Article content continued

It’s natural to applaud the expansion of the high-tech industry in Metro Vancouver, where CBRE Labor Analytics estimates roughly 65,000 are already employed.

But why does Trudeau, a globalist who champions free trade and the free movement of labour, not talk about federal foreign-worker-recruiting methods in the country’s technology sector, especially in contrast to the more protectionist approach in Donald Trump’s U.S.?

Perhaps it’s because these are multi-edged, emotive issues. Their thorny nature is likely the same reason the prime minister did not mention — as the City of Vancouver quietly did when it lobbied to become Amazon’s second headquarters in North America — that high-tech wages in Metro Vancouver are the lowest on the continent.

Photo by MCM Partnership Architects / PNG

Amid the murkiness, for instance, I’m not aware of anyone who has an answer from the federal Liberals on whether the government has offered tax, migration or labour concessions to Amazon to bring the technology giant to Vancouver and other parts of Canada, where it already employs more than 6,000 people.

After all, the federal government and B.C. Liberals granted a labour-market exemption in 2014 to Microsoft so it would expand operations in Vancouver. The exemption means the Seattle-based multinational can hire foreign workers in Canada without first having to prove qualified Canadians are not available.

The extent to which Canadian high-tech companies rely on foreign workers, international students and would-be migrants is explained in the book Trans-Pacific Mobilities: The Chinese and Canada (UBC Press), edited by the University of Calgary’s Lloyd Wong, with a key contribution by SFU’s Karl Froschauer.