Les immigrants temporaires ne feront pas partie des discussions de Québec

2023/05/06 Leave a comment

Seems similar blind spot to the federal government consultations on the annual plan that doesn’t include temporary residents even if the numbers and arguably impact greater than Permanent Residents:

Reconnaissant que près de 300 000 immigrants non permanents se trouvaient en sol québécois à la fin de 2022, la ministre de l’Immigration, Christine Fréchette, refuse toutefois d’inclure la question des immigrants temporaires dans sa consultation sur les cibles cet automne.

Talonnant Mme Fréchette sur le sujet lors de l’étude des crédits de son ministère, le député solidaire de Saint-Henri–Saint-Anne, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, a sommé le gouvernement d’aborder le sujet lors de ses consultations sur les cibles d’immigration 2024-2027. « On a aucune consultation sur les temporaires, je vous demande un engagement pour qu’on puisse faire une planification ordonnée réglée ensemble et qu’on sache où on s’en va. De faire uniquement l’exercice sur les permanents, c’est de passer à côté du débat », a-t-il souligné.

Le député libéral de Nelligan, Monsef Derraji, a renchéri en faisant valoir que la majorité des travailleurs temporaires s’installaient dans la région de Montréal. « On ne peut pas dire qu’on peut juste tenir compte des permanents dans la planification pluriannuelle », a-t-il lancé.

Selon des documents rendus publics dans le cadre de l’étude des crédits, il y avait environ 290 000 immigrants temporaires en territoire québécois au 31 décembre 2022, surtout des étudiants étrangers et des travailleurs temporaires.

La ministre Fréchette a pour sa part rétorqué que ce type d’immigration reflète le besoin ponctuel des entreprises et estime important que ces dernières gardent cette « agilité » pour aller « chercher les talents dont elles ont besoin ». « L’immigration temporaire, c’est [aussi] l’effet du succès de nos établissements d’enseignement », a-t-elle ajouté. « Pour nous, d’office, ça fait partie des éléments, car on y fait référence, mais pour ce qui est des orientations comme telles, la planification pluriannuelle porte sur l’immigration permanente. »

Déplorant que des travailleurs étrangers temporaires soient pris en otage en raison de permis « fermés » qui les lient à un donneur d’emploi en particulier, le député Monsef Derraji a tenté d’obtenir de la ministre qu’elle s’engage à éliminer ces documents qui conduisent parfois à des abus de la part des employeurs. Christine Fréchette a répondu qu’il s’agissait d’une question dont elle discute déjà avec son homologue fédéral, Sean Fraser. Elle a par ailleurs rappelé que son gouvernement souhaite rapatrier les pouvoirs des programmes concernant les travailleurs temporaires gérés par Ottawa.

Davantage d’immigrants francisés

Malgré des taux de décrochage parfois élevés dans certaines régions, la ministre de l’Immigration s’est également félicitée du progrès de la persévérance des immigrants en francisation dans l’ensemble du Québec.

Préférant voir les choses du côté positif, Christine Fréchette dit observer des taux de persévérance de 78,8 % pour les étudiants à temps complet et 84,6 % pour les étudiants à temps partiel. « C’est franchement un beau succès. […] On a augmenté considérablement le nombre de personnes qui prennent des cours de francisation ».

Lors de l’étude des crédits, le député Derraji lui a fait valoir que près de la moitié des immigrants en francisation décrochent dans certaines régions administratives, notamment en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, où ce taux atteint 43 %. À Montréal, il est près de 25 %. « Ce n’est pas du tout un échec, on partait de zéro. On a tellement rebâti en 2018 », a répondu la ministre Fréchette. Selon les documents du ministère, le décrochage est moins élevé chez élèves à temps partiel, soit environ 15 % pour l’ensemble du Québec.

Pressée d’expliquer pourquoi certains immigrants décrochent de la francisation, elle a noté que, dans un contexte de plein-emploi, beaucoup peuvent être tentés par le marché du travail. « Quand on prend des cours de francisation, on peut être rapidement sollicité pour intégrer des entreprises ou travailler davantage d’heures si on a déjà un emploi », a-t-elle affirmé.

