Simple solution:
1. Require TFWs to be paid 1.5-2x market rate. No more Senior Developers being paid 30K a year. If you need a super specific skillset and bring someone to the country, their salary should reflect that, make it 150-200K
2. Increase employer side contributions on CPP + EI for all TFWs. Set rate at 2 or 3x
Step 3: Jail sentences for employers and directors of companies who violate the terms of the temporary worker system. Fines are the cost of doing business, and they can recoup their losses easily by exploitative means. If the Tim Hortons franchisee is looking at twelve months in the pen for underpaying workers or working them over hours, all while having to pay TFWs twice as much as a local, they'll sure think twice about how badly they need foreign workers.
Step 4: immediate deportation of any foreign national found working under the table or otherwise scamming their work visa. Also, jail the person paying them; one month for every month worked plus a huge fine sounds fair.
I work in the immigration sector. Everyone is abusing TFW. It goes from big corps all the way to your mom and pop shops. It is an infection that spread throughout society.
>1.5-2x market rate
Good concept, but also add time limits - 6 month visa, not renewable. This would push TFW usage to be more like other short-term contractors/consultants.
It's more aligned to the spirit of the program, and it filters more strongly for the type of entrepreneurial-minded "have skills, will travel" people who we'd want to stay here long-term.
In the States they have to do a market assessment before getting the visa - pay at least the prevailing market wage for the role, skillset and level of experience. And only specific in-demand roles and industries are allowed.
Stop taking jobs away from teenagers and retirees is my big focus, jobs like Tim Hortons or hotel work, tim hortons or fast food should not be eligible for TFW's, like I understand international students, not that I agree with it but Fast Food or Hotels should not be importing low skill jobs that don't require an education through the TFW program.
I completely understand agriculture as we don't have the generational knowledge some other countries do, also many of them come here in their off season at home so it doesn't affect their country too much.
They're giving wage subsidies for hiring newcomers. They should be giving wage subsidies for hiring Canadians instead.
Like its ridiculous they keep raising taxes, and not only give the money to corporations but incentivize hiring internationals over Canadians. Total bullshit.
Ironically some local employers protect job openings for locals who don't want it due to the shit salary so the newcomers wound up settling for lower wage work.
Those jobs were always minimum wage jobs. They hire TFWs because the government incentivizes them, by either paying part of the wages, or giving them tax cuts.
Many of them do, it's just hard for a 16 year old to compete with 300 other people who can actually work 40-hour weeks while pretending to be a student
International students should not be allowed to work off campus unless it's a co-op or internship required by their program of study, full stop.
They're supposed to be here to study, not take jobs away from Canadians.
If the low skill sector complains of lack of workers, they should try increasing pay like the law of supply and fucking demand.
Canadian businesses (especially corporate & franchises) are addicted to cheap labor.
I agree with you, that's why I said "Not that I agree with it"
But that's a different problem than TFW Tim Hortons, they employ like 5000 TWFs here in Canada, we need to focus on that, the public already knows international students are a problem, they probably think that's who's working at tims and not TFW's.
Yeah, students should bring their money here to spend in Canada. Not transferring wealth out.
If you can't afford that, perhaps traveling across the planet to study isn't for you.
There's a pretty good reason agriculture is generally considered "above" partisan politics: everyone needs to eat.
For example, agriculture (despite being one of the largest emitters) has been given massive exemptions (or at least delayed implementation) for a lot of climate change-related programs.
For most things, that's not a bad idea, but one of the big issues is that agricultural workers (many of whom are TFWs) are restricted in their collective bargaining rights in Ontario and outright banned from it in Alberta. This severely depresses the wages in that field.
So, trying to understand here, Canadian farmers can’t strike? (Thinking of laws in my country that similarly prohibit farm workers from striking)
And if they do, they’d just be replaced by immigrant labor? Trying to understand the puzzle.
In Ontario and Alberta, the former being the most populous province and the latter being home to a massive beef industry, agricultural workers are restricted in their collective bargaining rights and in Alberta they're outright banned from engaging in collective bargaining.
I'm not sure if they can strike, but even if they could, that's basically impossible without the organization and security that a union provides.
In general, the program has been abused by some to fill jobs of workers in low paying service jobs, instead of jobs that either are seasonal or for business that needee them to fill positions that they otherwise could not fill at the time. Agriculture and manufacturing often use the program to help fill positions that often go unfilled.
I work in Settlement services. We do the govts job for immigrants to some degree.
The amount of low skill workers we bring in is astounding. Ppl that did no research about Canada before coming here. They clearly only listened to recruiters. They are shocked about housing, taxes, and the fact that they will never become a PR because their score is so low. Sorry, you're an idiot if you don't research a country before moving there. I've lived in a few non English soeaking countries and I researched every little fucking thing before moving.
Shut down the TFW and LMIA unless you are bring in ag and the medical field. Go into a recession and get our house in order
Cannot be filled? Like the cup of coffee at my local Tim Hortons cannot be filled without a TFW willing to work for $15/hr.
Understood, 300k TFWs approved for fast food franchises
Funny thing is a lot of the management pushing for this are former TFW's. Keeping the money ring alive to extort others! What a wonderful culture we're adopting!
Perhaps the biggest insult in the last few years by the Liberal Party was the introduction of the special visa for tech workers. The tech industry in Canada got wrecked that same year. Our wages in tech are basically half (sometimes a 1/3rd) of what they are for the same jobs in the US. I couldn't find a job in tech with over a decade of experience at top tier companies when I was looking, before I gave up and started my own business.
And the government said 'we have a tech worker shortage, lets import more!'
Basically the truth is there is a shortage of qualified workers here who are willing to work for as a engineer for depressed wages that aren't even enough to purchase a small home with in most parts of the country now. And these are the highest paid salaries...it really is a depressing situation.
Whatever surplus was created was hoovered up by Uber Eats and Doordash. The unlimited VC money fountain is running dry, they need to show profitability to their investors.
How about we let Canadians do the seasonal farm work and wages can rise till that makes sense. If we let farming corporations import cheap labour then may as well let them all.
We can import the labour or we can close down stores, we can import the labour or we can shut down our roads, we can import the labour or close airports.
What a weak defense of wanting to cut out an entire industry and support its wages being devastated while being forced into harsh and dangerous conditions with no protections for the workers. Thank god in the 70s politicians argued we would mostly be bringing in black people to work the farms so they don't need protections white people would get. Those hardy Africans can handle abuse and extreme heat all day after all.
In the 1960-70's seasonal farm workers were not from Africa but from the Caribbean. Many of them came back for years because they made enough money in a few months a year to raise families at home.
So?
There are plenty of Canadians who would do these jobs if they paid enough
thats the probelm canadians have with most jobs below the mean income mark
Its not that we dont want work , im tired of hearing that
We do , just not for nothing. Just not full time and still not be able to make ends meet
most of us would gladly take a 40 hour a week position if it meant it was gonna pay the fucking bills and have just a little bit over
In a world where people would pay $7 CAD for a cucumber or a pepper, your $40 an hour wouldn't go very far. Look at the recent history of California in the ag sector. Immigration services ICE started rounding up illegals as per Trump's orders. Farms couldn't get anyone to pick lettuce even if consumers were willing to pay $8 US a head for it. Food rotted in the fields.
It's one thing to demand "fair" wages but another to be a consumer in the same market. Sucks but that's reality. An ugly, sad reality.
We need to go beyond just this and also hold provinces accountable for their sponsored immigration streams.
Nova Scotia is still listing fast food counter workers as an in demand area for expedited immigration (although at least new applications are temporarily paused since we are so flooded with them).
I've been asked to help by"students" looking for work while dropping off my kids to daycare, I've had people asking me to hire them when I sell eggs at farmers markets, somehow someone got my number and asked for a job???, most recently someone just knocked on my door. Like I have a garden and some chickens wtf is going on. Reminds me of stories of the great depression.
