Lululemon: corporate welfare queen

As someone who absolutely loves their clothes, this story pains me. It was just announced that Lululemon has secured an exemption for immigration rules after they essentially threatened to move their headquarters outside of the country. This special treatment for the company practically amounts to corporate welfare, and ordinary Canadians like you and I, as well as immigrants, will pay for it. I explain below in my email to Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne:

Dear Mr Champagne:

I am emailing you today in response to the story of your office granting Lululemon an exemption for the rules around employing immigrants.

I cannot believe that your government continues to lie to Canadians and suggest that there is a labour shortage. If this was a free market, you could only make that claim if wages were outpacing inflation. This was the case temporarily during the pandemic, but recently, partly due to your government's policies, worker wages once again are lagging inflation.

You may also point to relatively low unemployment rates, but that metric does not tell the whole story. How many people are working multiple jobs? How many jobs are paying poverty level wages? How many of those jobs are precarious temporary and gig work?

This country does not have a labour shortage. We have a wage shortage. Canadians know this. They see everything from housing, to education, to fuel, to transportation, to groceries skyrocketing in cost, while their wages have been stagnant. More and more people are living paycheque to paycheque and personal debt is rising. By all accounts, economic inequality has been rising since the era of neoliberalism began over 40 years ago and it hasn't gotten any better during the current reign of the Liberal federal government.

Bringing in even more competition into the labour pool will not only keep wages low, but also lower the incentive for employers to offer competitive benefits, provide proper training, and maintain safe and respectable working conditions. It is clear by now that the Liberal government does not care about workers.

As a software developer, I consider myself a highly skilled worker. But even I in my 20 year career have yet to receive a raise that has outpaced inflation without changing positions or employers. I was fortunate to get into the housing market when houses were somewhat affordable but so many Canadians are seeing that dream became more and more out of reach. Owning your own home not only gives one stability and a nest egg, but it literally gives them power. Under capitalism, public policy tends to favour property owners, and the policies of the current federal government have not wavered from this.

Opening the floodgates to immigration without the proper infrastructure in place will not make home ownership more attainable for Canadians and it is setting up immigrants for failure. Econ 101 tells us that increasing demand raises prices. The average price of a home in Canada is over $700k. How is adding more demand for housing going to make housing more affordable? This is absolutely insane.

Our already overloaded hospitals, doctors offices, day cares, and schools will also continue to suffer as provincial governments, especially mine here in Saskatchewan, fail to properly fund these services. There is no way the federal government doesn't know this. Is it because you don't care?

I do get why you're doing this. You want to present to the corporate world how much GDP growth our country can pump out as some kind of signal for foreign investment. The problem with this is that 40 years of neoliberal policies that treat our country like a corporation has not been too kind on the people already here and the institutions we rely on, as I mentioned above.

It wouldn't be so bad if that economic growth was shared with all Canadians but it is not. Instead, more and more people are becoming mentally ill, are addicted to drugs, or are homeless. More and more people are relying on food banks and community pantries. There are already hints of austerity from your government, and with a potential recession looming, people will literally die because of it.

Do you know what else your government's policies are doing? It is creating ripe conditions for the rise of the far right. As economic inequality rises, more and more people are becoming disaffected. These people are easy pickings for a right-wing, populist leader, and the current leader of the Conservative party fits this bill perfectly. You are making his job easier by implementing the types of anti-worker policies your government is creating.

These policies are not just unfair for Canadians but they are unfair for the immigrants that you are taking advantage of. Expecting Canadians' attitudes towards immigrants to continue to be positive when their own socioeconomic conditions continue to deteriorate is not only naive but it is dangerous. Look at what's happening to our neighbours in the south, or in the UK, or Sweden, or Italy, or Hungary. Forget history, there are places all around the world right now where the far right are rising up while immigrants are being made the scapegoat, among other groups, when instead, it is policies that benefit the already-privileged that are to blame.

Instead of giving into threats of Lululemon moving its headquarters out of the country, how about you threaten them for having the audacity of holding the country that has provided the conditions for them to grow into the behemoth it is hostage? How about you threaten tariffs for their imported products, or an exit tax, or higher taxes on the company and its executives? Giving in has now signalled to other companies that Canada is now a safe haven for corporations who want to use cheap labour to subsidize their already immense profits. Your government has proven itself as working for corporations and the rich, and not for all Canadians, who you are supposed to represent.

I am scared for this country and am certain that what comes after your government is going to be even worse, and its going to be mostly your fault. Your policies are ruining Canada and I guarantee that in the future, we will look back at this era of neoliberalism as a terrible mistake and something that squandered the long term sustainability of this once great nation, all so your friends and donors could extract as many profits as they can off the backs of Canadians and non-Canadians alike.