Quant aux immigrants temporaires, la ministre a précisé que la majorité d’entre eux (60 %) parle français et, qu’au cours de la dernière année, il y a eu une augmentation de plus de 30 % des travailleurs étrangers temporaires qui ont suivi des cours de français. « C’est colossal », a-t-elle déclaré.

Or, bien que les allocations s’étendent désormais aux milliers de travailleurs temporaires agricoles, à peine 431 d’entre eux se sont inscrits à la francisation. La ministre Fréchette a dit vouloir augmenter ce score. « La francisation est un travail constant, il y aura toujours des efforts à faire pour que l’apprentissage du français soit facilité et accessible. » Elle entend miser sur de nouveaux outils, dont Francisation Québec, un guichet unique qui sera lancé dès le 1er juin et qui regroupera toute l’offre de services en francisation.

Pas fermée à la régularisation

Par ailleurs, questionnée à savoir si son ministère allait emboîter le pas au fédéral, qui planche sur un programme de régularisation des personnes sans statut, Christine Fréchette a dit ne pas fermer pas la porte. « Mais il faut voir davantage les intentions pour décider si on s’y engage ou pas », a-t-elle souligné.

La ministre a d’ailleurs affirmé qu’il était « encore trop tôt pour se prononcer » sur cette question. « C’est important pour nous de connaître la nature des orientations [du fédéral]. On souhaite être consultés sur cette politique publique. »

Source: Les immigrants temporaires ne feront pas partie des discussions de Québec

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Temporary foreign worker program must have open work permits

2023/05/03 Leave a comment

A more modest proposal than permanent status for all but unlikely given some business community opposition:

If your boss asked you to pay him $1,000 in cash to keep your job, expected you to work without safety equipment or holiday pay, or told you to sleep on the floor in the apartment he was renting to you … you would probably quit. I hope you would.

But if you are a temporary foreign worker this may not feel like an option for you.

The Canadian temporary foreign worker program continues to grow, as companies grapple with labour shortages in many sectors. Last year an estimated 220,000 temporary foreign workers came to Canada and this number is likely to be even higher next year as the federal government relaxes restrictions on the program.

Will the number of abuses increase too? Probably, unless we change the way the program is administered.

The biggest problem right now is closed work permits. Temporary foreign workers must stay with the employer who hires them. If temporary foreign workers quit or are fired they can only work for a new employer who happens to have an unfilled labour market impact assessment (LMIA), or they have to return home. And because temporary foreign workers all have closed work permits, they sometimes endure working conditions that Canadian employees would walk away from.

Open work permits, in contrast, would give temporary foreign workers the same flexibility that Canadians take for granted. Open work permits would allow them to quit a job that is abusive and move to any other employer that will hire them. Interestingly, open work permits are already offered to temporary foreign workers who can demonstrate that they are being mistreated. But at that point the abuse has already happened. And many temporary foreign workers are reluctant to report abusive employers because they are (mistakenly) worried about jeopardizing their future chances to apply for permanent residency. 

Open work permits are also more flexible for employers. With one, a temporary foreign worker can be promoted easily or moved to where they are needed most within an organization, especially as they gain more experience and their skills improve. Companies’ needs change quickly, and this flexibility can be crucial in a competitive environment. Some temporary foreign workers could even work at a second part-time, short-term, or seasonal job, if they wanted.

To be sure, some advocacy groups would argue that we should immediately grant citizenship or permanent residency to all temporary foreign workers as soon as they arrive in Canada. However, the amount of bureaucracy involved would also increase dramatically, slowing down a process that is already very cumbersome. When companies are hiring workers they usually need someone immediately. Temporary foreign workers who are seeking work also need to be able to work as soon as possible.

Granting immediate permanent residency to all temporary foreign workers would also give the companies that use the temporary foreign worker program, such as slaughterhouses and fast-food restaurant chains, much greater involvement in deciding who immigrates to Canada. Most Canadians would not be comfortable with more corporate involvement in Canadian immigration decisions.