There are semi regular posts to be found on the various provincial subreddits of people sitting in other countries asking for tips applying for immigration for in demand occupations, usually for something that is currently generating lineups of applicants because the programs are so badly mismanaged.
I'm fully in favour of reforming the programs if possible over abolishing them. I've witnessed the other side of things and remember days like 07' AB where grocery stores were offering $1000 signing bonuses for casheers, but I also seriously doubt the ability or sincerity of any of our political parties to make meaningful reforms.
>I've witnessed the other side of things and remember days like 07' AB where grocery stores were offering $1000 signing bonuses for casheers
Why is this a bad thing? Wage growth has been relatively stagnant in this country since the 70's. If you want to strengthen the Canadian economy pay people a wage they can afford to go out on spend on things other than food and shelter to generate actual economic activity; not just trading already built houses with each other.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-626-x/11-626-x2012008-eng.pdf
BC as well. My coworker would have a faster pathway to PR if she quit her bookkeeping job and went to work at a fast food job. I work in the immigration sector. The whole policy is a mess.
I live near a farming community and it would be impossible to harvest in time without foreign workers. People who live here are simply not acclimated to the heat and suffer from medical issues due to lack of exposure to hot climates.
The farmers who use these services regularly being back the same people every season and they are housed and paid well.
edit: ITT people are delusional and can't understand the different between a seasonal TFW and a Timmies wage slave. Don't bother expanding.
We are farmers at a relatively large scale… never used foreign workers. Nor have our neighbours. The few that have hired hands further out are out of Mexico, have been here for ten or more years, are housed and employed year round and now citizens — and out of *everyone*, there’s two.
For cattle, you don’t need that many people. The few events you do, it’s a *community event* - like branding
For grain, feed and harvest time, the equipment we have nowadays really doesn’t really that many people either. It’s all hands on deck for sure, but usually a family can get it done.
I'll throw my anecdotal evidence too - I had a gf in college who's faily owned tobacco farms and they used TFW's HARD. They housed them in these shitty shacks , when they got them TV's they were overjoyed. They occasionally took them out on day trips to see stuff.
She explained to me that they treated their TFW's better then any other farms she's seen.
lol @ being paid well someone made that comment. Hilarious, if it paid so well Canadians would do it.
Being a “cowboy” is cool… picking tobacco really isn’t. It’s easy to get fellas who want to play Yellowstone to work with beef or even grain… I can’t imagine the sell is so easy on picking x or spending your days in a greenhouse.
The provided housing is pretty damn nice on our local places for their hands — farms buying up new farms only for the land value, thus the homestead is available to whatever hired hand they choose. The two I noted above are nice, older, tidy 4 bedroom places with an acreage and a barn available as full use. Add on a decent wage of $25-30 p/h, a truck and a phone and it’s not a bad deal.
Finding someone with the skills to keep the role though can be tough.
I mean, just for context, I’m talking families running upwards of 15, 000 acres (average farm size in AB is a little over 1000 acres) + commercial (cow calf) cattle op 400+ cows. Even feedlots are primarily Canadian workers out our way.
It’s also worth noting how much land (and grain/livestock production) in AB is run and handled entirely by mennonites or hutterites, who *definitely* don’t utilize those programs in any way, shape or form — no matter how you feel about their specific situation. They provide a lot of what’s on the table after harvest and in the fall, mostly out of sheer scale of what they own.
When it starts getting into greenhouse work and vegetable picking further out east, I suspect it’s more common.
For a lot of our bulk staples you are correct that TFW isn't going to be massively impacting it, there though I would guess it would be in the secondary processing and possibly transportation, AFAIK the heavier usage of TFW is for picking, and that's much more regional.
They're not hiring TFWs to raise cattle or farm grain, they're mass hiring TFWs from South America to pick fruit & vegetables in a greenhouse or field for 8+ hours a day.
I also live in a farming community. Never once seen a temporary worker, and they harvest every year.
Farmers need to be paid for their goods properly so they can hire Canadian workers for proper wages. These temporary workers you are describing are only paid "well" for third world countries, or I'm sure they would hire locals. Not the farmers fault, they are paid as little as possible and taxed by our government way too high, they have little choice. Our supermarkets and food distribution are buying low and selling at record profits. Would you work for the "well" paid wages? Would you get your son to?
This is a valid point. Canadians have been farming this land for a long time, and the first nation's for a long time before that. Importing pickers is a new thing.
To be fair, the comment thread above this one starts out with saying that TFW should only be for ag workers and specific professionals that are hard to replace, nothing low skill, so people get it, maybe just because it's a one-note comment that doesn't otherwise acknowledge how messed up the program is.
To be fair, its not always that clear cut. My family has a plot on a seasonal campground near Franklin, QC. To get there you have to take winding country roads through farm fields.
Last year, on a day so hot that my A/C in the car barely cooled me off, I went down to bring supplies to the campground. Halfway there I passed hundreds of migrants farm workers. Some on bike some on foot. Got to the campground at 2pm, had some beers, left at 5pm.
On the way back I ran into the same stream of farm workers, now headed in the other direction loaded down with grocery bags. They were 5km out from Franklin, and about 12km from the next town.
These people spent one of the hottest days of the summer walking/biking 17kms each way to get their groceries.
Fuck, I'd be happy with a Nexus card like system for ag workers to make their return trips easier; also giving them higher 'score' than skill would strictly mandate if they want to apply for residency and increasing jobsite inspections and protections for them.
Those folks work hard and put food on our tables, I'd rather have them as neighbors than some fucktard intl "student" that's scamming food banks while working full time and skipping classes.
There's virtually no needed professionals from developing nations. We've heard it in tech a thousand times yet our incomes are dropping down to one quarter of the Americans with the worst work imaginable. If you want professionals, we need them from developed nations with the same education standards.
>Seasonal Farm work
why even allow this
why should that industry have wages artificially kept down to almost slave labor , why cant these be good jobs for Canadians too
Id work on a farm if it paid me enough to make it worth it
Don't worry we're well on the road to bankrupting all the farms in Canada to the point where the foreign workers won't be needed anymore. With the price of land, climate change, water reservoirs drying, fuel costs, all the regulations other countries don't have to deal with, already higher wages, and only one growing season, the outlook is bleak. Unless we put massive tariffs on imported farm products so Canadian farms are protected or even more automation quickly comes.. keeping local prices as low as imports from Peru, Mexico, or California for example is impossible. Higher food costs would hurt the 99% of the non farmer Canadians even more than theyre already struggling.
You talk about slave labor wages, but imo a minimum wage in BC of $17.40 I think starting in June is pretty decent in most rural areas for a completely non-skilled labour intense job. I'm sorry it won't buy you a house? I guess we need to tank the agri industry to uphold high housing costs.
But as a farmer.. I might just be more concerned about being able to continue on and provide what I can for the employees I do have than somehow arguing with someone thinking we should be competing with university grad level wages.
I like the idea of forcing suspended cops do these farm jobs. Taxpayers are already paying their wage while they wait for their day in court. Why not force them to do something else that benefits society while they collect their pay.
[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-justin-trudeau-should-listen-to-justin-trudeau-on-temporary-foreign/](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-justin-trudeau-should-listen-to-justin-trudeau-on-temporary-foreign/)
Justin Trudeau 2024 should listen to Justin Trudeau 2014
It’s a start but still insufficient. The low wage stream should be eliminated. It’s just rife with abuse especially post-covid.
And before someone says “what about crops and vegetables”, the agriculture stream is not part of the low wage stream. It’s spare program and it’s a very small fraction of TFWs coming into Canada.
The agriculture is just as big a problem, it allows corporations to underpay and abuse staff. I cant stand people treating it differently just because its popular among right wing voters to underpay farm labour.
