Barry Op/Ed
Vancouver, British Columbia, the Province of Tolerance and Multicultural Diversity with all the Tofu Fixins, is one city where those who believe this is Lotusland, soon find themselves in the middle of a swamp of deceit along with what seems the past and present provincial governments blessing.
For instance our Centennial Line, an underground transit system was dug with many Central American labourers who were hired by a Canadian company whose pay scale for Immigrant workers versus Canadian workers it is said was 50% less.
The lower mainland Fruit pickers from India are no more than indentured servants ekeing out slave wages, paid by their own Indo Canadian countrymen, or Richmond BCs Asian community bringing over women from China to work retail or service industry jobs, soon find themselves in a stereotypical $5.00, $5.00, “Me Love You Long Time” Massage or Exotic Dancer Industry.
Certainly not a Happy Ending all these Immigrants thought about when they left the shores of their homeland, lured by those whose promises of Good Money, but a scam by their own Countrymen in Canada whose Culture it seems is quick to take advantage of their own kind.
Ethnic Canadian businesses knowing full well their own countrymen’s desperation as immigrants to make a better life for themselves in a country rich like Canada, who line up around the block in their third world country by the thousands to get here.
Many Vancouverittes as they sit down to drink their berry smoothie, go to a restaurant, head to a Tittie Bar, eat their veggies, ride the New Olympic Centennial line in 2010, or get that Massage will not give a second thought the toil and hidden meaning of their pasted smiles by those who bring all these services to them.
Just another case of out of sight out of mind, typical of many in Vancouver with blinders on as they go about their rich daily lives and state “BC is the Mostest, Bestest Beautifulest Place in the World”.
It certainly is, for the Businesses who make Money off the Backs of the indentured from parts unknown!
http://www.ottawasun.com/News/National/2008/09/30/6927671-sun.html
Foreign workers lured with lies HUMAN TRAFFICKING, Canada’s National Shame, Part III:
By TAMARA CHERRY, SUN MEDIA
The stereotype is a young woman forced to work in a brothel, strip club or massage parlour. Reality cuts across all walks of life. Nannies.
Construction workers. Seasonal farmers. “Nobody knows the language of human trafficking,” says Sherilyn Trompetter, assistant executive director of Changing Together, an Edmonton-based NGO that leads the Alberta Coalition Against Human Trafficking.
Many exploited foreign workers are treated simply as employees in poor working conditions, not as human trafficking victims, Trompetter says, pointing to the case of 30 Polish welders who arrived in Alberta in 2005 and 2006 under false pretences and were paid less than half their expected wages.
“Human trafficking in general in Canada needs to be redefined and it needs to be stated that we’ve already seen these patterns; these patterns have always existed,” she says.
“We’re just not calling it what it is.”
In a four-part series running across the country this week, Sun Media looks at Canada’s hidden trade in people; at the failure of this country to live up to its international obligations on human trafficking, to prosecute human traffickers and meaningfully help victims.
Tags: Canada | Vancouver | opinion | Wages | World | immigrants | SLAVE | INDENTURED | Centennical Line