Of course, with open work permits some companies might complain that their investment — the worker they just recruited — will walk out the door. Temporary foreign workers are more expensive and time consuming to recruit than Canadians. Companies pay $1,000 just to apply for a LMIA that enables them to recruit temporary foreign workers, and they may also have to pay for the worker’s transportation or housing costs. 

However, the risk of their new worker leaving is the incentive for companies to treat their temporary foreign workers well. Companies should not choose workers just because they cannot quit. 

Every few weeks we hear about more temporary foreign workers being exploited or mistreated. The government continues to tinker with the temporary foreign worker program, so these abuses continue. Open work permits would enable these workers to walk away from bad jobs, just like any Canadian.

Catherine Connelly is a Canada Research Chair in organizational behaviour at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University and the author of “Enduring Work: Experiences with Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program.”

Source: Temporary foreign worker program must have open work permits

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Paradkar: Dear immigrants: Coming to Canada? Here’s what you’re really in for

2023/04/15 Leave a comment

While a bit overboard, all too accurate given the various changes to ease business restrictions on temporary worker permits and limits on employment time for international students:

Hello, new immigrants. Most of you are likely coming to Canada in search of a better life and better opportunities than in the lands you leave behind. The good news is that many of you will find a job. Some of you will even be well-paid. But more than a few will find your dreams of stability and comfort seriously challenged.

For those who take on the vast majority of jobs Ontario is looking to fill — in restaurants and in bars, in truck transportation, construction, nursing homes — you’ll first have to survive the savageries of capitalism and xenophobia.

As Canada opens its doors to half a million immigrants annually — about half of whom will land in Ontario — we say welcome, today’s newcomers. But do you know what you’re in for?

Canada has historically benefitted from immigration. Many immigrants, particularly higher skilled ones, have also benefitted by coming here. But this round of gate-opening reveals the truth about Canada’s economic immigration policy. It’s designed in the interest of a stronger economy, which serves, first and foremost, not the majority of immigrants, who will be channelled into unskilled, often temporary jobs, but those at the top.

What Canada wants, but is not saying out loud, is a servant class; a vast army of workers prepared to accept the low-paid jobs no one else wants. And given how the economy is structured along with our poor preparedness to receive these newcomers, it’s clear we want to keep them in that position.

The current immigration push continues a centuries-old tradition of worker exploitation in the Americas. When European settler attempts to enslave Indigenous populations failed for various reasons, indentured servants arrived in the 1600s to care for the vast lands the earliest settlers had got, bought or stole.

Then came chattel slavery, itself created because the elite capitalists realized free labour by commodifying humans kidnapped from afar was more profitable than cheap wage labour.

When, some 200 years later, Britain abolished slavery in most of its colonies in the 1830s, this continent experienced a “labour shortage,” like the one today. That led to Britain importing indentured or bonded labour from colonies such as India, particularly on its plantation islands.

Then, as today, “labour shortage” didn’t mean there was a lack of human bodies to do jobs that build societies. Nor did it mean there was a lack of skills to do them. Then, as today, it meant something about the shifting dynamics of demand and supply.

A higher demand for labour shifts power toward workers, who agitate for better wages and working conditions. Flooding the market with a supply of workers swings that shift in power back to the owning class.

Today’s immigration push comes with baked-in economic disenfranchisement. Temporary work in precarious jobs leaves workers vulnerable to abusive working conditions.

Much like the West Indian Domestic Scheme of the 1950s and ’60s, when Canada sought Black Caribbeans to be domestic workers, the floodgates are opening today through initiatives such as the Temporary Youth Worker Program and the Federal Skilled Trades program, and via colleges and universities, which are taking increasing numbers of international students.

According to Statistics Canada, a vast majority of Ontario’s job vacancies right now — 60 per cent — require a high school graduation or less, many needing less than one year of experience.

The Federal Skilled Trades program doesn’t require candidates to have secondary education but it will prioritize those with a certificate or diploma or degree. That means many economic migrants will be overqualified for the jobs being asked of them, but they will come, perhaps hoping they’re at least getting a foot in the door.