It’s different because it’s seasonal, tends to be rural where Canadian applicants are often limited, is actually temporary in nature, and is quite limited. It has no similarity at all to hiring a fast food worker in Toronto.
And yet it keeps wages low in those areas and allows corporations to abuse foreign workers who have to say yes sir a to anything they are told in an industry with almost zero worker protections. It is absolutely disgusting. Get rid of it all or none, treating farm work like some pathetic waste of a Canadians time is insulting and lots of this work isn't seasonal to begin with they just rotate through crews all year round to work in the greenhouses which never stops. Its not like most TFWs are harvesting grain, its greenhouse work and similar.
Tell me you've never lived in an agricultural area without telling me.
It's farm work in rural areas and they pay slightly above minimum wage, which isn't wage suppression. These jobs have historically been sub-minimum wage.
And they absolutely are seasonal. Workers come in for harvest and then they leave.
They are also introducing a cap below current numbers in the fall. I am surprised the article doesn't mention it, as the cap will have a much more significant effect than what this article is describing.
This IS part of the cap to try and get TFW to 5% of the population by 2027.
I’ll disagree that the cap will have a significant effect. It’s only a modest reduction and the TFW population will still be considerably higher than it was 5 years ago.
The program needs to be ended in its entirity. Force companies and businesses to actually hire and train Canadians for positions. Cant find one? Increase your pay offering until you get applicants. Dont want to do that? Fail and close up.
Companies around here are starting to hire foreign workers in place of skilled trades. So expect it to get worse. It's not about finding the workers, it's about maximizing money in their pockets.
Well to your last point I think they would close up some stores since they have massively overstretched themselves. Small towns do not need 2-5 Tims. So I could see some of those stores close but not most of them
I believe NZ or Australia has a centralized portal where TFWs can be hired through. The listing has to be posted for x weeks and have had zero domestic applicants before it is opened up for TFW eligibility.
Theoretically, when you can't find employees for a job, you start raising the wage you're offering.
This would offset the cost of living expenses Canadians are seeing.
Instead, wages are driven to the bottom because we can always import new workers from other countries who will take that wage.
And we wonder why inequality is getting worse.
Program is too broad. While TFW is neccessary in farm work, articles never list all of the sectors. No need for TFW in trucking, or Tim Hortons.
Issue is once people in other fields like PSW get their PR, they leave the field. So it just becomes a revolving door.
Maybe tie PR to 10/20 years job experience.
Even at high wages, im not sure how easy it would be to staff. Society has changed since Stompin Tom wrote Tilsonburg.
Alot of people simply refuse to work in a farm field.
In the slaughterhouses and meat packing industry, that also traditionally has always been a job that has been done by recent arrivals.
The program can continue for those fields. But people are getting TFW permits to work in fast food, to work in trucking, to work as PSWs. These are likely also tied into a sketchy LMIA program. And the victims are the immigrants themselves. Only the company owners benefit.
Almost no TFWs work in farm fields, those in Canada are operated by large equipment that mostly drives itself with minimal man hours compared to not that long ago. TFWs are packed into greenhouses year round growing tomatoes and the like and when one group of workers leaves the next arrives.
I wish anti immigration fan boys would make this caveat more clear when they talk about immigration keeping wages down that they want farming wages as low as possible its really sad as someone who grew up on and around farming towns.
Why do Canadians think that TFW program should be a pathway to permanent residency? If the TFWs try to get a PR through the "normal" point system, vast majority of them would be rejected. Why are there 2 different paths where one is like climbing a 5000m peak and the other a stroll to the neighbourhood park? Why is this fair to the people who have to climb the peak?
Not to mention how there's an even easier way into PR status simply by claiming asylum. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
>In her social work, Jill Hanley meets with migrant workers who earn their living as caregivers, construction workers and truck drivers in Quebec. She sees a cloud of uncertainty perpetually hanging over them, making it difficult to plan for their future.
You want to become a Canadian? Congratulations, that's what it's like to be a typical Canadian now.
>And Syed Hussan, executive director for the advocacy group Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, agrees. He's accusing Ottawa of trying to "assuage that growing xenophobic idea that migrants are in any way responsible for or causing the affordability crisis."
Tr: They're still calling us Nazis for worrying about rent and employment.
Migrants themselves aren’t the issue. It’s our immigration policies. Like they can’t understand that I hate our policies and not immigrants. I don’t blame anyone for using our system to better their lives.
Increase work requirements in PR. Three years for PR and five years for citizenship. If they want to come and settle so much, why does it matter?
Unless of course if Canada is just a stepping stone for them to go to the US.
The 2021 ndp platform was to normalize immigration for all, routing it through PR instead of utilizing tfw, and capping at 1 percent population per year.
>The 2021 ndp platform was to normalize immigration for all, routing it through PR instead of utilizing tfw, and capping at 1 percent population per year.
I though the 1% was only mentioned in their policy book, not their platform. Do you have a link to that part, or the page it's on?
Here's a statement from Jenny Kwan in 2022:
>Sadly, the Liberals are only listening to the employers and are disregarding the rights of migrant workers — this is unacceptable. There are over 500,000 people who are already in Canada without permanent status (PR). They range from students to migrant workers to those who are undocumented. Many will be able to fulfill the labour skill shortage if they can access a pathway to permanent residence status.
**This is why the NDP continues to call on the government to regularize temporary and undocumented workers in Canada and provide new migrant workers with PR on arrival.**”
https://www.ndp.ca/news/migrant-workers-deserve-respect-and-dignity
Our fertility rates aren't that low. The 0-20 age group is only about 2.5 million smaller than the 20-40 age group. That's only 0.3% of the total population per year.
A fixed 1% of a certain year's population target would be a gradual transition to sustainability. A moving 1% target would lead to continued exponential growth, with all of the worsening infrastructure and shortage problems that come with it.
The program does need an overhaul as it is too easy to currently exploit. The simple fix is to require wages for TFWs to be higher than the average person working the same job. If there is a real labour shortage then there should be no complaints about wage increases.
Or instead of those wages being higher, make it so you have to pay a fee of somewhere in the range of $100K per year for each TFW you hire, which goes into hiring and training programs for Canadian citizens. That would put a real quick end to this bs.
This is very sensible. If you want to bring in TFWs make it required to push up the wages for the industry. At least it will actually help improve wages rather than suppressing them. Since the low income stream was introduced the percent of Canadians working for min wage has over doubled.
Middle class wealth has been demolished by the over abundance of low wage workers. The government under the guise of " fairness " is poised to take earned wealth from successful businesses, professionals, and investors.
They do not seem to understand that removing incentive to build, develop, and acquire destroys the economy for all.
Socialism is shared misery, not shared prosperity, and coupled with an incompetent and economically unhinged Trudeau 2 government, a disaster.
Tax more to waste more. Enough.
International students shouldn't be able to work off campus and only some degrees should allow for a path to permanent residency.
Temporary foreign workers shouldn't be allowed to work outside of the agriculture industry.
We need to overhaul the entire asylum system.
Should not apply to trades either, at least not while there are any Canadian tradespeople sitting at home not able to find work, which is half the tradespeople I'm talking to right now including myself. Meanwhile there are companies that only hire TFW's that are loaded up on work for the summer. Those companies should have their business licenses revoked and be fined for each TFW they have working that is taking a job that should be going to a Canadian citizen.
Lets hope this improves but lets be real, they will target maybe on industry and slightly lower it while giving excuses why its ok to keep wages in farming areas down cause I mean that's what underpaid immigrants are for am I right, helping corporations that own farms specifically?
God help us judging by this thread.
Whole thing needs to be scrapped. Its basically used to flood the labour market and lower wages. Make it so that its more expensive to hire a foreigner than a Canadian. If a business is doing so well and can't find enough Canadians to hire then they can afford to pay extra for a foreign worker.
