Tim Hortons lied to you.

A couple of days ago, every regime media outlet in the country ran the same cheerful story: Tim Hortons, long notorious for importing cheap foreign labour, was turning over a new leaf. They were going to hire 10,000 “locals.”

What a turnaround. What a company. Pass the double-double!

I didn't buy it. So I went to the government's own temporary foreign worker website and did a quick search.

I was shocked to find 93 Tim Hortons locations are actively advertising for temporary foreign workers. Literally at the same time their spin doctors are claiming they’re hiring Canadians.

So I printed out the job postings, fired up our billboard truck, and headed to one of the foreign-staffed Tim Hortons to ask for the manager.

The Tim Hortons I went to was offering $36 an hour for a restaurant manager. Their government of Canada job listing claimed that no Canadian would do the job.

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The Tim Hortons executive in the store told me he'd “never seen” the foreign worker ads before. Really? They're on the government TFW website. Anyone can look them up. I showed it to him live, on camera.

He should tell that to the father I met outside, whose 21-year-old son can't find work.

I spent nearly an hour out front talking to passersby. Not one person — not a single one — said Tim Hortons should keep hiring foreign workers over Canadians. And many of the people I spoke with were immigrants themselves. 

It's only Tim Hortons that disagrees. (Tim Hortons, by the way, is not even a Canadian company anymore. It's owned by a Brazilian hedge fund called 3G Capital.)

Tim Hortons is lying about quitting cheap foreign labour. So we're going to drive that truck to the other locations still hiring foreign workers. It’s bad enough that they’re hiring foreigners instead of locals. It’s worse that they’re lying about it!

I've been doing this long enough to know that corporations only change behaviour when they feel it in the till.