Canada to reform temporary foreign worker scheme that UN says promotes slavery

Canada’s temporary foreign worker programme is not fatally flawed but is “in need of reform,” the country’s immigration minister said on Tuesday, following a damning UN report that dubbed the programme a breeding ground for modern slavery.

The programme 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 per cent 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 programme 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.”