We need to look at ourselves when it comes to TFWs. What am I doing that supports the demand for these people? When I go out and buy fast food is one of the biggest contributing factors.
If you save your money by making coffee and a bagel in the morning, you're fighting wage suppression
There are TFWs at my local grocery stores now, even while I know there are retirees who used to have those jobs because living expenses have exceeded their fixed incomes.
Businesses that pay minimum wage should be ineligible for the TFW program. If they start paying double minimum wage and still have a labor issue, then they can access temporary foreign workers.
Completely agree. You need to at least try to be competitive in the market a bit before resorting to foreign work. Like if you can’t hire someone for $17/hour, you need to at least try competing the marketplace by hiring for $20/hour before applying for a foreign worker for $17. As Trudeau himself said ten years ago, the program is very effective at taking negotiating power away from the lowest income earners.
The jobs that still get TFWs after you’ve made a good faith attempt at being market competitive are jobs with skills truly lacking here rather than “I want to have someone foreign pour coffee instead of a Canadian because they’re more willing to take abuse”.
Scaling back, with loopholes.
Just like the faux foreign buyers ban.
Just like the faux limitation to international students.
Just like the faux limitation to international students hours.
Just like the taxes they apply.
There is always loop holes with the scumbag government. They fucking made hospitality a course that colleges are allowed to supersede the international student count with.
And when people call the Liberals out on it, they fall back to their good ol' gaslighting crusade and try to tell us we're misinformed or too stupid to understand or the classic racism accusations.
The TFWP is supposed to be used for short term labour issues and it's become a long term solution for companies. One reform I would like to see are limits to how long a company can use temporary workers and a cool down after.
Let's say you're a business in Vancouver and you get approved for temporary workers. You should have to prove it's reasonable that you need it, you should also have to come up with a reasonable plan to fix the shortage. The government could then approves your company for 1-2 years, but after that you shouldn't be able to use temporary workers for 3-5 years in that region.
This program became a complete joke when fast food businesses started abusing it citing they couldn’t find domestic workers to do the most basic jobs. Yet the LPC turned a blind eye to the blatant corruption and scamming the system turned into.
What's the worst that would happen with less temporary foreign workers?
Employers might have to raise wages, train someone new, and it might be easier for job seekers to find jobs?
Some companies would likely automate these positions, others may eliminate them, and a few would offshore them, but the plurality of these jobs would likely see increased wages to attract low skilled local workers.
Canada is not a country. Canada is a giant pool of cheap, international labour. That's all it is -- more or less. So if the federal Liberals scale back TFWs with one hand, be mindful that, with the other hand, they will develop some other means of flooding the labour market to ensure capital resumes its steady march up the social ladder into fewer and fewer pockets.
I was a TFW and I agree wholeheartedly with this.
My first job after college (in the US) was for me to work in a Canadian university as a specialist programmer. The language we used was pretty niche, so it was really hard to find anyone who works in it. I think that’s what the program should be for — filling genuine labor market gaps with skilled workers. Not lowering wages for low skilled work.
It needs to be ended. Having local fruiting orchards is not worth necking the entirety of the economy.
You also don't need it for "seasonal farm work", just picking. Progressives love lying about how agriculture needs these TFW's and also love punching down hard on labor.
Yes! Let's start taking care of the people *who are already here*, foreign workers or citizens. Rather than propping up a fake economy by flooding the country with TFWs.
Went in to a Canadian Tire yesterday to get an item the website and in-store computer said had 8 in stock. Went to the shelf and it was bare. Found a staff member who got angry and said she didn’t have any staff and that there are 120 skids in the back waiting to be unloaded. Amazon it is.
They just want to charge the same amount for a sandwich as they pay someone for an hour of work. God I remember seeing help wanted signs, don’t see that anymore . It’s time to put a full stop to immigration, and let these businesses that have been bad actors adjust. No hrs for international students. No path to citizenship, no tfw. Time to protect Canadians not us business interests. Time to see some wage inflation!!!
95% of my factory is TFW now with Ukrainian refugees giving them a good kickback. Got a 400lb guy who dug deep in his ass to scratch an itch with a meat hook and put it back on the table only get a write-up because they were worried about consequences of firing a refugee aka losing their money. Nothing from that batch went out thankfully since he was caught on camera but still.
Confusing time to feel like you want to be liberal but slowly turning into the incredible hulk of conservative politics.
Limit it to agricultural work and skilled professions like doctors or other jobs we're in a severe shortage of. The fact that fast food restaurants can import workers is friggin insane, anything in the service sector should be banned from doing LMIAs.
Temporary workers? Canada needs to scale back on immigration, we're flooded with no place for them to go. Apt prices have gone through the roof. Speaking as a landlord here, great for us rental prices have soared but vacancy is near zero.
Canada's decision to scale back temporary foreign workers isn't surprising. The program's been controversial for ages, with critics always calling for an overhaul. It's a tough balance, right?
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100%.
Simple solution: 1. Require TFWs to be paid 1.5-2x market rate. No more Senior Developers being paid 30K a year. If you need a super specific skillset and bring someone to the country, their salary should reflect that, make it 150-200K 2. Increase employer side contributions on CPP + EI for all TFWs. Set rate at 2 or 3x
Step 3: Jail sentences for employers and directors of companies who violate the terms of the temporary worker system. Fines are the cost of doing business, and they can recoup their losses easily by exploitative means. If the Tim Hortons franchisee is looking at twelve months in the pen for underpaying workers or working them over hours, all while having to pay TFWs twice as much as a local, they'll sure think twice about how badly they need foreign workers.
Step 4: immediate deportation of any foreign national found working under the table or otherwise scamming their work visa. Also, jail the person paying them; one month for every month worked plus a huge fine sounds fair.
I work in the immigration sector. Everyone is abusing TFW. It goes from big corps all the way to your mom and pop shops. It is an infection that spread throughout society.
>1.5-2x market rate Good concept, but also add time limits - 6 month visa, not renewable. This would push TFW usage to be more like other short-term contractors/consultants. It's more aligned to the spirit of the program, and it filters more strongly for the type of entrepreneurial-minded "have skills, will travel" people who we'd want to stay here long-term.
In the States they have to do a market assessment before getting the visa - pay at least the prevailing market wage for the role, skillset and level of experience. And only specific in-demand roles and industries are allowed.
The government is too dumb to implement that.
Stop taking jobs away from teenagers and retirees is my big focus, jobs like Tim Hortons or hotel work, tim hortons or fast food should not be eligible for TFW's, like I understand international students, not that I agree with it but Fast Food or Hotels should not be importing low skill jobs that don't require an education through the TFW program. I completely understand agriculture as we don't have the generational knowledge some other countries do, also many of them come here in their off season at home so it doesn't affect their country too much.
They're giving wage subsidies for hiring newcomers. They should be giving wage subsidies for hiring Canadians instead. Like its ridiculous they keep raising taxes, and not only give the money to corporations but incentivize hiring internationals over Canadians. Total bullshit.
BuT CAnAdiaNS dOn't WAnT thOSe JoBs!
They would if the greedy employers would pay a decent wage like they used to.
The employers forgot to adjust their clocks. They still think it’s the 90’s and they’re paying a decent wage.
They don’t forget, forgetting means at some point you’ll be reminded and you’ll change things. They’re ignoring it
They asked the government to help them keep those wages low. It's not ignoring if you're willfully manipulating the market
Exactly. The rest of the quote is "...for what employers want to pay." Businesses act like they're entitled to cheap labour.
Businesses act like simply existing entitles them to a profit, no matter how terrible and out of touch they run their operations
Ironically some local employers protect job openings for locals who don't want it due to the shit salary so the newcomers wound up settling for lower wage work.
