Tim Hortons CEO appeals for ‘flexibility’ on foreign workers
Chief executive says limiting hiring will affect service
OTTAWA — Tim Hortons’s top executive says Canada’s recent crackdown on hiring temporary foreign workers must be flexible if the nation’s biggest coffee merchant is to remain fully staffed.
The loss of foreign workers will compound shortages of Canadians available to work in some regions to make problems such as slow and incorrect orders even worse, chief executive Marc Caira said Thursday in an interview.
Employment Minister Jason Kenney unveiled new rules on June 20 to restrict the employment of temporary foreign workers to “a last and limited resort to fill acute labour shortages.”
The rules include a ban on “entry-level” restaurant jobs in areas where unemployment is six per cent or greater.
Kenney’s changes followed reports of nationwide abuses, and Caira said Tim Hortons has always sought to hire Canadians first and only then to make proper use of the foreign worker program.
“If you don’t have access to some of the foreign workers where they are required it will ultimately also impact on the Canadians that work in that area,” Caira said, “because we can’t really deliver on the promise that we want in terms of delivering quality service.”
The tighter rules on the worker program will now also include increasing workplace inspections to 25 per cent of employers, and cutting permits for low-wage staff to one year from two years, according to a June 20 government statement. The government didn’t single out specific employers it had concerns about.
Tim Hortons, which employs more than 100,000, pours eight of every 10 cups of coffee sold daily in Canada, Caira said earlier Thursday in a speech hosted by Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson.
“We hope to engage with the government — to work with them to allow us to have some input into this flexibility,” he said.
“We have had good success with the program, where there is some hiccup along the way we deal with it quickly and very seriously.”
Tim Hortons needs to translate its control of the breakfast market into a greater share of lunch sales “in the not too distant future,” as a period of consumer anxiety means little revenue growth in the restaurant industry, he said.
Canada’s economic growth slowed to a 1.2 per cent annualized first-quarter pace as a harsh winter slowed production. Job creation has also slowed, keeping the unemployment rate of seven per cent above the six per cent recorded before the last recession began in 2008. The job market is also fragmented among the 10 provinces, with unemployment rates ranging from 3.7 per cent in Saskatchewan to eight per cent in Quebec and 12.7 per cent in Newfoundland.