Trucking companies deemed unsafe permitted to employ temporary foreign workers

2026/07/13 Leave a comment

Another breakdown in immigration:

Nearly 100 trucking companies with a history of safety infractions, labour violations and other regulatory failures have been granted approval by Ottawa to hire temporary foreign workers since 2019, a Globe and Mail investigation has found.

The compliance issues ranged from flunking safety audits to concerns over forged documents. In some cases, companies were approved by Employment and Social Development Canada to use the migrant labour program despite failing to comply with wage theft orders issued by the same ministry. 

One carrier identified by The Globe’s analysis was decertified by Manitoba authorities over chronic safety issues, yet subsequently granted permission to hire temporary workers on three occasions. 

The Manitoba government accuses the company of setting up a related carrier in Alberta linked to a fatal collision in Brandon, Man., in late May. The incident prompted the province to call for the creation of a national trucking registry to better track bad actors in the sector. …

Source: Trucking companies deemed unsafe permitted to employ temporary foreign workers

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Khan: The Temporary Foreign Worker Program Can’t Be Fixed

2026/07/10 Leave a comment

There will always be some need for temporary workers, particularly seasonal work and some of the groups under IMP. But the design for lower skilled temporary workers invites abuse and scams:

THE TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKER PROGRAM has, for a litany of reasons, cemented its place as the poster child for all things wrong with Canada’s immigration system. Corruption? Check. Exploitation? Check. Profiteering? Check. A growing majority of Canadians now blame the program for bringing in too many immigrants and contributing to the housing shortage, a crumbling health care system, and for some on the far right, a perceived crisis of too many Brown people. 

The critiques are mostly political and occasionally racist. But a recent British Columbia Supreme Court decision in a class action suit tells a more sobering story: the TFWP is merely a tool bad actors can weaponize against the vulnerable in a broader immigration system that places a person’s productive value above their human value. 

What makes this case extraordinary is its scale: between 2011 and 2016, a Surrey-based immigration consultant named Kuldeep Bansal ran a glitzy foreign worker recruitment operation out of a luxury hotel in Dubai, disguised as a series of job fairs, that defrauded hundreds, potentially thousands, of vulnerable workers with offers of jobs in Canada that, in many instances, didn’t exist. 

The suit accused Bansal of charging vulnerable workers in Dubai between $2,000 and $8,000 for “services” related to obtaining these “guaranteed” jobs for Mac’s Convenience Stores Inc. (The company, which has been rebranded as Circle K, is owned by Quebec-based Alimentation Couche Tard, which is not named in the ruling.) The hiring representative for Mac’s, a man named Geoff Higuchi, was accused of knowing about the scam but still helping Bansal secure work permits through the TFWP, then breaching contracts with the around 125 workers who actually arrived in Canada and were told the jobs they had applied for were no longer available….

Canada is no stranger to the exploitation of temporary workers. It’s been a feature of the Canadian labour market practically since Confederation, from the contract labour schemes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the seedy “labour brokers” they spawned, to the introduction of the TFWP in 1973, the birth shortly thereafter of the immigration consultant industry, the abuse of agricultural and domestic workers that followed, and the expansion of the program during the low-wage labour shortages of the early 2000s and during the pandemic. By 2023, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery declared the low-wage stream of the TFWP a “breeding ground” of modern enslavement.

Over the decades, successive governments have used a largely economic argument to justify temporary labour: businesses need flexibility in hiring to help them navigate the ups and downs of the labour market. The logic of that argument, experts say, places short-term economic needs above humanitarian obligations. And the results have been predictable: flexibility has turned into dependency, dependency into abuse. 

Today, with Canada facing an uncertain economic future, the demand for temporary foreign workers is on the decline. But when that changes, the machinery of exploitation will lurch back into motion. We will see more businesses lobbying the government for more access to cheap foreign labour and more immigration consultants leveraging that demand to enrich themselves, leaving in their wake a trail of broken lives. 

That cycle will endlessly repeat, as it has for more than a century, until Canadian politicians finally admit what the real problem is: temporariness itself. 

Adnan R. Khan is a freelance writer and editor based in the Netherlands and the author of the Canada in the World newsletter.

Source: The Temporary Foreign Worker Program Can’t Be Fixed

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ICYMI – Globe editorial: Ottawa’s enduring problem of a surge in temporary workers

2026/06/10 Leave a comment

Mirrors CPC calls although sceptical that any government could resist business pressures for caregivers and LMIA Temporary Foreign Workers:

…IRCC is doing a better job at managing new arrivals, but it needs to do more to reduce the overall number of work permits. The temporary foreign worker program outside of agriculture should be wound down. It’s also time to take a closer look at the International Mobility Program. 

