Good overview of recent research on low-skill migration and the government’s repetition of the Harper government mistakes before correction after a few years:
Former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper found himself in trouble in 2014 for jacking up the number of temporary foreign workers coming to Canada to work at places like McDonald’s and Tim Hortons.Then-opposition leader Justin Trudeau, labour unions and the media went into overdrive — attacking Harper for pandering to the business lobby by inundating the market with hundreds of thousands of low-skilled temporary foreign workers, many of whom were vulnerable to exploitation.To the surprise of many, Harper responded to the outcry. He sharply reduced the number of guest workers and brought in laws encouraging employers to improve working conditions and hire more people who were born in Canada or had become permanent residents.
But a rush of low-skilled foreign labour happening again, more than ever, in 2022.
Under a different name. And under the radar.
This time voters can thank Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for handing certain business lobbyists what they eagerly seek: A huge supply of low-skilled temporary foreign workers to fill jobs in supermarkets, coffee shops, kitchens, hotels, construction and residential care, for which some bosses don’t want to pay serious wages.
The legislation that Trudeau’s government has produced in the past few years, especially this spring, reduces pressure on employers to raise wages, improve conditions and hire people they may not always prefer, including recent immigrants, refugees and people with disabilitiesThat’s the gist of the case carefully set out by a range of Canadian economic professors who specialize in labour, including McGill University’s Fabian Lange, Waterloo’s Mikal Skuterud, Carleton’s Christopher Worsick and Western’s Ian O’Donnell.
Their arguments — which also analyze the high degree to which hundreds of thousands of foreign students contribute to Canada’s low-skilled workforce — are buttressed by researchers at Statistics Canada, including Eden Crossman, Youjin Choi, Yuquian Lu and Feng Hou.
The labour economists believe high-skilled immigrants have the potential to boost the living standards of all Canadians. But they disagree with encouraging employers to over-rely on low-skilled foreign workers, particularly through a new visa category, which is unknown to 99 per cent of Canadians.It’s called the “international mobility program.”
The ostensibly short-term foreign workers who arrive under the international mobility program now far surpass the number who come under the traditional category of temporary foreign worker, which is often nostalgically associated with farm staff and live-in nannies.
There has been a 65 per cent increase in guest workers arriving into Canada in 2019 compared to 2015, when the Liberals were elected.
And much of that expansion of mostly low-skilled workers, says a recent paper by O’Donnell and Skuterud, has come through the international mobility category. In 2019, it made possible the arrival of almost 400,000 workers, compared to 95,000 temporary foreign workers.
Employers prefer the international mobility program because it is an “open visa,” which is far less restrictive than the temporary foreign worker category. Government websites highlight how the mobility program does not require employers to do a labour-market impact study, through which a boss must show a local wasn’t available to fill the position.
The little-known international mobility program has brought in far more guest workers in recent years than the temporary foreign worker program. (Source: Prof. Mikal Skuterud)
And while Harper once restricted temporary foreign workers to 10 per cent of certain sectors, and allowed them only in regions where unemployment is under six per cent, the Liberals have done away with those limits even for temporary foreign workers, say Lange et al in a Policy Options article titled, “The economic case against low-wage temporary foreign workers.”
The resulting “unprecedented” increase in guest workers has not been transparent to the public. Nor is there decent study of it.“Whether or not the purpose is to obfuscate the data to mitigate controversy, that has been the effect,” say O’Connell and Skuterud.
There’s more. The mobility program does not include the even-larger class of foreign nationals who arrive on student visas. Six in 10 of them work while in Canada, mostly at low-skill jobs
Foreign student numbers at the end of last year stood at 621,000. That’s a five-fold increase since 2000. Most apply for three-year work permits following graduation. Their presence is felt most strongly on the job and rental markets in Canada’s big cities, where educational facilities are concentrated.
About one in six foreign students in Canada, or more than 100,000, attend schools in Metro Vancouver, where the majority also work, typically in the service and hospitality sectors. Many put up with the low wages because Ottawa portrays it as a prime route to permanent resident status.
“A cynical view of what has happened,” say O’Connell and Skuterud, is that people who used to arrive in Canada as temporary foreign workers “have been replaced by … study permit holders,” whose affect on the job market basically goes untracked.
Despite the Liberal government’s progressive rhetoric, this spring it found another way to make things even easier for bosses to hire more migrant workers at low pay.
On April 11, the government increased the cap on temporary foreign workers to 30 per cent from 10 per cent in seven sectors, including food services, hospitality, construction, health and residential care. Across the rest, the cap has been hiked to 20 per cent.
Guest permits will also go for 270 days instead of 180. And, incontradiction to what Trudeau urged in 2014, the Liberals “will end the moratorium on the hiring of temporary foreign workers in regions where the unemployment rate exceeds six per cent,” says the Policy Options essay.
The economists say all this reflects a fundamental shift in Canada’s immigration policy — to a “two-step approach” that encourages applicants to work in Canada before applying for citizenship. Almost 60 per cent of those who now go for permanent residency in Canada have already worked in the country, compared to just 12 per cent in 2000.While that can have its benefits, it can also lead to low-skilled workers (who are more likely to apply for immigration than those with high skills) being exploited while they pursue what the scholars call “the dream” of a Canadian passport.
Instead of employers relying on “a ready source of cheap labour” from outside the country to fill low-paying jobs, the economists advance the supply and demand concept that employers who have trouble finding workers should instead lure them by paying more, offering better conditions and hiking productivity through innovation.
To that end, Lange et al recommend a system to gradually lower the issuing of work visas — “thereby improving the economic efficiency of the system and the wages and working conditions of Canada’s lowest-wage workers.”
Harper did it once. It’s time now for Trudeau to reduce the damage.
About Andrew Andrew blogs and tweets public policy issues, particularly the relationship between the political and bureaucratic levels, citizenship and multiculturalism. His latest book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias, recounts his experience as a senior public servant in this area.
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