Once in, however, these immigrants will have been slotted into the jobs Canadians won’t do for the wages being offered.

The overt racists and xenophobes also grease the wheels of this exploitative system.

If employers see labour as robotic capital-making units, xenophobes, easily made insecure by “outsiders,” keep immigrants bracing for attacks on their very existence, leaving them grateful for the crumbs, told their deplorable circumstances are a result of their not working hard enough or their supposed inferiority.

The economy is structurally built to see full employment — everyone having a job — as a problem.

A seventh straight month of job gains and near-record-low unemployment of five per cent is leading economists to predict that the Bank of Canada might well raise already high interest rates in coming months to “cool the economy” and inflation.

In this way of thinking, rising wages for, say, an average grocery worker in Canada, who earned $18.97 per hour in 2022 is a threat to the economy. But grocery magnate Galen Weston earning $5,679 an hour is not.

This thinking is why employers freely blamed programs such as Canada Emergency Response Benefit — that offered about $500 a week to those who lost income due to COVID — for “spoiling” workers.

Far better to call a person earning $500 a week, and not wanting to work for less than that bare minimum, lazy than pay them higher wages.

Perhaps the new immigrants coming in to rescue our economy, including those who have to remain jobless in service of this country, might be thanked in other ways? Maybe they’ll be housed relatively easily? Not have to worry about finding good schools for their children? Or have a safety net should they fall ill?

No such luck. Provincial parsimoniousness has already extended to defunding education, defunding health care and not building enough or affordable houses on land already earmarked for homes.

Politicians and their owning class friends are eyeing for-profit education and for-profit health care once the current systems are squeezed to the point of hopelessness. Large developers, quite coincidentally, bought precisely those thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive and protected Greenbelt land that Ontario’s premier opened up to build housing.

Yes, developers will need construction workers willing to work for less than a decent wage, if they hope to pad their profits. Instability in foreign lands fostering desperation can be a wonderful boon.The very rich benefit mightily from boosted immigration in other ways, too. More people means more consumers and buying food is non-negotiable. Ka-ching, that sound of cascading coins, is an inadequate metaphor to capture the surge in sums of money for people like Weston, whose family’s net worth is about $8 billion US.

We — as a nation — either need to be better prepared to receive newcomers or, failing that, be honest and say: Welcome, newcomers — welcome to your new life of multi-dimensional suffering.

Source: Dear immigrants: Coming to Canada? Here’s what you’re really in for

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Temporary Foreign Worker program sees 68% jump in approvals 

2023/04/01 Leave a comment

The absence of temporary residents from the annual departmental immigration plan becomes more and more untenable given how temporary workers and students form a larger number than new Permanent Residents, particularly given the impact on housing availability and affordability, healthcare and infrastructure:

Employers in Canada were approved to fill more than 220,000 positions through the Temporary Foreign Worker program last year, taking advantage of government decisions that broadened access to migrant labour.

TFW approvals jumped 68 per cent from 2021, according to a Globe and Mail analysis of figures recently published by Employment and Social Development Canada. Over the final three months of 2022, companies were authorized to hire nearly 69,000 positions through the TFW program – the most in a quarter since at least 2017.

The numbers reflect part of the hiring process: Foreign workers still need to get the appropriate permits to fill those positions.

Even so, the ESDC figures show that employer demand for temporary foreign labour is soaring at a time of near-record-low unemployment rates and elevated job vacancies.

Companies also benefited from an overhaul of the TFW program last spring, when the federal government increased employers’ access to low-wage labour, among other changes.

As businesses rush to use the TFW program, Canada is experiencing the largest population gains in decades. The country grew by slightly more than one million people in 2022, a 2.7-per-cent increase that was the most since 1957, according to a recent Statistics Canada report.

Temporary immigration was the primary driver of growth. In 2022, the number of non-permanent residents jumped by around 600,000 on a net basis, a record increase. This group includes international students, along with those temporary workers whose permits are issued outside of the TFW program.

In its report, Statscan said the federal government is deliberately courting more immigrants to boost the supply of labour as the country ages. However, the agency also noted: “A rise in the number of permanent and temporary immigrants could also represent additional challenges for some regions of the country related to housing, infrastructure and transportation, and service delivery to the population.”

