SLOBODIAN: Liberals make it easier for foreign students to scoop available jobs

Canadians first? Not with this Liberal government. And certainly not when it comes to youth unemployment.Foreign students here and unemployed youth in Iraq take precedence over Canadian youth needing jobs — especially if they’re the Christians the ‘inclusion’ obsessed Liberals openly discriminate against.But it doesn’t matter what faith you are or even if you follow none, Canadian youth employment is not the Liberal's priority.And Canadians, trying to put food on the table and struggling to make ends meet while educating their children searching in vain for jobs, are instead saddled with the tab of meeting foreign youth employment needs.Are you fed up yet? Canadians first!Oh, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller is very concerned about how expensive it is to get an education in Canada.“It is costly to be a student in Canada,” said Miller.“My focus primarily is to make sure that the public policy that we have in place is one that reflects the ability of the student to actually do what they’re supposed to be doing, which is study, without bankrupting themselves.”Too bad Miller wasn’t talking about Canadian students.He said that when he ‘temporarily” lifted the 20-hour work week cap for foreign students under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in November 2022, extending it to this April 30.He was trying to justify a Liberal decision to allow 807,000 foreign students to work unlimited hours in Canada.That increase corresponded with Statistics Canada reporting an unemployment hike for Canadians under age 24 to 10.2% last summer from 9.2% the previous year.No, no, foreign students — about 646,000 of the 807,000 working more than 20 hours weekly — weren’t taking jobs away from Canadians, Miller said on December 7.How did he know that? Well, it turns out he pulled that big claim out of the air.The Liberals didn’t bother to study what impact that would have on Canadian job seekers, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.Both immigration and labour were asked under Access to Information to provide “all research, studies, literature reviews or other data” on the impact of lifting the cap on “labour markets, youth unemployment or hiring Canadian postsecondary students.”“The information you are seeking does not exist,” the labour department told Blacklock’s Reporter.Immigration had a “nil response.”Miller hid. (What could he say?)So, it would be fair to assume the Liberals haven’t studied how many unemployed Canadian students rely on food banks — that are struggling to keep up with extreme demands under Trudeau’s inflation — to eat.Foreign students are going to food banks and churches too. Despite not being in real need, they have no problem trying to game the benevolence of the system.The National Post reported in November that one Brampton food bank trying to keep Canadian children fed, like many other food banks and churches, was overrun with foreign students. It had to put up a sign saying, “no international students.”Meanwhile, the Trudeau government recently announced Canadian taxpayers will have to cough up $9.9 million to fund vocational and technical training for “the deepening unemployment crisis” Iraqi youth face.International Development Minister Ahmad Hussen, who made the announcement in Windsor — which has a large Iraqi community — claimed this will help stability in the Middle East.Delusionary hogwash, as missiles fly with alarming increase.What it does do is help buy votes for Windsor-Tecumseh Liberal MP Irek Kusmierczyk. That's it.This partnership is between the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and Canadian Leaders in International Consulting (CLIC).Tania Jordan, with WUSC fretted that it is challenging for Iraq youth to find good jobs.Not like Canadian youth, eh?And Iraqis benefitting from Canadian taxpayers won’t have to go through the rigorous drill that Canadian Christian employers are subjected to when applying for the Summer Jobs Program.Why? Well, only 0.4% of Iraq’s population, about 250,000, are Christians. The rest, between one and two million, have been driven out over the past couple of decades.Those who remain suffer extreme “persecution and intolerance,” according to the American Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East (American FRRME).So, Christian Iraqi youth won’t benefit a bit from Canada’s contribution to youth unemployment.But it’s no different in Canada that, if Trudeau hangs around, has a good shot at making it into the top ten Open Doors’ World Watch List of countries that persecute Christians. (The litany of Liberal discrimination against Christians is another looooong column).The Trudeau government won’t let up on blatantly discriminating against Christian employers seeking government grants to hire summer interns aged 15 to 30 under the Canada Summer Jobs program.The federal government was successfully sued in 2017 by Toronto’s Right to Life Association and Calgary’s Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform over 1,559 applicants being refused grants.The Department of Employment got its fingers slapped and had to pay up for criteria requiring applicants to sign an oath of agreement on moral issues, including abortion.But the Trudeau government, that bends over backwards to accommodate foreign students, still finds reasons to refuse Canadian Christian youth jobs.The oath was rewritten to force applicants to sign a vague pledge to “respect individual human rights.”Of course, those human rights are what the Liberal government decides they are.According to Blacklock’s Reporter, churches are petitioning the House of Commons to put an end to the discriminatory practise that is still “flagging” some faith groups and deeming them ineligible for grants after inundating them with questions no one else is asked.“We are concerned that the 2024 eligibility criteria for funding for the Canada Summer Jobs program could be used to exclude religious organizations,” Deina Warren, director of legal affairs for the 3,200-member Canadian Centre for Christian Charities, told the Catholic Register.Warren said the “values test” to receive funding is based on “whether the applicant’s views aligned with those of the federal government.”So, there you go.Bureaucrats can deprive taxpayers of grants they are entitled to — because they’ve been instructed by the Trudeau government to do so.Freedom of religion doesn’t matter to the Liberal government. If that means denying Canadian youth work opportunities, so be it.Again, the priorities are fretting about how costly it is for foreign students to get an education in Canada and about unemployed Iraqi youth.That trumps the needs of Canadian youth needing jobs.But campaigning Liberal politicians will come crawling for your vote with big promises, pledges and heartfelt speeches about how much they really care about the well-being of Canadians, the future of youth, blah, blah, blah ….But they don’t care.

SLOBODIAN: Liberals make it easier for foreign students to scoop available jobs

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