The federal government is boosting the availability of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) to ag and other understaffed sectors under a list of policy changes announced Monday.
Employment and Workforce Development Minister Carla Qualtrough announced what’s called the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program Workforce Solutions Road Map, which the government said “marks the next step in an ongoing effort to adjust and improve the TFW Program to ensure it continues to meet the labour market needs of today.”
Starting “immediately,” the government said Monday, the length of a labour market impact assessment (LMIA) — the document an eligible employer has to obtain, to show that the use of TFWs in a given workplace won’t affect the Canadian job market, and that both the employer and the specified job are legitimate — will be doubled.
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Where before the COVID-19 pandemic, LMIAs were valid for six months, and were later extended to nine months, they will from now on be valid for 18 months, the government said.
Also effective immediately, the maximum term of employment for workers in the “high-wage” and “global talent” streams will be extended to three years, up from two.
“This extension will help workers access pathways to qualify for permanent residency, enabling them to contribute to our workforce for the long-term,” the government said.
Also, to better handle seasonal peaks, the number of low-wage positions that employers in seasonal industries — that is, sectors such as fish and seafood processing — can fill with TFWs will no longer be limited, making permanent the seasonal cap exemption that’s already been in place since 2015. The maximum term for those positions will also be increased to 270 days a year, up from 180.
Later, starting April 30, eligible low-wage employers will be able to hire a maximum of 20 per cent of their full-time equivalent workers at a given worksite, up from the current 10 per cent, until further notice.
Also starting April 30, in seven sectors with “demonstrated labour shortages” — including food manufacturing, accommodation and food services, wood product manufacturing, furniture manufacturing, construction, hospitals, and nursing /residential care — the cap will be raised to 30 per cent, for one year.
Also, in regions with an unemployment rate of six per cent or higher, where the TFW program now won’t process applications in the accommodation/food services and retail trade sectors, that “refusal to process” policy will be eliminated starting April 30.
LMIAs in such regions “must still demonstrate the clear need for foreign workers,” the government said, but the policy change is expected to help employers in areas where “severe labour shortages have persisted” despite higher unemployment.
Overall, the government said Monday, the Canadian labour market is tighter than before the pandemic and the job vacancy rate reached an “historic peak” in the third quarter of 2021, with much of the unmet demand is in low-wage occupations.
Out of all foreign workers coming to Canada as TFWs, over 60 per cent — about 50,000 to 60,000 per year — are agricultural workers, the government said.
“Currently, thousands of jobs are vacant in food processing plants,” Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said in Monday’s release. “By facilitating the entry of foreign workers and extending their stay, our government aims to enable businesses to operate at full capacity and access new markets, increasing demand for our agricultural producers.”
The Canadian Meat Council, for one, hailed Monday’s announcement. “Our sector went from 1,700 to 10,000 empty butcher stations in the past few years,” the council’s senior vice-president for public affairs, Marie-France MacKinnon, said in a separate release Monday.
“The temporary foreign worker cap was a cap on our processing capacity and our sector’s growth potential. Today’s announcement allows our meat processors to hire temporary foreign workers, but there’s nothing temporary about our jobs; they are full-time and permanent.”
Canadian food and beverage manufacturing generally is facing an “escalating labour crisis,” the council said, with some companies reporting vacancy rates of 20 per cent or more, and some “forced to limit production and/or stop producing some products altogether.”
However, the Toronto-based Migrant Workers Alliance for Change on Monday panned the government’s planned changes. Alliance executive director Syed Hussan said the government “keeps making it easier for employers to hire migrant workers without ensuring migrants have basic rights and protections that can only be accessed by those with permanent resident status.”
Canada does not have a “crisis” of labour shortage, Hussan said Monday in a release, but rather a “wages and work conditions crisis” to be solved by “decent work and full immigration status for all.”
Low-waged essential workers, Hussan said, “should be able to come to Canada with permanent resident status instead of on employer-controlled permits with few rights.”
The government said Monday that its ministerial roundtable on TFWs, a consultative forum announced in December last year, will hold its first meeting this June, focusing on housing standards for TFWs.
Meetings of the roundtable, which will have up to 25 members and will be chaired by Qualtrough, are to be held twice each year for the next three years, each focusing on a different topic. Members are to include representatives from “stakeholders, employers, labour organizations and migrant support worker organizations.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network
