Playing fair

The temporary foreign worker Program (TFWP) is an ineffective solution for what ails labour markets in this country. Whatever good intentions may have been behind the TFWP, it is ill suited to solve the diverse labour challenges faced by the provinces. Not only has the program been co-opted by politics, it is unfair to both the people who come from overseas to work and to the employers who have come to rely upon those workers and who, in many cases, have befriended them.

Now, confusion, exacerbated by recent policy changes from Ottawa, has left many involved with the program in limbo. Those policy changes were meant to crack down on companies that were abusing the program, and there have been some of those. But they are a small minority. Most firms are trying to do the right thing, and many who overstep the rules did not intend to do so; they simply are overwhelmed by the bureaucracy. Even employers that know the TFWP well and do all the right things to hire Canadians first – go to job fairs, advertise, work with internship programs and hire people from eastern Canada – are saying they can’t find enough Canadians that want the available jobs.

The TFWP is a catch-all term that encompasses a variety of paths that people can take to work in Canada, whether that be in the oilpatch, as live-in caregivers or at Tim Hortons. As of 2013, there were 44,989 temporary workers in Alberta (the highest number in any province in Canada), compared with 36,366 permanent residents. While the number of temporary foreign workers has increased substantially in most provinces, the increase has been most remarkable in Alberta, now home to about 20% of all such workers in the country.

The latest changes have their origin in news from early in 2013, when Royal Bank of Canada was reported to have replaced Canadian workers with temporary workers. Soon after, the C.D. Howe Institute released a report suggesting that the TFWP had spurred unemployment in some parts of the country. A backlash ensued and Ottawa responded.

Changes to the program include the introduction of TFWP application fees for businesses, new assessment criteria and stricter rules for the food services, retail and accommodation industries. A cap on the proportion of low-wage temporary workers a company can hire will be phased in over two years; the cap could cut the number of temporary workers in half. Workers now can stay for only one year (instead of two) before having to renew their permit, and employers have to jump through more hoops in the job posting and interviewing processes to ensure Canadians can’t fill the roles.

The effects for some businesses in Alberta will be crippling, but there are alternatives. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), for one, is proposing an “Intro to Canada” visa, which would replace the TFWP with a path to permanent residency. Applicants would come for a one- to two-year period and, after that, they would automatically qualify for permanent residency as long as they met certain criteria.

The CFIB’s proposal would be a more equitable solution for everyone involved.