New report goes bold on temporary foreign worker program: Getting rid of it ‘could solve this all’ | CBC News

The best way to fix problems with Canada’s temporary foreign worker program may be to get rid of it, according to a new report.

The report — Permanent Jobs, Temporary People: Temporary Foreign Workers’ Struggle for Permanent Residency in Prince Edward Island — is a joint project involving Dalhousie and St. Thomas universities, P.E.I.’s Cooper Institute and the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre. Released Wednesday morning, the research focuses on how the program is working on P.E.I.

The report’s recommendations include improving workplace inspections, providing full access to employment insurance and health care, ending employer specific work permits, and ensuring reliable funding for groups supporting migrant workers.

But the first recommendation is simply to grant permanent residency status to workers when they arrive in Canada — that is, remove the “temporary” element.

“That overall recommendation is, OK, we could solve this all if we granted permanent residency upon arrival. Most of these things wouldn’t be necessary,” said Eliza MacLauchlan, lead author of the report.

The other recommendations are meant to clarify the other problems with the program, she said.

In preparing the report, researchers conducted 27 interviews with 29 participants, including 12 current or former temporary foreign workers; 10 current or former service providers; four provincial government employees; and three employer representatives. The interviews were conducted between October 2022 and July 2023.

A growing reliance

The temporary foreign worker program was launched in the 1970s as a last-resort option for businesses that could not find enough workers in Canada. The farming and fish plant sectors were particularly in need.

But in the following decades, temporary foreign workers have become an essential part of the Canadian workforce.

It’s a trend that has grown in recent years. An estimated 40 per cent of P.E.I.’s agricultural workforce is now made up temporary foreign workers. Adding in employees in seafood processing, the trucking industry and other jobs, the number of temporary foreign workers arriving on the Island every year grew from about 400 in 2015 to more than 1,600 in 2023.

Temporary foreign workers lack many of the rights that citizens and permanent residents do. Most of them are on closed work permits, tied to particular jobs with particular employers.

The report outlines how this creates a power imbalance: Temporary foreign workers who lose their jobs also have to leave the country, and those who complain about abusive working conditions may simply not be invited back the following year.

But the report also found employers were struggling with the requirements as well. In particular, taking part in the program requires a level of expertise in immigration that some companies and industries simply do not have.

“There was a lot of human resources challenges that came with administering this program [and] also supporting people with permanent residency,” said MacLauchlan.

Providing housing, a requirement for employers using the temporary foreign worker program, was also a big challenge for some, particularly in the rural areas where many resource-based industries are located.

Tip line call doesn’t help

As the program grow, the report found some evidence that the system of support for temporary foreign workers is breaking down, including the 1-866-602-9448 “report abuse” hotline that Service Canada is supposed to be offering 24 hours a day.

One report recommendation is that worksite inspections should be frequent and unannounced; currently, employers are given warning of an impending visit in most cases.

CBC investigation uncovers abuse allegations at P.E.I. apple orchard

An apple orchard company on Prince Edward Island has been mired in allegations of worker abuse. Following years of complaints and a Canada Border Service Agency investigation, the company has not been banned from hiring temporary foreign workers, an investigation by The Fifth Estate has found.

A worker not named in the report told researchers that just before one pre-announced inspection, that person’s employer gathered the temporary foreign workers for a meeting and instructed them on what to say when the inspector arrived. They did so. 

“However, they then later called the ‘report abuse’ tip line, but they really didn’t find they got any support through that. They knew other workers at their workplace had also called the ‘report abuse’ tip line, who said the same thing. Nothing really happened,” said MacLauchlan.

“The government was supposed to be there to help, but they didn’t really get any help from them.”

Seasonal workers need not apply

While many temporary foreign workers hope their job on the Island will lead to permanent residency in Canada, it is a difficult path.

Of the 3,615 people who received permanent residency in 2023 in P.E.I., the report found just 55 had taken part in the temporary foreign worker program.

One of the main reasons is that although such work plays a vital role in the economy, it does not qualify toward permanent residency because it is seasonal.

“This is a very strict rule that [the federal government has], that it has to be the non-seasonal employment,” said MacLauchlan, talking about work that will count toward permanent resident status.

This has led to workarounds, but the report found new details about how one of these workarounds is causing more trouble for some temporary foreign workers, not less.

In some cases, employers will keep a worker on the payroll year-round even though the job is seasonal. Hours paid for during the off-season are banked, under the assumption workers will make them up during the busy spring and summer months.

It is clear that the tip line and complaints-driven inspections are not catching or preventing abuses in the workplaces of temporary foreign workers in P.E.I. and beyond.— Permanent Jobs, Temporary People report

But if the hours aren’t made up, the workers are left in debt to the employers. MacLauchlan said one worker interviewed, who eventually became a permanent resident, resorted to a loan agent to pay off the employer.

“That person is now paying close to $500 a month for that loan that they took out to pay back their employer, and are now living in their car,” she said.

Another continues to work for their original employer, unable to break free of the $10,000 still owing.

In 2015, the federal government instituted a new system of fines and suspensions for employers found to be breaking the rules of the temporary foreign workers program. Since then, almost 900 employers have been found non-compliant.

But the report concludes the system is not catching everyone.

“Given the preponderance of workplace abuses uncovered by researchers and the media, it is clear that the tip line and complaints-driven inspections are not catching or preventing abuses in the workplaces of temporary foreign workers in P.E.I. and beyond,” it says.