Canadian Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault announced Tuesday that the government is cracking down on Canada’s temporary foreign worker program in a bid to curb fraud.
The temporary foreign worker (TFW) program has ballooned over the years, with much higher use by non-agricultural sectors, such as fast food restaurants and health care providers. With the increased use, there have been mounting allegations that the program is being misused by some employers.
The changes announced Tuesday include the potential implementation of “a refusal to process applications” which would prevent employers in certain areas and industries from using the temporary foreign worker (TFW) program at all, according to a statement from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC).
The TFW program is intended as a “last resort for employers to fill jobs for which qualified Canadians are not available,” according to ESDC.
However, demand has skyrocketed over the last five years. Employers were given the green light to hire 239,646 temporary foreign workers in 2023, according to data from ESDC — more than double the number in 2018 when 108,988 TFW positions were approved.
Experts and advocates have repeatedly warned that labour gaps that could be filled by Canadian residents are being filled by a precarious and vulnerable workforce.
Monetary penalties issued to businesses failing to comply with the rules of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program rose to $2.1 million in the fiscal year ending March 31, according to ESDC data released in June — a 36 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
Reports of alleged abuses of the TFW program by restaurant owners, including 2014 allegations against a McDonald’s franchise in B.C., led to a federal probe and new regulations, including a cap on the number foreign workers employers that can be hired and limiting low-wage workers to no more than 10 per cent of a company’s workforce. Employers were also barred from hiring TFWs in regions where unemployment was above six per cent.
In April 2022, Ottawa changed the TFW regulations again allowing employers to hire up to 30 per cent of its workforce with migrants to help fill a record number of job vacancies.
But under pressure to lower the number of temporary residents in the country, the federal government in March said it would reduce the number of low-wage temporary foreign workers a business can hire back down to 20 per cent with an exception for construction and health-care sectors.
This is a developing story.
With files from Bloomberg.