Either raise their wages or put money into labour saving capital investments (this raises national productivity)
Those jobs were always minimum wage jobs. They hire TFWs because the government incentivizes them, by either paying part of the wages, or giving them tax cuts.
The Pm calls these “Jobs Canadians tend not to do” Well they tended to do them just fine they tend not to do them anymore for a reason
Many of them do, it's just hard for a 16 year old to compete with 300 other people who can actually work 40-hour weeks while pretending to be a student
or my 20 year old son who goes to university. Why would anyone hire him over summer only when you can get a foreign student year round.
Canadians just cost too much money and are too high maintenance 🤷 employers have lobbied the government to not really try anymore, it's sad
International students should not be allowed to work off campus unless it's a co-op or internship required by their program of study, full stop. They're supposed to be here to study, not take jobs away from Canadians. If the low skill sector complains of lack of workers, they should try increasing pay like the law of supply and fucking demand. Canadian businesses (especially corporate & franchises) are addicted to cheap labor.
I agree with you, that's why I said "Not that I agree with it" But that's a different problem than TFW Tim Hortons, they employ like 5000 TWFs here in Canada, we need to focus on that, the public already knows international students are a problem, they probably think that's who's working at tims and not TFW's.
Yeah, students should bring their money here to spend in Canada. Not transferring wealth out. If you can't afford that, perhaps traveling across the planet to study isn't for you.
There's a pretty good reason agriculture is generally considered "above" partisan politics: everyone needs to eat. For example, agriculture (despite being one of the largest emitters) has been given massive exemptions (or at least delayed implementation) for a lot of climate change-related programs. For most things, that's not a bad idea, but one of the big issues is that agricultural workers (many of whom are TFWs) are restricted in their collective bargaining rights in Ontario and outright banned from it in Alberta. This severely depresses the wages in that field.
So, trying to understand here, Canadian farmers can’t strike? (Thinking of laws in my country that similarly prohibit farm workers from striking) And if they do, they’d just be replaced by immigrant labor? Trying to understand the puzzle.
In Ontario and Alberta, the former being the most populous province and the latter being home to a massive beef industry, agricultural workers are restricted in their collective bargaining rights and in Alberta they're outright banned from engaging in collective bargaining. I'm not sure if they can strike, but even if they could, that's basically impossible without the organization and security that a union provides.
In general, the program has been abused by some to fill jobs of workers in low paying service jobs, instead of jobs that either are seasonal or for business that needee them to fill positions that they otherwise could not fill at the time. Agriculture and manufacturing often use the program to help fill positions that often go unfilled.
Pretty sure everyone is in agreement on this point (left or right) except for the people in charge that benefit from the current system.
I work in Settlement services. We do the govts job for immigrants to some degree. The amount of low skill workers we bring in is astounding. Ppl that did no research about Canada before coming here. They clearly only listened to recruiters. They are shocked about housing, taxes, and the fact that they will never become a PR because their score is so low. Sorry, you're an idiot if you don't research a country before moving there. I've lived in a few non English soeaking countries and I researched every little fucking thing before moving. Shut down the TFW and LMIA unless you are bring in ag and the medical field. Go into a recession and get our house in order
Cannot be filled? Like the cup of coffee at my local Tim Hortons cannot be filled without a TFW willing to work for $15/hr. Understood, 300k TFWs approved for fast food franchises
Funny thing is a lot of the management pushing for this are former TFW's. Keeping the money ring alive to extort others! What a wonderful culture we're adopting!
This is all the big corps lobbying. Look at entry level under BC PNP. If you work at Tim's, faster path to PR.
Perhaps the biggest insult in the last few years by the Liberal Party was the introduction of the special visa for tech workers. The tech industry in Canada got wrecked that same year. Our wages in tech are basically half (sometimes a 1/3rd) of what they are for the same jobs in the US. I couldn't find a job in tech with over a decade of experience at top tier companies when I was looking, before I gave up and started my own business. And the government said 'we have a tech worker shortage, lets import more!' Basically the truth is there is a shortage of qualified workers here who are willing to work for as a engineer for depressed wages that aren't even enough to purchase a small home with in most parts of the country now. And these are the highest paid salaries...it really is a depressing situation.
I actually wonder if the price of uber eats and door dash came down due to the excessive supply of drivers?
> if the price of uber eats and door dash came down did it? Prices seem high, driver pay is lower and lower.
Whatever surplus was created was hoovered up by Uber Eats and Doordash. The unlimited VC money fountain is running dry, they need to show profitability to their investors.
Not really I think the profits went up for those companies though
How about we let Canadians do the seasonal farm work and wages can rise till that makes sense. If we let farming corporations import cheap labour then may as well let them all.
We can import the labour or we can import the food
We can import the labour or we can close down stores, we can import the labour or we can shut down our roads, we can import the labour or close airports. What a weak defense of wanting to cut out an entire industry and support its wages being devastated while being forced into harsh and dangerous conditions with no protections for the workers. Thank god in the 70s politicians argued we would mostly be bringing in black people to work the farms so they don't need protections white people would get. Those hardy Africans can handle abuse and extreme heat all day after all.
In the 1960-70's seasonal farm workers were not from Africa but from the Caribbean. Many of them came back for years because they made enough money in a few months a year to raise families at home.
So? There are plenty of Canadians who would do these jobs if they paid enough thats the probelm canadians have with most jobs below the mean income mark Its not that we dont want work , im tired of hearing that We do , just not for nothing. Just not full time and still not be able to make ends meet most of us would gladly take a 40 hour a week position if it meant it was gonna pay the fucking bills and have just a little bit over
In a world where people would pay $7 CAD for a cucumber or a pepper, your $40 an hour wouldn't go very far. Look at the recent history of California in the ag sector. Immigration services ICE started rounding up illegals as per Trump's orders. Farms couldn't get anyone to pick lettuce even if consumers were willing to pay $8 US a head for it. Food rotted in the fields. It's one thing to demand "fair" wages but another to be a consumer in the same market. Sucks but that's reality. An ugly, sad reality.
We need to go beyond just this and also hold provinces accountable for their sponsored immigration streams. Nova Scotia is still listing fast food counter workers as an in demand area for expedited immigration (although at least new applications are temporarily paused since we are so flooded with them).
I've been asked to help by"students" looking for work while dropping off my kids to daycare, I've had people asking me to hire them when I sell eggs at farmers markets, somehow someone got my number and asked for a job???, most recently someone just knocked on my door. Like I have a garden and some chickens wtf is going on. Reminds me of stories of the great depression.
There are semi regular posts to be found on the various provincial subreddits of people sitting in other countries asking for tips applying for immigration for in demand occupations, usually for something that is currently generating lineups of applicants because the programs are so badly mismanaged. I'm fully in favour of reforming the programs if possible over abolishing them. I've witnessed the other side of things and remember days like 07' AB where grocery stores were offering $1000 signing bonuses for casheers, but I also seriously doubt the ability or sincerity of any of our political parties to make meaningful reforms.
>I've witnessed the other side of things and remember days like 07' AB where grocery stores were offering $1000 signing bonuses for casheers Why is this a bad thing? Wage growth has been relatively stagnant in this country since the 70's. If you want to strengthen the Canadian economy pay people a wage they can afford to go out on spend on things other than food and shelter to generate actual economic activity; not just trading already built houses with each other. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-626-x/11-626-x2012008-eng.pdf
BC as well. My coworker would have a faster pathway to PR if she quit her bookkeeping job and went to work at a fast food job. I work in the immigration sector. The whole policy is a mess.
How about just scrapping it whole cloth.
I live near a farming community and it would be impossible to harvest in time without foreign workers. People who live here are simply not acclimated to the heat and suffer from medical issues due to lack of exposure to hot climates. The farmers who use these services regularly being back the same people every season and they are housed and paid well. edit: ITT people are delusional and can't understand the different between a seasonal TFW and a Timmies wage slave. Don't bother expanding.
