Ottawa loosens restrictions on temporary foreign workers to help employers with labour shortages

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The federal government is making it easier to hire foreign workers to help restaurants, food processors, and other labour-strapped employers cope with elevated vacancy rates.

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Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough announced a string of adjustments to the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program that will ease restrictions and allow employers to bring in more low-wage workers from abroad.

Industry groups have been lobbying for the changes for months, warning that persistent staffing shortages were putting their operations at risk. In the food industry, for example, a coalition of industry groups has been calling for emergency access to more TFWs to help ward off deficiencies in the food supply.

But labour advocates say the changes will increase the flow of workers into Canada without actually fixing a fundamental flaw in the program that has left TFWs vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

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Canada’s labour shortage neared 1 million unfilled jobs in the final quarter of 2021, up 80 per cent over pre-pandemic levels, according to a March 22 report from Statistics Canada. Job vacancy peaked at around 988,000 empty jobs in September, gradually declining to 830,000 in January — the last month for which data is available.

Currently, most employers are allowed to hire TFWs in low-wage positions for up to 10 per cent of their workforces.

But as of April 30, the government will raise that cap to 30 per cent for the next year for employers in seven hard-hit industries, including food service, health care, food processing, and construction. The cap for employers outside those industries will rise to 20 per cent.

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Limits won’t apply at all to seasonal industries, such as seafood processing, which already had been exempt since 2015. Those seasonal jobs will be allowed to last 270 days a year, up from 180 days.

The federal government will also remove a restriction that forbids employers in regions where the jobless rate is higher than six per cent from using TFWs in retail and food service.

Before the pandemic, employers had to fill out paperwork every six months to show they couldn’t find domestic workers to fill the jobs. During the pandemic, the rule was relaxed to nine months. Now, those applications will only need to be completed every 18 months

The changes will allow food processors in Canada to hire an additional 12,000 TFWs this year, according to an estimate from Food and Beverage Canada (FBC), a lobby group.

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Since December, FBC has been leading a coalition of 11 trade groups, pushing the federal government to lift caps on TFWs to 30 per cent of the workforce to “help stabilize the food supply chain.” The coalition applauded the changes, announced April 4, as did the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

But Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), criticized the move for brining in more TFWs without “ensuring rights for those workers.”

Working and living conditions for TFWs in agriculture have been subject to public scrutiny the last two years, following a series of COVID-19 outbreaks among migrant workers on farms. Late last year, the auditor general found problems with the vast majority of inspections into whether farms were complying with quarantine requirements.

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In his mandate letters following the 2021 election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau directed Qualtrough and Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau to strengthen federal protections for TFWs while also addressing labour shortages in the farming and food processing.

Through the pandemic, MWAC said migrant workers weren’t able to complain about bad conditions, or quit, because their permit to work in Canada is tied to their employer. That leads to a dangerous power imbalance between employer and employee, Hussan said. To fix it, MWAC has been advocating for migrant workers to receive permanent resident status.

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“Let workers come, for sure,” Hussan said. “But let them come with permanent resident status instead of an employer-dependent work permit.”

Qualtrough’s office said the changes to the TFW program were happening “alongside” measures to protect workers. “As always, any employer who is found to be non-compliant with the program will face severe penalties, which can include fines and permanent expulsion from the program,” spokesperson Jane Deeks said in an email.

The government said it is working on new regulations to better protect TFWs from mistreatment and abuse, and is using a tip line as part of “a risk-based approach to target higher-risk employers.” In its last budget, the Trudeau government pledged $49.5 million over three years for community organizations that support migrant workers.

Qualtrough will also host a roundtable in June about worker housing, “as the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for safe and adequate employer-provided housing for TFWs,” according to April 4 announcement.

• Email: jedmiston@postmedia.com | Twitter: jakeedmiston