The following letter was sent to federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair and copied to Coast Reporter.

Mr. Mulcair:

I am writing you to express my concern over the Conservative government, the British Columbian and Albertan provincial government’s attack on middle class workers by allowing foreign workers to displace Canadians with their hiring practices.

The federal Conservative government and the government of B.C. have allowed 200 Chinese workers to work at a mine in Northern B.C. because the Chinese company, which owns the mine claims there aren’t any workers here who are qualified. They required workers to speak Cantonese, not French or English, which I assume are still our country’s official languages. This requirement, of course, eliminated most mine workers in Canada.

I applied for a position as a warehouse worker at the aforementioned mine and was turned down even though I have over 20 years of warehousing experience. I wrote my MP, John Weston, about the issue over a year ago and he passed my concern to the minister in charge and I never heard back.

Now the Conservative federal government and the Albertan provincial government are recruiting retired U.S. service people to fill jobs in the oil industry because of a so-called lack of available workers here in Canada. This, of course, is a complete fallacy. I have applied to several companies in the oil patch for labouring and warehouse work and have been turned down repeatedly despite having the experience and credentials for the positions.

Mr. Mulcair, I implore you, as federal leader or the opposition, to end this attack on middle-class Canadian taxpaying workers before it extends to common practice and we lose our ability to work in our own country.

Richard Knight

Gibsons