By Hassan Yusseff
President of Canadian Labour Congress
Special to The Post
I’ve seen Canada change in good ways and bad since emigrating here from Guyana in the 70’s.
For starters, when I arrived, there was a lot more training and quality jobs to go around. I was able to get the training I needed almost immediately, and at a young age, land a secure job as a mechanic. I felt pretty optimistic about my future.
There is far less opportunity for today’s young people and anyone new to Canada. Under the Conservatives, meaningful, quality, full-time jobs have become almost impossible to find.
Three quarters of the jobs created in the last six years have been unstable – either part-time, temporary or self-employed.
That’s left nearly one million Canadians juggling multiple jobs just to make ends meet.
Training and support for youth is hard to find. And too many qualified professionals arrive in Canada ready to work but can’t because their credentials aren’t recognized.
So this election, we need to choose a government we can trust to create more opportunities for good jobs. Not just for some but for all Canadians, including immigrants. One we can trust to provide more support and training for young people. One that will support the small businesses that create jobs in our community. One we can trust to make fast tracking recognition of foreign credentials a top priority.
For too many Canadians, there are other challenges when it comes to finding opportunity.
One is being treated differently by employers and others because of our names, or the colour of our skin, or the language we speak. Another is being treated differently by our own government, for the same reasons.
Two laws passed by the Conservatives have left many realizing that there is, indeed, more than one class of citizen under this government.
C-24 allows the government to revoke the citizenship of anyone who has immigrated to Canada, or any of the 863,000 Canadians with dual citizenship. That means there are two classes of Canadians – those who were born in Canada and only hold Canadian citizenship, and the rest of us.
That law and C-51, the law the Conservative government claimed was about national security, have left many of us feeling very fearful.
Fearful that we, or someone we know will be racially profiled, stopped from travelling, or worse, falsely targeted or accused by authorities. Fear that if we end up in trouble abroad, our government won’t help us.
So this election, who can we trust to make Canada what it should be? When I make that decision, I’ll be thinking about who we can trust to stop promoting fear and division, and instead build a country where we all have the same rights and freedoms.
I’ll be asking who we can trust to build a country of opportunity for everyone, where there aren’t different opportunities and rights for “old stock” Canadians and the rest of us. Where nobody is left wondering if there’s first and second and even third class Canadians.
This election, I hope you’ll join me in asking the tough questions about who we can really trust, and in choosing a better future for all of us.
The Canadian Labour Congress represents 3.3 million working Canadians. For more information go to www.canadianlabour.ca.
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