Worswick: Ottawa needs to abolish the temporary foreign worker program

Worth consideration:

…While these statements, at first glance, may seem at odds, there are valid economic reasons to be in favour of skilled (permanent) immigration but opposed to less-skilled temporary foreign worker programs.

We must therefore redesign our international migration policies. Ottawa’s announcement on Monday to further restrict the temporary foreign worker (TFW)program is a step in the right direction but not enough. Canada needs to go further and abolish the program.

We need to quickly phase out the low-skill stream of the TFW program, which the government has expanded to let companies fill perceived labour shortages. Then we should merge the higher-skill part of the program into our economic immigration program.

This would retain the advantages of the TFW program for higher-skilled workers, which is that it provides for a trial period for prospective immigrants. It would also ensure the temporary foreign workers are admitted in line with the goals of the economic immigration program: that they have high-enough skills to become immigrants whose presence greatly benefits the Canadian economy.

This must be done to reverse a long-standing, concerning trend. With support from the provinces and the business lobby, the federal government has greatly increased the numbers of immigrants and the number of temporary foreign workers coming to Canada, with 2022 levels that are more than 50 per cent higher than the 2017 levels in each case (according to the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration). Given that these remarkable increases have coincided with both a health care crisis and a housing crisis, it naturally raises the issue of redesigning our international migration programs….

Source: Ottawa needs to abolish the temporary foreign worker program