Friday, September 9, 2011

Deconstructing Hudak's Weak Ploy

Any affirmative action initiaitve always draws forth twisted logic from its detractors. We've seen this response with language, race, and gender affirmative programs many times before. That Hudak's advisors are using the old binary opposition ploy again assumes not that they are intellectully weak, but that their target for the pitch is. They might just be right.

Setting up binary oppositions such as hardworking "Ontario" workers, on the one hand, and privileged "foreign" workers, on the other, is a common propagandistic strategy - the good guys on one side; the boogeyman on the other stealing your job - but one easy to deconstruct since the so-called foreign workers are in fact, as every journalist who questioned Hudak knew, Ontario workers.

But, as it turns out, these are vulnerable workers who need a boost and whose contribution to Ontario's economy could be significant with that help. With this policy the Liberals are of course being every bit as political as the Conservatives, but the policy is nevertheless a worthy one since there are indeed a significant number of recent immigrant professionals in Ontario who cannot practice their profession because of accreditation challenges. This has been a longstanding issue requiring some sort of feasible solution, and so the tax credit incentive to hire these people is a good one.

Hudak would appear to prefer Ontario chain gang workers cleaning up Ontarians' trash than Ontario's immigrants working and contributing in established professions. Which of these two group is going to contribute more both socially and economically to Ontario?

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