFWs, the stores have to put in some leg work to make their jobs attractive – that’s what happens in a tight labour market. To attract local youth, one store offers a deal where they cover a portion of university tuition. Many teenagers are employed in the stores, providing them with spending money and work experience. Often, when you go shopping in the evening, the local grocery stores are almost completely operated by these Canadian teenagers working shifts after school.

According to Statistics Canada, Prince Rupert had a 17.1% youth unemployment rate in 2021. If this Safeway wants to stay open now that Canada’s immigration cut is starting to take effect, I suggest they draw on this pool of potential workers. But, be warned: Canadian workers expect to be paid a good wage and to be treated with dignity. Sobeys, which owns Safeway, can probably afford to do so with its net worth of $2.88 billion.

The taxpayer-funded society defending Canada’s mass immigration status quo

The tragic tale of a Safeway that may face the devastating fate of having to hire Canadians was told at a “community dialogue” co-organized by Community Futures Northwest with facilitators from Prince Rupert’s Hecate Strait Employment Development Society and Terrace’s Skeena Diversity Society.

The Skeena Diversity Society “provides services and resources to foreign workers and employers in Terrace and area”. A Black Press article from 2020 explains that the society “was established 20 years ago, responding to the call to address systemic racism”. On Skeena Diversity’s website, the group offers help to employers seeking to hire TFWs: “Do you employ or would like to employ a FOREIGN WORKER? Please fill the form below. Help us better serve you”. According to its website, the Skeena Diversity Society is “funded by the Government of Canada and Province of BC”.

The specific government department that funds this society is Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). It appears that our immigration department is working at cross-purposes. On the one hand, the department’s stated goal is to reduce the proportion of temporary residents to 5% of Canada’s population, in part by cracking down on the international student and foreign worker streams. On the other hand, the same department is disbursing funds to a society which facilitates events like the one in Prince Rupert, where sob stories about the victims of Canada’s immigration crackdown are shared.

What’s all the fuss about, anyway?

The Prince Rupert “community dialogue” centred on airing grievances surrounding changes to Canada’s immigration system that have been made as a result of the seismic shift in public opinion in favour of immigration restriction. What were these changes, anyways? Surely, they must be horribly cruel and unfair for there to be so much protest against them. Take a look, and judge for yourself:

“After opening remarks from Bachrach, Saša Loggin, executive director of the Skeena Diversity Society, gave a brief overview of the changes that were announced in November 2024 and came into effect Jan. 1.

In a nutshell:

• A goal has been set to reduce the number of temporary residents in the country from 6.5 per cent currently, to five per cent by the end of 2026.

• Canadian permanent residency targets have been reduced from 485,000 last year to 395,000 this year, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027.

• Both spousal work permit eligibility and post-graduate work permit eligibility have been tightened.

• International student study permits have been capped with a 10 per cent reduction in 2025 from 2024.

• For employers hiring foreign temporary workers under the low-wage stream, the quota is capped at 10 per cent.

• The starting wage for temporary workers in the high-wage stream has been increased by 20 per cent to $34.62 per hour.“

Do you think those measures are too harsh? Or are you part of the 78% of Canadians who support Canada’s immigration cut?