Thursday, February 07, 2013

This Day In Snookland (ctd)...Was It Facts Or Focus Groups That...


...Changed Pat Bell's Tune About Offshore Mine Workers?


In a nice bit of he said/he said, Shane Woodford of CKNW notes that in Nov of 2012, Snooklandian Minister for Fake News and TeeVee Ads, Pat Bell, said the following:

..."The (mining)company's obligation based on the federal government temporary foreign worker program is to go out and advertise across Canada to try and find workers who are capable of doing this, they did that, they placed ads in virtually every major paper, all the internet based services, the mining association website, literally every place that a miner would look for work and had no uptake on it at all."...



And now, faced with facts (i.e. hundreds of actual applications from actual Canadians which, we presume, is the same  thing as 'uptake') Mr. Bell is saying the following:

..."The public needs to have confidence that any jobs that are allowed to be taken by, particularily temporary workers I think there is a difference between that and immigrants, need to truly be unfillable by British Columbians and by Canadians and that has clearly not been the case here and we have all learned that."...


Of course, facts have never forced Snooklandian Ministers to come clean in the past.

Thus, we here at Gazeteer HQ really are wondering if the Wizards of Snooklandia are looking at some inside numbers that are telling them that they can make some hay by changing course and running, hard, against the Feds on this one...

.

5 comments:

Bill said...

The Snooklandian Liberals may very well be changing course again as you hypothesis. They have lately been ricocheting back and forth on all political fronts more chaotically than a pinball spinning on a roulette table attached to weathervane on a sinking ship in a hurricane - if you get my drift. I think as the polls truly are showing more and more BCers have finally figured this out.

It isn't common sense and ethics that drives Christy and co. on - just the maintenance of power. They have been running from the truth, the people and good governance for many years and thankfully are on their last desperate gambits.

karen said...

I hope to god no one is taken in by this. Please let us not forget all the broken promises after the 2001 and 2005 elections. This is expedient doublespeak. I do not to this day understand how these thieves and liars were elected over and over. What they SAY means nothing. What they DO means everything.

Anonymous said...

I'm wondering about foreign fast food restaurant workers across BC who have been brought in and what it is that the federal government requires for proof that those jobs can't be filled internally.

Anonymous said...

This has nothing to do with specialty Chinese miners. This is about. China's specialty wages. Chinese resource workers earn, $800 per month.

This is also why? Harper is permitting China and all company's, to hire cheap slave wage earners.

Harper's Omnibull-S-Bill permits China to sue any Canadians, getting in Red China's way.China sued in BC to take the mining jobs.

Don't forget about the nine new mines and mine expansions, going into Northern BC. Wonder who will get those jobs?

RossK said...

Bill--

A very good way to put it....because gambits are most definitely them.

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karen--

Just after the 2009 election I remember Mr. Good and the Ledgie Boys, when they weren't talking about 'cults' kept saying that BC Rail didn't mean anything because Mr. Campbell and Friends had been elected twice since the story first 'broke'...Of course, what they didn't say was that if they and others like them had actually gone after the story from the beginning things likely would have turned out very differently for Mr Campbell et al. ...The good news is that I really do think things are different now.

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Anons Above--

I've thought about the fast food thing, but I think the real thing there is that wages have been held so low in that sector that there probably is a case to made for an actual need to bring folks in (although it would appear that there has been some true exploitation there).

But what about, say, the construction industry where the union busting has made it possible to drive down wages just enough to put things in the grey zone...I'm thinking, for example, of the folks that were brought in to work on the digging of the Canada line trench (although I must confess that I'm a bit fuzzy on that one and would welcome input from anybody in the know on that one).

Regardless, it would appear that if not for the union in this latest case all would have run smoothly for those with the most to gain.

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