The Surrey Board of Trade is wary of the federal government's decision to reduce the Temporary Foreign Worker program, fearing it will have an adverse affect on local employers. The government, however, maintains changes are needed to crack down on fraud and open up more jobs to Canadians.
"While the program's adjustments aim to reduce reliance on temporary foreign workers, we believe that Surrey employers continue to struggle in finding employees with the necessary skill sets, particularly in critical sectors like healthcare, retail trade, and transportation," board spokesman Jasroop Gosal said.
"As these changes roll out, it is essential that we carefully examine the full extent of their impact. Employers and workers alike need certainty, and we urge the government to provide more support to ensure that all residents, particularly immigrants who have the highest labour force participation rates, continue to thrive in our local economy."
The TFW was set up as an "extraordinary measure" to be used only when Canadians and permanent residents aren't able to fill job vacancies, according to a Employment and Social Development Canada bulletin. "Unfortunately, the TFW Program has been used to circumvent hiring talented workers in Canada."
Randy Boissonnault, federal minister of employment, workforce development and official languages, revealed in August a move to "weed out" fraud and misuse of the program and strengthen compliance measures with changes to take effect on Sept. 26.
“The Temporary Foreign Worker program was designed to address labour market shortages when qualified Canadians were not able to fill those roles," Boissonnault noted. "Right now, we know that there are more Canadians qualified to fill open positions. The changes we are making today will prioritize Canadian workers and ensures Canadians can trust the program is meeting the needs of our economy.”
The changes include government refusal to process Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIAs) related to lower-wage jobs in metropolitan areas with an unemployment rate of six per cent or higher, with exceptions being granted for seasonal and non-seasonal jobs in sectors such as agriculture, food processing and fish processing, healthcare and construction. Moreover, businesses will not be allowed to hire more than 10 per cent of their workforce through the TFW program and the maximum duration of employment hired through the low-wage stream is reduced from two years to one.
The government holds that Canadian employers have a responsibility to invest "in the full range of workers available in this country, such as young people, newcomers, and persons with disabilities, who are too often an untapped economic resource in Canada."
But the one-year cap on LMIAS, Gosal argues, will lead to Surrey employers facing "even more uncertainty in filling crucial vacancies.
"Small and medium sized businesses, specifically retail trade, make up a large portion of Surrey’s business community. These changes will cause significant impacts," he said. “Surrey’s economy depends on industries such as retail trade, healthcare, and transportation. These sectors have been critical employers for immigrants and recent immigrants, and any disruption to their participation in the labour force will be felt across the city.”
In May, the Now-Leader reported that 48 Surrey businesses had been fined a collective $914,000 over the past eight years for non-compliance with the TFW program or International Mobility Program, with $473,250 in those fines listed as unpaid.
The highest penalty applied to a Surrey business – a numbered company – was a $129,000 fine plus a one-year ban. The lowest fine was $500.
Surrey businesses also reaped a collective 22 years in bans on hiring temporary workers.
Ken Hardie, Liberal MP for Fleetwood-Port Kells, said Labour Market Impact Assessments have been sold for “outrageous amounts of money when they’re not to be sold. So there’s been a lot of gaming the system."
An LMIA is a document an employer requires before hiring a foreign worker, with a positive LMIA indicating a need exists for a foreign worker to fill a job.
Gosal weighed in.
"We need to ensure that the bad actors are not continuing to manipulate and use the system as they have. I think that this is absolutely ridiculous that these businesses are able to take advantage of this program," he said. "We absolutely need to increase not only monitoring as well as punitive measures but we need to make sure that they're not able to take advantage of this system in any other way."
The federal government's budget for 2017 included a investment of $279.8 million over five years – beginning in 2017-18 with $49.8 million per year after that – to support the TFW and IMB programs.
Asked how people who already live here, who can't find work, are supposed to get into the stream of being productive taxpayers to pay for such programs, Gosal replied that the federal government has said it want to make sure that businesses are hiring Canadian citizens and permanent residents.
"We at the Surrey Board of Trade totally support ensuring that the right employee gets the job and at the end of the day, in the past especially, there has been a labour shortage and so there just wasn't the right pool," he told the Now-Leader.
"Of course, finances play a part in who someone is going to hire or not hire but at the end of the day I think the message that we get from our businesses is that it's all about the skill – the businesses are more than willing to pay for the person with the best skill set and of course, there's a mismatch in that as well as affordability being what it is, a lot of businesses are paying more for their workforce in order to be one, competitive but also to ensure they have happy and supported employees because then you get employees that stick around that want to continue to work for you."
Gosal said he's not saying foreign workers generally have a better skill set than people who already live here. "I think it's just a greater pool of potential candidates and that will give businesses the ability to really find a person that would be a good fit for the position and there are some individuals that are new immigrants that are able to meet or exceed the skill sets that some businesses are looking for.
"We're just saying that they are part of the ecosystem and part of the solution for employers and we want to make sure that, especially now, with the level of immigration that we've had to date, that could cause some employment concerns and greater issues for our businesses in the near future with these changes."