💥 “Try Harder”? I Did. The System Failed.
By Tina Winterlik | November 2025
When I came home to Canada in March 2023, after spending five winters in Mexico, I truly believed I could rebuild my life here.
I thought, Surely things must have improved. Housing, work, stability — that’s what I hoped for. But what I found was a Canada that didn’t feel like the same country I’d left.
I applied for jobs every day. I updated my resume, created profiles, wrote matching cover letters, uploaded everything into online portals that seemed to go nowhere.
👉 No one called.
LinkedIn was flooded — with automated recruiters, suspicious job offers, and even messages asking for my passport just to “join a company.” That’s not how real hiring works.
When I refused to send my passport, I realized how much of the job market had become a digital maze of manipulation — not by individual workers, but by systems profiting from cheap global labour and fake recruiters.
I even got two fake cruise ship job offers — both scams. I saw through them, but imagine how many desperate people didn’t.
I tried a program for workers 55 and older, thinking maybe this was my shot. I finished it. Still nothing.
Meanwhile, months went by, and I started feeling invisible in my own city. Riding buses in Surrey, I’d often be the only white person. People asked me for help, directions, kindness — and I gave it, because that’s who I am.
But at home, things got tense. My sister and her husband — who had graciously taken me in — started to lose patience. After more than a year of applying, reapplying, and trying everything, they told me to move out in April.
So I did.
Now I’m caregiving and dog walking — grateful for the work I have, but this isn’t the path I expected after a lifetime of learning, training, and contributing.
And then came the gut punch.
After working through COVID — during the most stressful, uncertain time — the government started clawing back CERB from me. As if surviving wasn’t enough of a fight.
And my kid, who worked loyally from age 16 to 23, even through the pandemic, was let go after seven years — replaced by someone new from abroad.
No appreciation, no stability. Just gone.
That’s when the anger hit.
Because while our kids — born and raised here — are being discarded, we see systems still exploiting vulnerable international workers, corporations chasing cheap labour, and governments turning away while pretending it’s all about “diversity” and “growth.”
And then I saw the Reuters report:
In 2023, Canada uncovered nearly 1,550 fraudulent study permit applications, mostly from India.
Their new system later detected 14,000 potentially fake letters of acceptance in one year.
Suddenly, everything made sense.
The job market wasn’t just competitive — it was corrupted.
When fraud floods a system, honest people — Canadian-born, immigrant, old, young — all lose.
When profits come before people, the most vulnerable are always the first to fall.
So to everyone who ever told me, “Just try harder”…
I did. My kid did. We both did.
What we need isn’t more “trying.”
We need justice.
We need accountability.
And we need to start protecting the people who’ve already given so much — the ones who built this country and kept it going when everything else fell apart.
🔍 Sources
- Reuters: Fearing fraud, Canada rejects most Indian study permit applicants (Nov. 3, 2025)
- CTV News: Reporting on fraudulent study permits and Canada’s new verification system
💬 Reflective Questions
- Why is the government clawing back CERB from people who survived the pandemic instead of holding corporate fraud accountable?
- What protections exist for our kids — born, raised, and loyal to this country — who are losing stable jobs to unstable systems?
- How has labour fraud, international recruitment, and fake hiring distorted fairness in Canada’s job market?
- Why are older workers still invisible, even after retraining and contributing for decades?
- How can Canada rebuild a fair economy that values honesty, loyalty, and real effort — not exploitation and profit?
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