Immigration is a key driver of Canada’s prosperity, but more needs to be done to move away from the two-step immigration system of the last decade, and return to selecting the highest-skilled immigrants from abroad for permanent residency. Restoring balance has been too slow. The federal government shouldn’t pretend otherwise. 

Source: Ottawa’s enduring problem of a surge in temporary workers

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While I was away: Temporary Residents

2026/06/08 Leave a comment

Some articles of interest:

Rempel Garner: Liberals spent $1.6B on Temporary Foreign Worker program, new data shows

Virtue signalling. A CPC government would face the same pressures from the business community and provincial governments:

….Therefore, particularly in light of the recession, the TFW program should be immediately abolished and replaced with a standalone program solely dedicated to fill legitimately hard-to-fill seasonal agricultural positions. In no universe should its administration in its present iteration be funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by Canadian taxpayers who themselves are struggling to find and keep work….

Tim Hortons commits to hiring 10,000 local employees, scaling back on temporary foreign workers

Hopefully, they will publish the numbers for accountability:

Tim Hortons is pledging to hire some 10,000 local employees, rolling back its reliance on the temporary foreign worker program.

The coffee chain says 400 hiring events have already taken place throughout March and April, and that the hiring blitz of local team members will continue throughout the year.

It’s a bit of a change for the company, which has in the past relied on the temporary foreign worker program to pull in new employees. Tim Hortons says it turned to the foreign worker program following the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, when the country experienced a shortage of workers….

ApplyBoard faces a reckoning as Canada’s immigration boom turns into a bust

Had it coming it appears:

….Behind the scenes, however, things were messier. The Logic spoke to 17 former ApplyBoard employees who worked at a variety of levels and in a wide range of roles—from the company’s launch to recent months—to tell the inside story of a startup that played a key role during a pivotal time in Canada’s history. The sources requested anonymity out of fear of professional and legal repercussions. 

The former workers talked of pervasive culture problems amid immense pressure to expand as ApplyBoard’s leaders lionized the work-hard, play-hard ethos of Silicon Valley at the expense of workplace boundaries and norms. The results, say the departed staffers, were incidents of recklessness and questionable judgment by senior managers, including sexual harassment and discrimination. They also said managers brushed off well-known problems with document fraud and unscrupulous recruiting agents, prioritizing growth over academic integrity and student well-being….

Usher, the college and university consultant who has worked with ApplyBoard, likewise doesn’t pin the consequences of high foreign-student numbers on the company that helped match students to schools that wanted them.

“Business conditions are a function of government regulation,” says Usher. “Did they strike it rich in Canada because of the policy environment? Yeah, they did. Good for them. They didn’t create that policy environment. They took advantage of it. That’s what businesses do.”…

ApplyBoard’s services especially appealed to colleges that don’t have the reputations of major universities or the resources to run wide recruitment operations overseas, and they offered too little in return, Skuterud says.

“If you look at the programs these students were in, overwhelmingly the growth was in these business programs with low cost for the college,” Skuterud says. “You just need one more seat in the classroom.”

That’s not arranging a beautiful intellectual marriage, he says—it’s much grubbier….

End the sleight of hand of immigration consultants 

Ongoing debate between lawyers and consultants. Certainly the latter are more prone to fraud:

The new rules give the immigration ministry more power to take action if the college doesn’t fulfill its mandate: the immigration minister can appoint someone to take over the board’s duties if it doesn’t meet its responsibilities. But instead of doubling down on a failed model, it’s well past time that Ottawa moved on to a new solution. 

Given attempts for separate regulation haven’t worked, immigration consultants should be required to work under the supervision of lawyers. There should still be requirements for training, like paralegals, but they would operate under the rules of provincial and territorial law societies, which closely monitor lawyers. For example, lawyers are subject to spot audits to examine their financial records. This more proactive approach would help root out problems. 

Law societies could create public blacklists of consultants, lawyers, employers and recruiters found guilty of fraud. They could also crack down aggressively on ghost consultants. While it might seem that putting lawyers in charge will drive up costs for clients, in reality, many of the independent consultants – in particular the shady ones – already charge their clients very high fees. 

Instead of more half-measures, Ottawa needs to implement real reform. The immigration consultant sector is a stain on Canada’s reputation, and it needs to be cleaned up now. 

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Temporary Foreign Worker Permits Are Destroying Trucking

2026/05/05 2 Comments

Another area of less expensive temporary workers being used, similar to the restaurant and food service industry:

…If the goal is to fix the transport trucking industry, and protect the workers who keep it running, the solutions are not complicated. They do, however, require political will, and perhaps most importantly, workers and unions organized and willing to fight. 

