Liberal government to cut down number of permanent residents and put strict measures to temporary workers program
Ottawa will cut the share of temporary foreign workers in the low-wage stream that employers can hire in a move to wrestle down temporary immigration numbers that exploded in the wake of the pandemic and is also considering reducing the number of permanent residents that Canada accepts, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday.
The federal government unveiled three changes to the program at the start of day-two of the cabinet retreat in Halifax on Monday. The new rules will take effect in one month, on Sept. 26. and come in addition to changes already announced in March and over the summer.
At a press conference Mr. Trudeau said employers in the construction, health care and food security sectors will be exempt from the changes.
“We need Canadian businesses to invest in training and technology, not increasing their reliance on low-cost foreign labour,” Mr. Trudeau said.
“It’s not fair to Canadians struggling to find a good job, and it’s not fair to those temporary foreign workers, some of whom are being mistreated and exploited.”
He said cabinet will be discussing whether to also change the numbers of permanent residents that it accepts.
“We’re looking at the various streams to make sure that as we move forward, Canada remains a place that is positive in its support for immigration, but also responsible in the way we integrate and make sure that there’s pathways to success for everyone who comes to Canada,” Mr. Trudeau said.
In the changes announced Monday, Ottawa will reduce the share of temporary foreign workers that employers in the low wage sector can hire to pre-pandemic levels of 10 per cent of their total workforce, down from 20 per cent, the government said in a press release.
It will also no longer process applications for the temporary foreign worker low-wage stream from employers in regions with an unemployment rate of 6 per cent or higher. That was previously a rule but it was shelved during the post-pandemic labour shortage.
Lastly, the government is cutting the maximum time workers can be employed in the low-wage stream to one year, from two.
Reliance on the low-wage stream has shot up since 2022, when Ottawa agreed to ease access to the program in response to calls from restaurant owners and other employers who said they were struggling to find staff after months of pandemic restrictions.
Government records show Ottawa approved 83,643 temporary foreign worker positions in the low-wage stream in 2023, up from 28,121 in 2019 prior to the pandemic.
The 2022 changes included increasing the cap on the proportion of low-wage temporary foreign workers that an employer can hire to 20 per cent, or even 30 per cent in some sectors such as accommodation and food services, up from 10 per cent.
Prior to the government’s Monday announcement, economist Mike Moffatt, who was invited to present at the cabinet retreat, argued that the low-wage stream for the non agricultural sector “needs to be abolished entirely.” In his comments on social media, he said the overall program needs to be dramatically reduced by about 80 to 90 per cent.
In March, the government announced that it planned to rein in the number of temporary residents and restrict how many foreign workers businesses can hire.
At the time, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said the government would reduce the proportion of temporary residents in the population from 6.2 per cent to 5 per cent over the next three years – and that the target would be finalized by the fall.
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