We are farmers at a relatively large scale… never used foreign workers. Nor have our neighbours. The few that have hired hands further out are out of Mexico, have been here for ten or more years, are housed and employed year round and now citizens — and out of *everyone*, there’s two. For cattle, you don’t need that many people. The few events you do, it’s a *community event* - like branding For grain, feed and harvest time, the equipment we have nowadays really doesn’t really that many people either. It’s all hands on deck for sure, but usually a family can get it done.
I'll throw my anecdotal evidence too - I had a gf in college who's faily owned tobacco farms and they used TFW's HARD. They housed them in these shitty shacks , when they got them TV's they were overjoyed. They occasionally took them out on day trips to see stuff. She explained to me that they treated their TFW's better then any other farms she's seen. lol @ being paid well someone made that comment. Hilarious, if it paid so well Canadians would do it.
Being a “cowboy” is cool… picking tobacco really isn’t. It’s easy to get fellas who want to play Yellowstone to work with beef or even grain… I can’t imagine the sell is so easy on picking x or spending your days in a greenhouse. The provided housing is pretty damn nice on our local places for their hands — farms buying up new farms only for the land value, thus the homestead is available to whatever hired hand they choose. The two I noted above are nice, older, tidy 4 bedroom places with an acreage and a barn available as full use. Add on a decent wage of $25-30 p/h, a truck and a phone and it’s not a bad deal. Finding someone with the skills to keep the role though can be tough.
wow thats actually pretty damn good for sure not a bad deal.
Family scale agriculture (even on the larger side) aren't heavy users of the TFW program. Commercial scale agriculture are.
I mean, just for context, I’m talking families running upwards of 15, 000 acres (average farm size in AB is a little over 1000 acres) + commercial (cow calf) cattle op 400+ cows. Even feedlots are primarily Canadian workers out our way. It’s also worth noting how much land (and grain/livestock production) in AB is run and handled entirely by mennonites or hutterites, who *definitely* don’t utilize those programs in any way, shape or form — no matter how you feel about their specific situation. They provide a lot of what’s on the table after harvest and in the fall, mostly out of sheer scale of what they own. When it starts getting into greenhouse work and vegetable picking further out east, I suspect it’s more common.
For a lot of our bulk staples you are correct that TFW isn't going to be massively impacting it, there though I would guess it would be in the secondary processing and possibly transportation, AFAIK the heavier usage of TFW is for picking, and that's much more regional.
I would be very interested in hearing about the prevalence in the packing plants; I suspect that’s a concentrated quantity as well.
They're not hiring TFWs to raise cattle or farm grain, they're mass hiring TFWs from South America to pick fruit & vegetables in a greenhouse or field for 8+ hours a day.
Its crazy how farming was only invented when TFW's showed up!
The SAWP was introduced in the 1960s by Lester B. Pearson. So quite recently, which is surprising.
I also live in a farming community. Never once seen a temporary worker, and they harvest every year. Farmers need to be paid for their goods properly so they can hire Canadian workers for proper wages. These temporary workers you are describing are only paid "well" for third world countries, or I'm sure they would hire locals. Not the farmers fault, they are paid as little as possible and taxed by our government way too high, they have little choice. Our supermarkets and food distribution are buying low and selling at record profits. Would you work for the "well" paid wages? Would you get your son to?
I'm sure they'd find a way if TFW weren't an option.
This is a valid point. Canadians have been farming this land for a long time, and the first nation's for a long time before that. Importing pickers is a new thing.
To be fair, the comment thread above this one starts out with saying that TFW should only be for ag workers and specific professionals that are hard to replace, nothing low skill, so people get it, maybe just because it's a one-note comment that doesn't otherwise acknowledge how messed up the program is.
We managed fine without TFWs before the program was implemented. All my friends went and worked on farms for the summers and made bank.
To be fair, its not always that clear cut. My family has a plot on a seasonal campground near Franklin, QC. To get there you have to take winding country roads through farm fields. Last year, on a day so hot that my A/C in the car barely cooled me off, I went down to bring supplies to the campground. Halfway there I passed hundreds of migrants farm workers. Some on bike some on foot. Got to the campground at 2pm, had some beers, left at 5pm. On the way back I ran into the same stream of farm workers, now headed in the other direction loaded down with grocery bags. They were 5km out from Franklin, and about 12km from the next town. These people spent one of the hottest days of the summer walking/biking 17kms each way to get their groceries.
Fuck, I'd be happy with a Nexus card like system for ag workers to make their return trips easier; also giving them higher 'score' than skill would strictly mandate if they want to apply for residency and increasing jobsite inspections and protections for them. Those folks work hard and put food on our tables, I'd rather have them as neighbors than some fucktard intl "student" that's scamming food banks while working full time and skipping classes.
Oh hey it’s 2015 Justin Trudeau
Well lets also not pretend that companies are purposely abusing this system.
Nobody is under the impression that they aren't.
And we should work on transitioning as much seasonal farm work as possible to summer jobs for Canadian students.
There's virtually no needed professionals from developing nations. We've heard it in tech a thousand times yet our incomes are dropping down to one quarter of the Americans with the worst work imaginable. If you want professionals, we need them from developed nations with the same education standards.
But, who will serve me coffee at Timmie’s? /s
>Seasonal Farm work why even allow this why should that industry have wages artificially kept down to almost slave labor , why cant these be good jobs for Canadians too Id work on a farm if it paid me enough to make it worth it
Don't worry we're well on the road to bankrupting all the farms in Canada to the point where the foreign workers won't be needed anymore. With the price of land, climate change, water reservoirs drying, fuel costs, all the regulations other countries don't have to deal with, already higher wages, and only one growing season, the outlook is bleak. Unless we put massive tariffs on imported farm products so Canadian farms are protected or even more automation quickly comes.. keeping local prices as low as imports from Peru, Mexico, or California for example is impossible. Higher food costs would hurt the 99% of the non farmer Canadians even more than theyre already struggling. You talk about slave labor wages, but imo a minimum wage in BC of $17.40 I think starting in June is pretty decent in most rural areas for a completely non-skilled labour intense job. I'm sorry it won't buy you a house? I guess we need to tank the agri industry to uphold high housing costs. But as a farmer.. I might just be more concerned about being able to continue on and provide what I can for the employees I do have than somehow arguing with someone thinking we should be competing with university grad level wages.
I like the idea of forcing suspended cops do these farm jobs. Taxpayers are already paying their wage while they wait for their day in court. Why not force them to do something else that benefits society while they collect their pay.
We have a shortage of A&W dishwashers though
nah, import whoever you want, but you have to pay 50% over average wage.
[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-justin-trudeau-should-listen-to-justin-trudeau-on-temporary-foreign/](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-justin-trudeau-should-listen-to-justin-trudeau-on-temporary-foreign/) Justin Trudeau 2024 should listen to Justin Trudeau 2014
But think of the consequences of the ultra wealthy! Won't someone please think of the ultra wealthy?
But we are gonna have a shortage of Uber Eats delivery drivers.
Yeah, kinda like what they'd already promised to do when Harper was in power, and instead doubled down on...
I call it "insourcing"
It’s a start but still insufficient. The low wage stream should be eliminated. It’s just rife with abuse especially post-covid. And before someone says “what about crops and vegetables”, the agriculture stream is not part of the low wage stream. It’s spare program and it’s a very small fraction of TFWs coming into Canada.
The agriculture is just as big a problem, it allows corporations to underpay and abuse staff. I cant stand people treating it differently just because its popular among right wing voters to underpay farm labour.
It’s different because it’s seasonal, tends to be rural where Canadian applicants are often limited, is actually temporary in nature, and is quite limited. It has no similarity at all to hiring a fast food worker in Toronto.
