Canadian immigration minister says temporary worker program needs reform

Canada's temporary foreign worker program is not fatally flawed but is "in need of reform," the country's immigration minister told Reuters on Tuesday, following a damning UN report that dubbed the program a breeding ground for modern slavery.

The program brings non-Canadians to the country to work on a temporary basis. Ostensibly meant to fill labour shortages, it has grown dramatically and has come under fire for suppressing wages and leaving workers vulnerable to abuse.

The low-wage temporary foreign worker stream, especially, "is one that we need to take a more careful look at," Immigration Minister Marc Miller said.

Its ranks have grown dramatically - from 15,817 in 2016 to 83,654 in 2023, thanks in large part to expansions in 2022.

Among other things, these expansions increased the share of employers' workforces that could be low-wage temporary foreign workers, and the change waived a rule precluding the hiring of temporary foreign workers in certain low-wage occupations in regions with unemployment rates of 6% or higher.

Labour Minister Randy Boissonnault is considering "a refusal to process in the low wage stream if the abuse and misuse does not improve," said labour ministry spokesperson Mathis Denis. 

But "even when the program is working as intended and there's no abuse, the low-wage stream absolutely suppresses wages. It's kind of designed to," said economist Mike Moffatt, senior director at the Smart Prosperity Institute.

If it were up to him, he said, he would end the low-wage stream entirely.  "I don't think employers have some constitutional right to low-wage workers."

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery said in a report last week that Canada's "Temporary Foreign Worker Program serves as a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery."

Problems cited included underpayment and wage theft and physical, emotional and verbal abuse. The report also noted that workers struggle to access healthcare.

Reducing the number of temporary residents, as Canada plans to do, will not address problems making these migrants vulnerable, the special rapporteur found.

"The structural precarity for temporary foreign workers would be mitigated by systematically providing workers with a pathway to permanent residence," the report said. 

Miller called the slavery characterization "inflammatory." 

"It's not to deny the allegations in some of the cases that are occurring and abuses that are occurring in Canada ... It's not right when there are abuses, and there are abuses."

But "I think it's unfair to employers that employ people and treat them well to call them the equivalent of slave owners."

Earlier this month, Miller told Reuters that Canada plans to unveil a suite of measures to reduce temporary immigration amid a worsening housing situation and an affordability crisis that have led to rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the country.