KOOP: Despite reforms, TFWs will keep harming Canadian workers

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In all my years watching Canadian government and politics, there has never been a more bungled policy file than immigration under this Liberal government.

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For decades, both Canadians and newcomers enjoyed the benefits of a well-ordered immigration system. The number of immigrants admitted each year was high compared to similar countries. And, though never as generous as some thought, Canada accepted well above our fair share of refugees and other asylum claimants.

A well-ordered, well-run, and generous immigration system contributed to a near consensus among Canadians that immigration was a good thing.

Other countries often have parties that are strongly anti-immigration. Fights over immigration issues can take centre stage in politics. Just look at the current U.S. election campaign.

In contrast, all of Canada’s major parties for the longest time agreed on the wisdom of the country’s immigration system. It was simply not a contentious, politicized topic.

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But nine years of Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has wrecked that consensus. Just this week, a new poll released by Leger showed that a majority of Canadians, 65%, thought there were too many immigrants coming to Canada, a stunning change.

As public opinion has shifted, so too have the positions of our parties. The all-party consensus in favour of immigration is now a thing of the past.

Trudeau must take responsibility for this. From the beginning, the immigration file was used as a political tool for Trudeau to trumpet his own virtue. This was especially true when it allowed him to contrast himself to former (and perhaps future) U.S. president Donald Trump.

But it turned out that while Trudeau was talking himself up, his government was in fact losing its grip on several out-of-control programs. The government has now shifted course, but it will take several years of concerted action (likely under a new government) to bring the situation back under control.

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Nowhere is this more true than with the temporary foreign worker program, which allows foreign nationals to work in Canada in sectors where businesses allegedly have trouble recruiting workers.

There is some value to this program in what is referred to as the agricultural stream. Additionally, some businesses genuinely struggle to meet staffing needs, such as hospitality businesses in resort towns.

But explosive growth in the low-wage stream of the TFW program — which allows a whole raft of businesses to recruit TFWs for low-wage jobs rather than hiring Canadian workers — has had massive negative consequences for Canadian workers. In part, this is because the federal government made it far too easy for businesses to import TFWs rather than attracting local Canadian talent.

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Normally, a tight labour market is good news for workers since companies must boost salaries or find other ways to attract qualified workers.

The low-wage TFW program short-circuits this market force. Instead of competing for Canadian workers, businesses can save money by importing workers from abroad. Canadian workers must then either settle for a lower wage or lose out on jobs entirely.

This then has a cascading effect. For a variety of reasons, many businesspeople would prefer to hire from the local workforce rather than importing labour. But once some unscrupulous businesses do so to keep their labour costs low, it becomes difficult for other businesses to compete without TFWs. These are the conditions under which the use of TFWs to replace Canadian workers has proliferated.

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While the low-wage TFW stream keeps wages low for some Canadian workers, for others it makes it all but impossible to even break into the labour market at all. This is especially true for young Canadians who are just getting started in life and must confront an affordability crisis in the face of an artificially tight labour market. For young Canadians, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Last week, Immigration Minister Marc Miller admitted that TFWs who had come to Canada with closed permits to work in specific positions were increasingly applying to break out of those permits, allowing them to apply for and work at other jobs. That number, Miller admitted, had “doubled or tripled” in the past few years.

TFWs on open permits then compete directly with Canadian workers on the job market, compounding the difficultly those workers already face in a tight labour market. Some TFWs on open permits can’t find work, so they remain unemployed.

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If the revelation that there is some unknown but rapidly growing number of unemployed foreign workers in Canada confuses and surprises you, believe me: you’re not alone. It boggles the mind that the federal government has allowed this to happen.

It appears that the federal government is waking up to the harms of its liberalized TFW program, announcing earlier this week that it will create more stringent requirements for businesses to hire these workers. In fact, Liberal changes to the program following the COVID-19 pandemic made it much easier for businesses to recruit TFWs. It’s not clear if the new changes will ratchet them back.

Many politicians claim to be committed to fighting for Canadian workers. But, when it comes time to make difficult decisions to make workers’ lives better, these politicians are often nowhere to be found.

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The truth is any attempts to reform or, better yet, do away with the low-wage stream will surely be ferociously opposed by many of the businesses that boost their profit margins through the importation of cheap labour. Multi-national corporations and their armies of lobbyists will fight tooth and nail to keep the wages of Canadian workers as low as possible.

So it will be more important than ever that we press politicians to look out for Canadian workers first and foremost and hold them accountable if they fail to do so.

— Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba.

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