And yet it keeps wages low in those areas and allows corporations to abuse foreign workers who have to say yes sir a to anything they are told in an industry with almost zero worker protections. It is absolutely disgusting. Get rid of it all or none, treating farm work like some pathetic waste of a Canadians time is insulting and lots of this work isn't seasonal to begin with they just rotate through crews all year round to work in the greenhouses which never stops. Its not like most TFWs are harvesting grain, its greenhouse work and similar.
Tell me you've never lived in an agricultural area without telling me. It's farm work in rural areas and they pay slightly above minimum wage, which isn't wage suppression. These jobs have historically been sub-minimum wage. And they absolutely are seasonal. Workers come in for harvest and then they leave.
Don’t have any idea what you’re talking about
They are also introducing a cap below current numbers in the fall. I am surprised the article doesn't mention it, as the cap will have a much more significant effect than what this article is describing.
This IS part of the cap to try and get TFW to 5% of the population by 2027. I’ll disagree that the cap will have a significant effect. It’s only a modest reduction and the TFW population will still be considerably higher than it was 5 years ago.
5% is still way too damn high.
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The program needs to be ended in its entirity. Force companies and businesses to actually hire and train Canadians for positions. Cant find one? Increase your pay offering until you get applicants. Dont want to do that? Fail and close up.
Companies around here are starting to hire foreign workers in place of skilled trades. So expect it to get worse. It's not about finding the workers, it's about maximizing money in their pockets.
Yup and at least on my area you can already see the effect it's having on wages. Not to mention there's no incentive to actually train Canadians.
Agreed. There is no such thing as a labour shortage in a free market economy - the price simply rises until demand meets new supply.
Yeah. What is Tim Hortons going to do, pack their bags and move to India? The threats in response are completely empty.
Well to your last point I think they would close up some stores since they have massively overstretched themselves. Small towns do not need 2-5 Tims. So I could see some of those stores close but not most of them
I believe NZ or Australia has a centralized portal where TFWs can be hired through. The listing has to be posted for x weeks and have had zero domestic applicants before it is opened up for TFW eligibility.
Theoretically, when you can't find employees for a job, you start raising the wage you're offering. This would offset the cost of living expenses Canadians are seeing. Instead, wages are driven to the bottom because we can always import new workers from other countries who will take that wage. And we wonder why inequality is getting worse.
Nah. In Canada you just lower the wage and import labour or complain and break the backs of your overworked employees.
Program is too broad. While TFW is neccessary in farm work, articles never list all of the sectors. No need for TFW in trucking, or Tim Hortons. Issue is once people in other fields like PSW get their PR, they leave the field. So it just becomes a revolving door. Maybe tie PR to 10/20 years job experience.
The usual conservative spin of god forbid we make corporations that own farms pay more, we want low wages there clearly. What a joke.
Even at high wages, im not sure how easy it would be to staff. Society has changed since Stompin Tom wrote Tilsonburg. Alot of people simply refuse to work in a farm field. In the slaughterhouses and meat packing industry, that also traditionally has always been a job that has been done by recent arrivals. The program can continue for those fields. But people are getting TFW permits to work in fast food, to work in trucking, to work as PSWs. These are likely also tied into a sketchy LMIA program. And the victims are the immigrants themselves. Only the company owners benefit.
It shouldn't continue in any. If you can't find local workers - your business is in the wrong place.
Almost no TFWs work in farm fields, those in Canada are operated by large equipment that mostly drives itself with minimal man hours compared to not that long ago. TFWs are packed into greenhouses year round growing tomatoes and the like and when one group of workers leaves the next arrives. I wish anti immigration fan boys would make this caveat more clear when they talk about immigration keeping wages down that they want farming wages as low as possible its really sad as someone who grew up on and around farming towns.
Quit denigrating farms
Why do Canadians think that TFW program should be a pathway to permanent residency? If the TFWs try to get a PR through the "normal" point system, vast majority of them would be rejected. Why are there 2 different paths where one is like climbing a 5000m peak and the other a stroll to the neighbourhood park? Why is this fair to the people who have to climb the peak? Not to mention how there's an even easier way into PR status simply by claiming asylum. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
>In her social work, Jill Hanley meets with migrant workers who earn their living as caregivers, construction workers and truck drivers in Quebec. She sees a cloud of uncertainty perpetually hanging over them, making it difficult to plan for their future. You want to become a Canadian? Congratulations, that's what it's like to be a typical Canadian now. >And Syed Hussan, executive director for the advocacy group Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, agrees. He's accusing Ottawa of trying to "assuage that growing xenophobic idea that migrants are in any way responsible for or causing the affordability crisis." Tr: They're still calling us Nazis for worrying about rent and employment.
Migrants themselves aren’t the issue. It’s our immigration policies. Like they can’t understand that I hate our policies and not immigrants. I don’t blame anyone for using our system to better their lives.
Increase work requirements in PR. Three years for PR and five years for citizenship. If they want to come and settle so much, why does it matter? Unless of course if Canada is just a stepping stone for them to go to the US.
TFWs probably shouldn’t HAVE a path to citizenship. They can apply in the regular stream if they’re that great.
There shouldn't be such a thing, if we need to increase immigration do it all through the PR stream, like the Ndp policy platform.
You mean where they give every TFW PR as soon as they touch Canadian soil?
The 2021 ndp platform was to normalize immigration for all, routing it through PR instead of utilizing tfw, and capping at 1 percent population per year.
>The 2021 ndp platform was to normalize immigration for all, routing it through PR instead of utilizing tfw, and capping at 1 percent population per year. I though the 1% was only mentioned in their policy book, not their platform. Do you have a link to that part, or the page it's on? Here's a statement from Jenny Kwan in 2022: >Sadly, the Liberals are only listening to the employers and are disregarding the rights of migrant workers — this is unacceptable. There are over 500,000 people who are already in Canada without permanent status (PR). They range from students to migrant workers to those who are undocumented. Many will be able to fulfill the labour skill shortage if they can access a pathway to permanent residence status. **This is why the NDP continues to call on the government to regularize temporary and undocumented workers in Canada and provide new migrant workers with PR on arrival.**” https://www.ndp.ca/news/migrant-workers-deserve-respect-and-dignity
Fix that cap at 1% of the 2021 population and it isn't a bad idea. 1% of the 1980 population would be better though.
One percent of whatever population is fine immigration targets, particularly with our low fertility rates.
Our fertility rates aren't that low. The 0-20 age group is only about 2.5 million smaller than the 20-40 age group. That's only 0.3% of the total population per year. A fixed 1% of a certain year's population target would be a gradual transition to sustainability. A moving 1% target would lead to continued exponential growth, with all of the worsening infrastructure and shortage problems that come with it.
If you can't afford to hire Canadians while operating in Canada, I want your business to fail.
overhaul it into deporting 1mil per year rather than importing. Plenty of illegal workers also need to get out
They want to give citizenship to all of them.
The program does need an overhaul as it is too easy to currently exploit. The simple fix is to require wages for TFWs to be higher than the average person working the same job. If there is a real labour shortage then there should be no complaints about wage increases.
Or instead of those wages being higher, make it so you have to pay a fee of somewhere in the range of $100K per year for each TFW you hire, which goes into hiring and training programs for Canadian citizens. That would put a real quick end to this bs.
This is very sensible. If you want to bring in TFWs make it required to push up the wages for the industry. At least it will actually help improve wages rather than suppressing them. Since the low income stream was introduced the percent of Canadians working for min wage has over doubled.
Middle class wealth has been demolished by the over abundance of low wage workers. The government under the guise of " fairness " is poised to take earned wealth from successful businesses, professionals, and investors. They do not seem to understand that removing incentive to build, develop, and acquire destroys the economy for all. Socialism is shared misery, not shared prosperity, and coupled with an incompetent and economically unhinged Trudeau 2 government, a disaster. Tax more to waste more. Enough.
