Safer area for Conservatives to attack and immigration critic Rempel Garner is having fun tweeting examples of TFWs in low-skilled service jobs. The excesses need to be trimmed and Canadian employers should not rely on TFWs to the same extent as cheaper labour or avoiding more investment in technology. Expect the provinces will also push back given the views of their business communities.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Mark Carney’s Liberals to ditch the federal government’s decades-old temporary foreign worker program, taking a harder stance against a program he’s previously said should be reduced, not axed outright.
The reason why, Poilievre said Wednesday, is because of worsening youth unemployment, rather than a Liberal-induced “immigration crisis” he has claimed has weakened both the economy and security of the country.
“The individual temporary foreign workers, the workers themselves, they are not bad people. They are not the problem. They are being taken advantage of by Liberal corporate leaders who want to use them to drive down wages,” Poilievre said at a news conference in Mississauga.
“We continue to support the dream of all immigrants to Canada, the immigrants who come here to be Canadian to get a job, work hard, contribute and live a good life that is part of the Canadian promise, and that is not what we’re addressing here today.”
Experts, however, warn that the Conservative leader’s framing is misleading, and promotes beliefs that foreign workers are a prominent threat to Canadian jobs.
The long-standing temporary foreign worker program allows Canadian companies to hire foreign nationals for temporary positions, as long as employers complete a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) to demonstrate the need for a temporary worker and that no local Canadians or permanent residents can fill the role. Through its various streams, the program has been lauded as a way to address labour shortages, but has also become a magnet for criticisms that it exposes workers to exploitation and abuse.
During this year’s spring campaign, Poilievre pledged in his platform to “restore order to immigration” in part by “dramatically reducing the number of temporary workers.”
On Wednesday, his party called on Ottawa to permanently end the program, cease issuing visas for new workers, create a separate program for “legitimately difficult-to-fill agricultural labour,” and to wind down the program more slowly in “ultra-low-unemployment regions.”
Tim Powers, chair of public affairs firm Summa Strategies, said Poilievre’s tougher position and shift in tone suggests he is seizing on Canadians’ economic fears while also avoiding turning away more immigrant communities who could join his coalition of Conservatives.
“It isn’t so much about what the program actually does. It’s what he thinks it represents to Canadians, this narrative that their jobs are being taken from them, and young people don’t get the opportunity to do work because temporary foreign workers are replacing them,” Powers said.
“I think if you talk to a lot of employers who use the program, they would tell you that trying to find local workers, particularly in service-based jobs … is hard to do because not everyone views the opportunities to work in a fish plant or a Tim Hortons as a job they want.”
At a cabinet retreat in Toronto, Prime Minister Mark Carney said he believed the program still had a place in his policy book and said he would assess how well the program was working.
“When I talk to businesses around the country … their number 1 issue is tariffs, and their number 2 issue is access to temporary foreign workers,” Carney told reporters.
But the Conservative leader, citing a youth unemployment rate that has climbed to 14.6 per cent, rolled out a series of claims about the program to justify his ask.
“The Liberals promised they would cap the temporary foreign worker program at 82,000, but in the first six months, they’ve already handed out 105,000 permits,” Poilievre said.
….According to federal data, Canada set a target to admit 82,000 new arrivals through the program this year.
But Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said Poilievre’s 105,000 figure does not “represent new arrivals to the country” and includes permit extensions for people already in Canada.
“Between January and June 2025, 33,722 new workers entered Canada through this program, which is roughly 40 per cent of the total volume expected this year,” a spokesperson for the department said in an email.
Despite Poilievre’s focus on the economic impacts of the program, some economists and immigration experts expressed concern about that the Conservative leader’s comments could still feed into the belief that migrant workers steal jobs.
“It is wrong to suggest that migrant labour is a major source of the problems Canadian workers are experiencing today — which are the result, first and foremost, of (U.S. President) Donald Trump’s tariff attacks, lingering high interest rates, the decline of high-wage industrial jobs, and government austerity in some provinces,” said Jim Stanford, economist and director of the think tank Centre for Future Work.
Stanford also emphasized that the program Poilievre is targeting only makes up a small share of the workforce and should not be confused with foreign workers under the substantially larger International Mobility Program, which includes international students.
Stanford said Poilievre’s claim that temporary foreign workers now make up two per cent of Canada’s workforce is inaccurate.
According to government data on the program, there were approximately 191,000 work permit holders in total in 2024, “less than one per cent of the workforce,” Stanford said. …
Multicultural Meanderings 