The Teamsters are calling for: a reduction in closed work permits that tie workers to a single employer; a meaningful wage floor and enforcement to ensure pay for all hours worked; pathways to permanent residency for migrant workers; stronger enforcement against employment misclassification and other labour violations; and recognition of truck driving as a skilled trade. 

All of these proposals would raise standards for migrant and Canadian-born workers alike, and should form the basis of solidarity. 

What’s happening in the trucking industry is not unique. It’s part of a broader pattern in the Canadian economy whereby employers refuse to accede to demands for better pay and working conditions (even when their own cost-cutting produces a qualitative labour shortage), instead depending on a supply of precarious and exploitable workers. 

As the Teamsters’ report makes clear, we are faced with a choice. We can continue down the current path, where labour shortages are solved not by improving jobs, but by making workers more disposable. Or, we can raise wages and improve work as the foundation of a better economy. As Burgan put it, “Trucking can’t be outsourced abroad. These jobs are here to stay. So let’s make sure they’re good jobs.”

The trucking industry, like so many others, doesn’t have a labour shortage. It has a shortage of good, union jobs. 

Source: Temporary Foreign Worker Permits Are Destroying Trucking

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Migrant farm workers’ class-action suit against Canadian government certified

2026/02/25 2 Comments

To watch:

An Ontario court has cleared a major hurdle for migrant farm workers to pursue a Charter challenge against Ottawa for systemic racism and discrimination.

On Monday, the Superior Court of Justice certified a $550 million class-action lawsuit initiated by two lead plaintiffs, Kevin Palmer and Andrel Peters, who were brought to Canada under the federal government’s seasonal agricultural farmworker program (SAWP).

The lawsuit alleges that their rights were violated under the “tied employment” provisions of the program that restricted them to work for a named employer only, and their “compelled” payments to Canada’s employment insurance premiums despite their disqualification from receiving the benefits.

The certified class will cover current and former agricultural workers who are or were employed in Canada on a contract basis under SAWP, on or after Jan. 1, 2008. The federal government has already identified precisely 74,785 people who are members of the class, and has produced a class list with each member’s personal information.

Launched in 1966, the SAWP allows agricultural employers to hire temporary foreign workers from Mexico and participating Caribbean countries for up to eight months a year when qualified Canadians are unavailable. Between 30,000 and 40,000 seasonal migrants come to work here via the program each year.

In his decision, Judge Edward M. Morgan concluded that the plaintiffs’ proposed common issues predominate over any individual issues in the action, and focus on a common set of conditions imposed on all class members in the SAWP. 

“The breaches alleged are systemic and apply across the class,” Morgan wrote in his 25-page decision. “The Charter claims focus on state action in imposing oppressive and liberty-restricting terms in the SAWP contracts and legislation/regulation.

“Likewise, the unjust enrichment claim arises from a set of facts imposed by legislation and held in common by all class members — i.e. the payment of EI premiums, accompanied by restrictions imposed in the EI scheme and the SAWP that prevented access to EI benefits….

Source: Migrant farm workers’ class-action suit against Canadian government certified

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Some employers using foreign worker program facing bigger fines for violations

2026/02/23 Leave a comment

Encouraging:

Amid increasing scrutiny on the use of Canada’s temporary foreign worker program, the total dollar amount of fines imposed on employers who are found to violate the terms of the program has risen dramatically.

However, some observers think changes to monitoring and enforcement of the program are still required.

Catherine Connelly is a professor of human resources and management at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., who has studied the temporary foreign worker program.

She says the federal government historically seemed to take an “educational approach,” with fines that were usually in the hundreds rather than the thousands of dollars.

“There just didn’t seem to be too much of a deterrence in terms of how they were approaching the enforcement of the rules of the program,” she said.

But Connelly says as public perception of the program soured, she noticed a gradual change that built into a “dramatic shift” over the last year.

“Now the approach seems to be more of a deterrence approach and we see fines easily into the tens of thousands, if not the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she said.

In the 2018-19 fiscal year, 74 companies faced a total of $102,250 in fines.

By comparison, during the last fiscal year, 147 companies faced $4,882,500 in fines.

Connelly believes the number of companies caught and fined is likely a “fraction” of those who are actually breaking the rules. But she says large fines may catch the attention of companies that are using the program.

“They are risk-averse and they are strategic in their planning. And so a well-run company will see that non-compliance with this complicated program is a serious issue that needs to be avoided,” she said.

Meanwhile, the number of employers applying to use the temporary foreign worker program has dropped in the last two years, according to recent numbers released by the federal government.

