During a visit by the president of the Philippines yesterday, Stephen Harper took a question from a Filipino reporter about the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme – something that affects a great many Filipinos who come to work in Canada, and how there has been an exodus of those workers whose four-year permits have expired. Harper responded that he doesn’t want to see a “permanent underclass” of workers who don’t have the same rights as Canadians, and that they can become immigrants like everyone else. While that answer sounds pretty high-minded on the surface, the problem with it is that it ignores the changes that his own government put into place and perpetuates. Under Harper’s watch, the numbers of permanent residencies has declined in favour of more temporary work permits, and the other problem is that the current immigration program ignores the fact that there is a need for low-skilled immigrants in this country who can’t get in the door now because we are only looking for highly skilled or educated individuals and their families. That kind of system ignores the long-term investment in the country that low-skilled immigration brings, and has brought to this country when it was a big part of the way our system operated. In other words, Harper’s own government policies are perpetuating a system that will allow these temporary workers for four years, but won’t allow them to become permanent residents, and yet he admonishes them for not using the regular immigration routes. But hey, rhetoric while a foreign leader is present makes everything sound better.

Good reads:

• Week five of the Duffy trial has wrapped, and goes on a three-week break; Nicholas Köhler muses about Duffy’s perverse kind of magnanimity. Here’s the week five comic strip, and a recap Q&A.
• Even a former PMO lawyer thinks the new “life means life” bill goes too far.
• Another video has shown up on the prime minister’s website that shows soldiers’ faces, though this one apparently was approved by DND for real.
• The National Post is taking a look at how sex work is – and isn’t – changing in the new legal landscape in Canada.
• Andrew Coyne notes that you don’t have to look far into this government’s record for its pettiness and lack of ethics when it can all be found within a 24-hour space.
• Susan Delacourt looks at the elections in Alberta and the UK, and notes shifting landscapes and women leaders at the fore.

Odds and ends:

The Ottawa Citizen’s Gargoyle roundup of small stories from the past week is here.

Thomas Mulcair held a rally in Montreal to bask in the reflected glory of Rachel Notley’s win in Alberta, and make some vague election promises.

The NDP got government support for their motion to stop taxing feminine hygiene products – but they won’t do anything about it in this year’s budget.