La Fin de l'Immigration? (2012)

In Canada, when we think of "temporary workers," the image that comes to mind are the seasonal agricultural workers who have working in our fields for the past 40 years, or the live-in nannies and maids from the Philippines. But these days, temporary foreign workers are found in all sectors: fast food, service stations, city bus drivers in Calgary, and even line workers on the CBC telecommunication towers in Montreal. Canada, a country with a reputation as a "land of immigrants," appears to taking its cue from places like Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, places that run on temporary foreign workers. The one-hour TV documentary, The end of immigration?, uncovers a trend which is having a major impact on the type of country in which we live, one that relies increasingly on -- "rent-a-workers" -- rather than immigrants, a process that could spell "the end of immigration" as we know it. Today, the number of temporary workers arriving each year in Canada far exceeds the number of immigrants. By comparing the situation of these temporary workers with that of their own parents who arrived in Canada as unskilled workers in the last century, the filmmakers uncover a hidden world that's as close as the MacDonald's on the corner. And they ask the crucial question: is this the kind of society we want to build?