Changes coming to the temporary foreign worker programme

There has been a great deal of controversy over the temporary foreign workers programme in Canada

The programme allows employers to bring in workers from outside the country if they cannot find Canadians with the skills needed and available for the work. It also allows employers to pay the foreign workers up to 15% less than they would have to pay Canadian workers.

In the past few years, the number of foreign workers brought in to Canada has skyrocketed.

Mark Thompson, professor emeritus at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, says there are over 330,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada in jobs that aren’t temporary. They are working in restaurants, in health care, and in many other fields.

 The issue of temporary foreign workers became more widespread following the hiring of Chinese coal miners for an operation in west coast British Columbia earlier this year. The Chinese-owned mine said no Canadian miners were qualified, something local unions vehemently deny. Since then IT workers at a major Canadian bank said they were losing their jobs to temporary IT workers from India, and recently construction workers in Alberta picketed a major building site saying foreign workers were brought in while qualified Canadians were left out.

In light of growing public outrage the federal government is expected to announce changes later today.

One of the expected changes is that employers will have to demonstrate that they have a plan to recruit, train and hire Canadians first, before they can be granted a permit to hire foreign workers. If they have to hire foreign workers they will then need to have a plan to show how they will eventually hire Canadians for those positions.

A fee might also be imposed on employers bringing in foreign workers, The present rules allowing employers to pay 15% less to foreign workers than to Canadians may also be amended.      

Employers are only given permission to hire temporary foreign workers if they can’t find Canadians to fill the jobs and only if bringing in foreign workers won’t have a negative impact on the Canadian labour market in a process known as obtaining a Labour Market Opinion. (LMO)

To receive a positive LMO employers have to show what efforts they have made to recruit and train Canadian residents and the potential benefits that hiring foreign workers could have on the Canadian economy. Some work categories are exempt from the LMO requirement. Professionals and business people, for example, who come to Canada as part of international agreements or workers who come as part of an exchange program, do not need a LMO.

Unions have long said employers have been abusing the programme to save money by hiring foreigners instead of Canadians