Saibal Sengupta🇨🇦🇮🇳

The disastrous decline in health and hygiene standards at Tim Hortons and many other Canadian fast food chains is directly attributable to the Temporary Foreign Workers (TFW) program. Inside 18 months, Hepatitis A — a fecal-oral disease, by Public Health Canada's own definition — has been confirmed in Tim Hortons food handlers in Ottawa, Amherst NS, and Barrie. A Montreal location was fined $4,200 for premises containing rodent excrement. India is now Canada's largest source of foreign workers. India's own government has spent 11 years and billions on its Swachh Bharat (Clean India) campaign trying to end open defecation. The current phase is literally branded "Swabhav Swachhata, Sanskar Swachhata" — behavioural and cultural cleanliness — because their own surveys find roughly half of rural households continue to defecate in the open even when they own a toilet. They say they prefer it. The Indian government calls it a cultural problem. Their words, not mine. You cannot import food-service workers from this environment, hand them a hairnet and a 90-minute orientation, and call it a food safety system. There is no training program that closes a 25-year cultural gap in 12 weeks.