In the fourth quarter, farms and food-processing plants were the largest sources of TFW approvals, which is usually the case. Over all, nearly 25,000 roles as general farm workers were authorized to be filled. Procyk Farms Ltd., of Wilsonville, Ont., received 599 approvals in the quarter, the most of any company.

Collectively, the restaurant industry was approved to hire thousands of people, including more than 3,100 cooks. Those employers included franchisees of Tim Hortons and McDonald’s Corp.

Other high-demand roles included truck drivers, construction workers and nurse aides.

The federal government said the expansion of the TFW program was meant to address a shortage of workers, something that companies have openly complained about for years.

In one of last year’s changes, companies are now able to employ 20 per cent of their staff through the low-wage stream of the TFW program, up from a previous 10-per-cent cap for most employers. In seven sectors with “demonstrated labour shortages,” such as restaurants and construction, the limit was temporarily set to 30 per cent. Earlier this week, Ottawa extended the 30-per-cent cap until late October.

However, many economists have criticized those moves, saying it helps companies avoid paying higher wages, and that it could lead to the exploitation of migrant workers, whose immigration status is tied to their employer.

“Unfortunately, we increasingly have a system where our temporary and permanent immigration systems are focused on the same objective – satisfying employers’ current labour needs,” economists Parisa Mahboubi and Mikal Skuterud wrote in a recent memo for the C.D. Howe Institute. “The risk is that the overall immigration system fails to do anything well.”

To hire a TFW, a company must submit a Labour Market Impact Assessment to the federal government, showing that they can’t find local workers to fill their open jobs. The ESDC figures refer to the number of roles that received positive assessments.

Most temporary foreign workers in Canada are not employed through the TFW program. At the end of 2022, there were more than one million active work permits in the International Mobility Program. This group includes a range of workers, such as company transfers from abroad. IMP permits have jumped by 193 per cent over the previous decade.

International students, who mostly don’t need work permits to secure employment in Canada, are a rapidly growing part of the labour force. At the end of last year, there were slightly more than 800,000 active study permits – nearly triple the volume from 10 years earlier.

Source: Temporary Foreign Worker program sees 68% jump in approvals

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‘Scumbag’ Ontario employers to be slapped with hefty new fines for withholding workers’ passports, vows labour minister

2023/03/22 Leave a comment

Good, but the proof will lie with enforcement or lack thereof. The decline in inspections over the last five years is not an encouraging sign:

Ontario employers who withhold vulnerable foreign workers’ passports will face stiff penalties under proposed new labour laws that aim to introduce the highest maximum fines in the country.

If passed, the legislation to be introduced Monday would result in penalties of $100,000 to $200,000 for each passport withheld from a worker — a significant leap from the current fines, which range from just $250 to $1000.

“It’s totally disgusting that any human being would ever be treated the way we see sometimes,” Labour Minister Monte McNaughton told the Star. “Which is why I’ve made this a top priority for myself and for our ministry.”

The proposed reforms would mean if employers are convicted of retaining documents for multiple workers, they could face cumulative fines ranging into the millions.

Withholding foreign nationals’ travel documents is already illegal under provincial employment laws, but heftier fines are “one piece of the puzzle” in a ministry crackdown on labour trafficking, McNaughton said.

Withholding workers’ travel documents is illegal — and widespread, advocates say

The new legislation comes in the wake of several recent labour exploitation cases that have resulted in criminal prosecutions. Earlier this month, York Regional Police announced it had identified 64 Mexican nationals who had been forced to live and work in “deplorable” conditions. Police have laid charges against the workers’ alleged abusers under human trafficking laws.

In that example, the labour ministry’s new penalty framework would also allow inspectors to slap recruiters with fines of up to $6.4 million for withholding passports, said McNaughton.

While retaining workers’ travel documents is coercive and illegal, advocates have long said the practice is widespread — and called for more proactive inspections to prevent violations of the Employment Protection for Foreign Nationals Act (EPFNA).

