Falice Chin: Is Canada quietly becoming like the Arab Gulf States when it comes to relying on foreign labour? 

Just asking the question highlights some of the issues:

…Canada’s version is more humane. Our laws offer more protections, and the “low” wages are higher. Foreign workers also don’t make up the bulk of our labour force, but the direction of travel is uncomfortably familiar. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) has grown from a seasonal stopgap into a structural pillar for industries from agriculture to warehousing.

And, like in Qatar or the UAE, it’s creating a permanent underclass of workers who are essential to our economy but never fully part of our society.

By design or not, the program gradually reinforces Canadians to devalue the work itself—treating certain jobs, and the people who do them, as disposable.

As Canada tweaks its immigration system, pressure is coming from multiple sides: labour advocates pushing for stronger protections, and a growing anti-immigrant sentiment accusing these workers of “stealing” domestic jobs.

The temptation is to abolish the system entirely, a move that would affect some 140,000 foreign workers across Canada.

But that would be disastrous for the economy….

The harder part to fix

Policy tweaks can improve conditions for both employers and employees, but they won’t touch the deeper problem.

As long as we see certain work as “someone else’s job”—fit only for people from “somewhere else”—we will keep importing workers to do it.

That mindset breeds disposability, the quiet assumption that people doing this work are interchangeable and less deserving of full belonging.

“If you have served tables, you’ll be nice to your server later when you have a different job, right?” Connelly explained. “Or if you’ve had a job cleaning up a campground, you’re going to be very tidy next time you camp there as a customer, right? So, yeah, I think there’s value in all this work. I think there’s something to be said for all of us having this type of job.”

On this point, the two experts agree.

“Fundamentally as a society, when we’re doing our workforce development strategies—whether it be the provincial or federal—consider the fact that we do need individuals in the restaurants…We do need builders as well as engineers as well as IT,” Santini said.

“I don’t know where this current government is going with AI and clean technology,” she continued. “But that element still requires the plumbers, still requires the electricians, still requires the machinists and the cleaners.”

A little self-awareness is needed

In 2022, I returned to Qatar a decade after my stint ended—not as a foreign worker, but as a soccer fan cheering for Canada’s men’s World Cup run.

Scanning headlines and social media posts from afar, I couldn’t help but notice the self-righteous tone in how Canadians condemned the Qatari government for its treatment of foreign workers, particularly the predominantly South Asians who built the country’s shiny stadiums.i

Officially, about 40 workers died, but other estimates range from the hundreds to as high as 6,500.

It’s true that Canada’s workplace fatality rates are much lower, regardless of which stat you believe.

But they’re not zero.

There’s no public tally isolating work-related deaths among TFWs in Canada. Given that these workers are heavily concentrated in agriculture, it’s reasonable to assume that some are among the roughly 62 farm-related fatalities per year recorded nationally.

And when I hear the callous way some Canadians talk about TFWs, it’s hard not to think of the attitudes I saw among some Qatari nationals.

Connelly pinpointed the sentiment perfectly.

“They would have this expectation that these workers should be grateful,” she said. “It wasn’t enough that they just work and be good workers and finish their work and then get a different job. They wanted them to be grateful for this opportunity.”

There is a way forward that keeps the TFWP, treats workers with dignity, and meets employers’ needs. But the most urgent reform is in how we value the work itself, and the people who do it.

Source: Falice Chin: Is Canada quietly becoming like the Arab Gulf States when it comes to relying on foreign labour?