Re: Legal services go to India in new outsourcing issue, Business, May 13

Legal services go to India in new outsourcing issue, Business, May 13

I guess we're supposed to admire the prowess and smarts of Legalwise Outsourcing Inc. in outsourcing legal work to one of the 60,000 annually graduating lawyers in India. However, please excuse me from the lineup for kudos. Having watched in my lifetime the evisceration of hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs and skilled white-collar jobs to outsourcing by our business elite, am I now to applaud legal work following suit, especially when a quarter of last year's Ontario licensed lawyers can't find work related to their profession?

Already highly trained and skilled IT and accounting work is being outsourced to the detriment of local applicants. How long before no level of very costly education and training is safe from this practice, leaving Canada hollowed out and resembling the impoverished and ramshackle countries it outsources to?

It seems we're hell-bent on returning Canada to what it once was — a hewer of wood and drawer of water. Nor will Indian lawyers escape the race to the bottom as the article assures all of us that a steady and growing pool of Indian lawyers ready to pick up any scrap of work sent their way and at steadily reduced fees will keep a cap on costs.

As for Canadians, how will the army of the underemployed and unemployed afford the flood of cheaper goods and services with no jobs to pay for them? Ain't globalization great for the rich?

Sam Markou, Mississauga