Canada taps migrants to ease labour shortage
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is opening up Canada to an increase of temporary foreign workers in a controversial experiment aimed at easing strains on the nation’s overheating economy.
Starting Saturday, the federal government will loosen limits on hiring low-wage employees from abroad, changes that could bring in thousands of migrant workers.
The move adds to an intensive effort to ramp up immigration to fill record-high levels of job vacancies as the country faces one of its tightest labour markets in decades.
Critics warn, however, the changes will suppress wages and undermine incentives for companies to make productivity-enhancing investments, while broadening a program that’s been accused of leaving foreign workers vulnerable to exploitation.
“The challenge is striking the balance between filling the labourmarket need and ensuring that workers have protection within the program itself,” Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough said in a telephone interview.
As of April 30, the government will allow employers to increase the share of their workforce that comes from the so-called Temporary Foreign Worker Program if they can show that no workers in Canada want the jobs. In sectors suffering from major labour shortages — including manufacturing, retail, hotels and food services — the cap will increase to 30 per cent of their workforce for low-wage positions. The cap for other sectors will increase to 20 per cent. Both limits are rising from 10 per cent.
The new rules add to changes implemented earlier this month that permanently removed any foreignworker caps on “seasonal industries” such as seafood processing, while allowing the workers to stay in Canada longer.
The ramp-up of the foreign worker program comes as employers nationwide struggle to find staff, with the unemployment rate falling last month to the lowest level since at least the mid-1970s. The lack of available workers is stoking inflation and is one of the main reasons why the Bank of Canada is racing to curb inflation with aggressive interest rate hikes.
Since September, overall employment in Canada rose by 2.4 per cent, outpacing the 0.8-per-cent increase in the working-age population and highlighting the potential imbalance between labour supply and demand, according to Statistics Canada. All of the nation’s employment gains over the past decade have come from workers not born in the country.
The temporary worker program represents a small share of the country’s non-immigrant foreign labour force, which totals about 600,000 people — mostly working foreign students and other international worker programs.
The challenge is striking the balance between filling the labourmarket need and ensuring that workers have protection within the program itself.
CARLA QUALTROUGH EMPLOYMENT MINISTER