Firms urged to hire Canadians

Rules covering foreign workers to get tougher

(Canadians) don’t understand why their niece or nephew or son or daughter can’t find a job, but you’re looking to bring somebody in from abroad

EMPLOYMENT MINISTER JASON KENNEY

Federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney urged business owners Thursday to work harder to hire Canadians first, warning the Temporary Foreign Worker program they may be depending on will not be allowed to keep growing at its current rate.

“I don’t want to hear any employers coming to me now, or in the future, saying they want access to the Temporary Foreign Worker program — unless or until they tell me first of all what they’re doing to recruit underemployed or unemployed Canadians,” Kenney said in an address at the National Skilled Migration Conference, a first-of-its kind event being held in Calgary this week and hosted by Calgary Economic Development.

Nearly 40 per cent of the more than 200,000 temporary foreign worker positions approved last year were for Alberta employers, who rely on outof-country labour to address workforce shortages in the oilsands, on farms, and in fast-food restaurants. But the program, which admitted nearly two and a half times as many workers in 2012 as it did in 1995, has come under fire in recent months. In one highly publicized incident, a B.C. mining company was allowed to hire 201 Chinese workers after an ad seeking Mandarin-speaking miners failed to turn up Canadian candidates. In another, a group of Royal Bank of Canada employees found themselves training foreigners to replace them after their jobs were outsourced by a contractor.

Kenney said he doesn’t want to see economic growth slowed because employers can’t find labour.

But he said business owners need to do a better job of explaining to the public why the Temporary Foreign Worker program is necessary.

“Canadians just don’t get it. They don’t understand why their niece or nephew or son or daughter can’t find a job, but you’re looking to bring somebody in from abroad,” Kenney said.

Earlier this year, the federal government introduced a number of reforms to the program aimed at cracking down on abuses like the B.C. mining company case.

Under the new rules, employers must now pay foreign workers the prevailing wage, rather than 15 per cent less as permitted under the old system.

They must also pay new administrative fees to access the program, and demonstrate that they are making efforts to transition to a Canadian workforce.

Kenney said a second round of reforms are in the works. These could include a reinstatement of the accelerated labour market opinion process that used to allow some employers to bring in temporary foreign workers faster. The fast-track process was eliminated earlier this year, but the government has floated the idea of bringing it back in a more limited way, focusing only on critical, highly skilled jobs.

Kenney touted the federal government’s ongoing immigration reforms — including an expression-of-interest system that, starting next year, will enable employers to identify prospective immigrants that they want sent to the front of the queue — as one way of addressing critical shortages in specific industries. He also called for a “paradigm shift” in education that would see more funding made available for postsecondary programs that meet the needs of the economy.

A report released this week by The Institute for Research on Public Policy — a non-partisan think-tank — said the changes that have already occurred to the Temporary Foreign Worker program are a step in the right direction, but an annual cap on the number of TFWs admitted to Canada is needed.

Another report — published by the University of Alberta’s Institute for Public Economics in July — suggested the Temporary Foreign Worker program should be restricted only to skilled, not unskilled, workers.

Mark Chambers, production manager for Sunterra Farms, said his business is an example of one that simply could not function without the program.

“It’s extremely important for us because we’re rurally located, and to try to get people to move to rural Alberta is extremely difficult,” Chamber said.

“In order for us to run our business and operate our farms and produce food for everyone, we rely on the ability to complement our Canadian staff through the Temporary Foreign Worker program.”

Chambers said his company is willing to work within the parameters of the recent reforms.

“We have to do it, we don’t have any choice,” Chamber said. “Without it, our business would close.”