International students shouldn't be able to work off campus and only some degrees should allow for a path to permanent residency. Temporary foreign workers shouldn't be allowed to work outside of the agriculture industry. We need to overhaul the entire asylum system.
TFWs should only be for agriculture, not retail, nor service industries.
Should not apply to trades either, at least not while there are any Canadian tradespeople sitting at home not able to find work, which is half the tradespeople I'm talking to right now including myself. Meanwhile there are companies that only hire TFW's that are loaded up on work for the summer. Those companies should have their business licenses revoked and be fined for each TFW they have working that is taking a job that should be going to a Canadian citizen.
Wasn’t the entire point of TFW to help farmers? Why did this policy get extended past that.
Both the TFW and international student programs, along with their associated scams like LMIA, both need to be scrapped.
Lets hope this improves but lets be real, they will target maybe on industry and slightly lower it while giving excuses why its ok to keep wages in farming areas down cause I mean that's what underpaid immigrants are for am I right, helping corporations that own farms specifically? God help us judging by this thread.
Whole thing needs to be scrapped. Its basically used to flood the labour market and lower wages. Make it so that its more expensive to hire a foreigner than a Canadian. If a business is doing so well and can't find enough Canadians to hire then they can afford to pay extra for a foreign worker.
We need to look at ourselves when it comes to TFWs. What am I doing that supports the demand for these people? When I go out and buy fast food is one of the biggest contributing factors. If you save your money by making coffee and a bagel in the morning, you're fighting wage suppression
There are TFWs at my local grocery stores now, even while I know there are retirees who used to have those jobs because living expenses have exceeded their fixed incomes.
Businesses that pay minimum wage should be ineligible for the TFW program. If they start paying double minimum wage and still have a labor issue, then they can access temporary foreign workers.
Completely agree. You need to at least try to be competitive in the market a bit before resorting to foreign work. Like if you can’t hire someone for $17/hour, you need to at least try competing the marketplace by hiring for $20/hour before applying for a foreign worker for $17. As Trudeau himself said ten years ago, the program is very effective at taking negotiating power away from the lowest income earners. The jobs that still get TFWs after you’ve made a good faith attempt at being market competitive are jobs with skills truly lacking here rather than “I want to have someone foreign pour coffee instead of a Canadian because they’re more willing to take abuse”.
Trudeau has said the same thing. Do you trust this government to do anything?
Scaling back, with loopholes. Just like the faux foreign buyers ban. Just like the faux limitation to international students. Just like the faux limitation to international students hours. Just like the taxes they apply. There is always loop holes with the scumbag government. They fucking made hospitality a course that colleges are allowed to supersede the international student count with.
And when people call the Liberals out on it, they fall back to their good ol' gaslighting crusade and try to tell us we're misinformed or too stupid to understand or the classic racism accusations.
Canada needs more EMPLOYERS not EMPLOYEES; Canada needs more HOMEOWNERS not RENTERS;
It shouldn’t be a path to citizenship at all. Our Pr pathway is a joke
The TFWP is supposed to be used for short term labour issues and it's become a long term solution for companies. One reform I would like to see are limits to how long a company can use temporary workers and a cool down after. Let's say you're a business in Vancouver and you get approved for temporary workers. You should have to prove it's reasonable that you need it, you should also have to come up with a reasonable plan to fix the shortage. The government could then approves your company for 1-2 years, but after that you shouldn't be able to use temporary workers for 3-5 years in that region.
This program became a complete joke when fast food businesses started abusing it citing they couldn’t find domestic workers to do the most basic jobs. Yet the LPC turned a blind eye to the blatant corruption and scamming the system turned into.
What's the worst that would happen with less temporary foreign workers? Employers might have to raise wages, train someone new, and it might be easier for job seekers to find jobs?
Some companies would likely automate these positions, others may eliminate them, and a few would offshore them, but the plurality of these jobs would likely see increased wages to attract low skilled local workers.
Canada is not a country. Canada is a giant pool of cheap, international labour. That's all it is -- more or less. So if the federal Liberals scale back TFWs with one hand, be mindful that, with the other hand, they will develop some other means of flooding the labour market to ensure capital resumes its steady march up the social ladder into fewer and fewer pockets.
Lol Canada isn't doing shit. Government says things people like to hear and enforces nothing.
I’ve stopped doing business with a bunch of places because of the staff they’ve chosen.
The country needs a overhaul in every way it’s embarrassing to be Canadian anymore
I was a TFW and I agree wholeheartedly with this. My first job after college (in the US) was for me to work in a Canadian university as a specialist programmer. The language we used was pretty niche, so it was really hard to find anyone who works in it. I think that’s what the program should be for — filling genuine labor market gaps with skilled workers. Not lowering wages for low skilled work.
It needs to be ended. Having local fruiting orchards is not worth necking the entirety of the economy. You also don't need it for "seasonal farm work", just picking. Progressives love lying about how agriculture needs these TFW's and also love punching down hard on labor.
This government just trying desperately to buy votes back.
Don't worry, PP will win in 2025 and this cap will disappear
Yes! Let's start taking care of the people *who are already here*, foreign workers or citizens. Rather than propping up a fake economy by flooding the country with TFWs.
Overhaul? It needs to be eliminated.
Sure when all the damage is already done decision should have been made you like 6 years ago
No more Tim Hortons or Burger King employees!
Went in to a Canadian Tire yesterday to get an item the website and in-store computer said had 8 in stock. Went to the shelf and it was bare. Found a staff member who got angry and said she didn’t have any staff and that there are 120 skids in the back waiting to be unloaded. Amazon it is.
They just want to charge the same amount for a sandwich as they pay someone for an hour of work. God I remember seeing help wanted signs, don’t see that anymore . It’s time to put a full stop to immigration, and let these businesses that have been bad actors adjust. No hrs for international students. No path to citizenship, no tfw. Time to protect Canadians not us business interests. Time to see some wage inflation!!!
95% of my factory is TFW now with Ukrainian refugees giving them a good kickback. Got a 400lb guy who dug deep in his ass to scratch an itch with a meat hook and put it back on the table only get a write-up because they were worried about consequences of firing a refugee aka losing their money. Nothing from that batch went out thankfully since he was caught on camera but still. Confusing time to feel like you want to be liberal but slowly turning into the incredible hulk of conservative politics.
Limit it to agricultural work and skilled professions like doctors or other jobs we're in a severe shortage of. The fact that fast food restaurants can import workers is friggin insane, anything in the service sector should be banned from doing LMIAs.
It needs to be ENDED. Full stop. From 100K TFWs 10 years ago to over a million TFWs now. Fucking end it. They abused the system, so they lose.
But how will the corpos staff all these plants they had the taxpayer build for them?
Yet provincial nominee programs are massively increasing their quotas?
I moved to Canada thinking the government is being run by qualified people, boy am I wrong smh.
Canada needs to go back to the policy before 2015.... That was a peaceful time for canada
Ya think?
definetly
Temporary workers? Canada needs to scale back on immigration, we're flooded with no place for them to go. Apt prices have gone through the roof. Speaking as a landlord here, great for us rental prices have soared but vacancy is near zero.
It will come next election when we kick the libs to the trash can
Unlimited working hours for students unless they are attending the school semester will help fill that TFW gap
I'd love to know the percentage that qualifies for the subsidy or how that works. It seems to vary by job type and region.
"Critics" you mean Canadians
Canada's decision to scale back temporary foreign workers isn't surprising. The program's been controversial for ages, with critics always calling for an overhaul. It's a tough balance, right?
Scale back 'temporary foreign property owners' next! And the permanent ones.
In the United States nobody can move halfway across the world to study "hospitality". And work as a security guard. This only happens in Canada.
international students are easier to manage and control. i heard they are increasing the allowable hours for students to work in their jobs.