After hitting roughly 150,000 applications in the 2023-24 fiscal year, the number fell to roughly 63,000 so far in the current fiscal year. …

Source: Some employers using foreign worker program facing bigger fines for violations

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Temporary foreign workers switch jobs and earn more after becoming permanent residents, study finds

2026/01/12 Leave a comment

Of note, not terribly surprising but good to see the data behind it:

…The research, which was conducted by economists at universities in Toronto and Chicago, found several benefits for workers who transitioned to permanent residency status.

Temporary foreign workers who were granted permanent residency in Canada between 2004 and 2014 – and thus were no longer on closed work permits which tied them to a single employer – saw an earnings increase of 5.7 per cent three years after they obtained PR status. 

The workers directly benefited from being able to switch positions, the researchers found. There was a “sharp” and “immediate” increase in the probability of a job-to-job transition of 21.7 percentage points over the three years, the paper estimates. And many of those workers switched into better-paying industries. 

“Our main question of interest when we began this research was: what is the effect of being on a closed permit relative to an open permit?” said Kory Kroft, a professor of economics at University of Toronto, and one of the paper’s authors. 

“The main takeaway is once you relax the restrictions, you see a big increase in job mobility. You find that immigrants who were clustered at low-wage jobs quickly sorted themselves into higher-wage jobs.” 

The TFW program is a key immigration stream in Canada that allows employers to hire mostly low-wage foreign workers on a temporary basis in sectors where the government determines there is a shortage of domestic labour, such as agriculture….

Source: Temporary foreign workers switch jobs and earn more after becoming permanent residents, study finds

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Inspections of temporary foreign worker employers in Canada have plummeted — despite a surge of workers

2025/10/11 Leave a comment

Not a good take:

The number of inspections of employers hiring temporary foreign workers has plummeted over the past five years — with most conducted without inspectors ever setting foot on worksites — even as the number of migrant workers and reports of abuse have surged, according to government data obtained by the Star.

Annual inspections fell 57 per cent, from 3,365 in 2020 to 1,435 in 2024, according to Employment and Social Development Canada, the department that oversees the temporary foreign worker (TFW) program.

There are three triggers for an inspection listed by the Immigration Department: a history of non-compliance, random selection and a reason to suspect non-compliance including a received allegation or complaint.

From 2020 to the end of 2024, 77 per cent of more than 12,000 employer inspections have been “paper-based only,” meaning the vast majority of these inspections take place remotely without any on-site reviews of the workplaces where it’s suspected that violations occurred.

The declining number of inspections comes at a time when the TFW program has ballooned, undergoing a massive expansion in the last decade, amid rising allegations of abuse and penalties issued to employers violating the program. Labour experts and advocates say the combination of fewer on-site inspections and rapid growth of the program raises serious concerns about oversight, enforcement and the protection of vulnerable workers.

The number of TFW approvals has more than doubled in recent years, rising to nearly 51,000 approvals in the third quarter of 2024 alone, more than triple the 15,507 approvals from the third quarter of 2021.From 2020 to the end of 2024, 77 per cent of more than 12,000 employer inspections have been “paper-based only,” meaning the vast majority of these inspections take place remotely without any on-site reviews of the workplaces where it’s suspected that violations occurred.

The declining number of inspections comes at a time when the TFW program has ballooned, undergoing a massive expansion in the last decade, amid rising allegations of abuse and penalties issued to employers violating the program. Labour experts and advocates say the combination of fewer on-site inspections and rapid growth of the program raises serious concerns about oversight, enforcement and the protection of vulnerable workers.

The number of TFW approvals has more than doubled in recent years, rising to nearly 51,000 approvals in the third quarter of 2024 alone, more than triple the 15,507 approvals from the third quarter of 2021….

Source: Inspections of temporary foreign worker employers in Canada have plummeted — despite a surge of workers

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Worswick: Why the Temporary Foreign Worker Program needs to be eliminated

2025/10/09 Leave a comment

More sensible proposals from Worswick:

…The TFW program was controversial under both the Harper government and the Trudeau government. In both cases, the government of the day ultimately bent its will to employer lobbying to make the program larger until an understandable public backlash ensued. The result is that the TFW program’s brand is severely damaged and should be retired. In its place, smaller, targeted programs would make sense. Two, in particular, are worth considering. 

Retaining a separate agricultural temporary visa program has merits. These types of jobs are unique in that they are geographically remote and seasonal by nature. Filling them with Canadian citizens or permanent residents may require large increases in wages, putting many farm enterprises at risk. 

Having a standalone global talent temporary visa program would also benefit the Canadian economy so long as the earnings are above the Canadian average. Such a program should be limited in size to minimize any negative effects on wages of higher-income Canadians. The program could prioritize the highest-earning jobs, as has been suggested for the U.S. H-1B program. Individuals taking these jobs would be excellent candidates as economic permanent residents.

Source: Why the Temporary Foreign Worker Program needs to be eliminated

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