“The profound weakness of the legislation is that it depends upon individual workers to bring forward complaints,” notes a 2016 report authored by lawyer and migrant labour expert Fay Faraday.

Last year, the ministry investigated 189 claims under EPFNA, uncovered 25 violations and identified more than $100,000 of unpaid entitlements owed to workers.

Inspections down dramatically since 2017

Ministry of Labour data shows the number of inspections conducted to identifyoverall workplace violations such as wage theft has dropped significantly in recent years, from 3,500 in 2017 to 215 last year.

The number of prosecutions for employment standards violations also dropped to 34 from 233 over the same time period.

In a statement, the ministry said its employment standards officers have supported the government’s pandemic response over the past two years, including “providing essential businesses with compliance assistance” and enforcing lockdown regulations.

“While the number of inspections the ministry has been able to complete has been impacted by the pandemic, we have continued to investigate every claim and review every complaint reported to us.”

Labour minister’s focus is on cracking down on ‘scumbags’

McNaughton said the proposed new fines will complement the ministry’s new anti-trafficking unit that has so far initiated 45 investigations and recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars for over 3,500 workers.

“I know the changes will only work if you catch these scumbags,” he said. “My focus is cracking down on the bad guys who are breaking the law, and my goal is to fine them as much as possible.”

In addition to facing so-called administrative penalties for withholding travel documents, individuals who are prosecuted in court under the proposed labour reforms could face additional penalties of up to $500,000 or a year of jail — up from the current maximum fine of $50,000. Corporations would be liable for penalties of up to $1 million.

With labour exploitation attracting growing attention, the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change has said it believes the labour ministry is the right body to lead enforcement activities. The advocacy group has raised concern about the involvement of police and border authorities, particularly where vulnerable workers are at risk of deportation.

Proposed legislation includes higher fines, expanded worker protections

Other changes to be introduced Monday include higher fines for corporations convicted of health and safety violations, raising fines to $2 million from $1.5 million.

The move follows an increase in maximum fines for individuals who break workplace safety laws, brought in last year.

The proposed new legislation will also contain a number of other initiatives recently announced by the ministry, including expanded cancer coverage for firefighters at the workers’ compensation board and protections for remote workers during mass terminations.

Source: ‘Scumbag’ Ontario employers to be slapped with hefty new fines for withholding workers’ passports, vows labour minister

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Dutrisac: La vulnérabilité perpétuée par le système (Temporary Foreign Workers and closed work permits)

2023/01/27 Leave a comment

Of note::

Le nombre d’immigrants temporaires a explosé au Québec, tout comme dans le reste du Canada d’ailleurs. Et parmi eux, des travailleurs étrangers à bas salaire, qu’ils se trouvent dans les entrepôts ou dans les champs, sont à la merci d’employeurs sans scrupule.

Discuter d’un seuil de 50 000 immigrants reçus, le chiffre programmé par le gouvernement Legault, c’est discourir sur un portrait bien partiel de l’immigration au Québec. Comme l’a rapporté Le Devoir récemment, ce seuil est largement dépassé par l’afflux d’immigrants temporaires. Ainsi, le nombre de ressortissants étrangers détenteurs de permis de travail et d’études présents sur le territoire québécois dépassait les 180 000 en 2022. En tout, selon l’Institut de la statistique du Québec, au 1er juillet dernier, on comptait 290 000 résidents non permanents, toutes catégories confondues. Ce nombre a presque doublé en dix ans.

Le gouvernement caquiste n’en a que pour les professionnels et les travailleurs qualifiés, réunis sous le vocable d’immigration économique et commandant les hauts salaires que favorise François Legault. Il en faut, de cette main-d’oeuvre bien formée que recherchent des employeurs aux prises avec des difficultés de recrutement.

Mais on ne saurait occulter le fait que le Québec a aussi besoin de travailleurs sans grandes études, disposés à prendre des emplois dont les Québécois ne veulent pas et à se contenter des bas salaires qui vont avec. Des emplois ingrats, souvent exigeants physiquement, qui représentent pourtant un rouage important de l’économie. On parle de manoeuvres, de manutentionnaires, de préposés à l’entretien, d’ouvriers dans des usines de transformation alimentaire, de travailleurs agricoles.

Depuis 2015, la main-d’oeuvre recrutée par les entreprises québécoises par le truchement du Programme des travailleurs étrangers temporaires (PTET) a plus que triplé pour atteindre les 34 000 personnes.

Quelles que soient leurs compétences, les travailleurs étrangers temporaires, s’ils veulent prolonger leur présence au pays, ce qui, souvent, est aussi le souhait de leur employeur, doivent renouveler leur permis de travail, une démarche souvent angoissante compte tenu de l’incurie administrative des autorités fédérales. Certains de ces immigrants sont ici pour trois ans, cinq ans, dix ans même. C’est la grande hypocrisie du système : de nombreux travailleurs temporaires occupent des postes permanents. Plusieurs souhaitent immigrer au Québec.

Contrairement aux étudiants et aux personnes admissibles au Programme fédéral de mobilité internationale, les travailleurs peu qualifiés recrutés par le PTET ne disposent pas d’un permis de travail ouvert, mais d’un permis « fermé » qui lie leur présence au Québec à un employeur unique. Ils sont placés dans une situation de vulnérabilité qui les expose à des abus et à une exploitation éhontée de la part d’employeurs. Ces travailleurs hésitent à porter plainte de crainte de perdre leur emploi et de se voir forcer de retourner dans leur pays, ce dont on les menace, d’ailleurs.

C’est ce genre de situations que montre l’enquête Essentiels. La face cachée de l’immigration, un documentaire présenté à Télé-Québec, réalisé par Ky Vy Le Duc et signé par la militante Sonia Djelidi et la journaliste du Devoir Sarah R. Champagne. On constate que des travailleurs agricoles ont été forcés de s’échiner dans les champs jusqu’à 17 heures par jour et qu’ils ont passé plusieurs semaines sans prendre une seule journée de congé. Logés sur la ferme, ils doivent s’entasser dans des baraques exiguës et invivables qu’on dit conformes aux normes fédérales. On y voit des travailleuses immigrantes se faire exploiter par une agence de placement sans permis. Ou encore ce travailleur qui est employé depuis dix ans par les serres Savoura et qui n’a vu sa famille, restée au Guatemala, que trois mois et demi pendant la décennie, ne réussissant pas à obtenir un certificat de sélection du Québec.

Contrairement à la Charte canadienne, la Charte québécoise des droits et libertés protège les étrangers. Il faudrait s’en souvenir. Se rappeler aussi que les normes minimales de travail, c’est pour eux aussi. Sur la ferme, Québec peut remédier à la discrimination perpétuée par Ottawa et leur garantir un hébergement digne de ce nom, sujet aux mêmes normes qui régissent l’hébergement fourni par les employeurs aux travailleurs québécois.

Pour que cessent les abus et les mauvais traitements dont les travailleurs étrangers sont l’objet, les permis fermés devraient être abolis et remplacés par des permis ouverts liés à un secteur d’activité et possiblement à une région. Ces changements essentiels dépendent malheureusement de la bonne volonté du gouvernement fédéral. C’est Québec qui devrait se charger des travailleurs étrangers temporaires sur notre territoire, ce que prévoyait l’entente Canada-Québec sur l’immigration. S’assurer du respect de la dignité de tout travailleur en sol québécois, c’est en somme sa responsabilité.

Source: La vulnérabilité perpétuée par le système

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Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is ballooning to fill the labour gap, but workers say they’re abused and poorly paid. Is that the solution we want?

2022/12/20 Leave a comment

Of note. The easing of time limits and percentage of workforce changes make no sense apart from appeasing the business community’s wishes for more flexible and less expensive laboour:

David Rodriguez, a 37-year-old cook from Mexico, says he was fired from a Toronto restaurant less than two months after arriving in Canada for standing up to his verbally abusive employer.

Amelia, 37, from Indonesia, says she was fired for telling her employer she was sexually abused by his father while working as a live-in caregiver in his home in Toronto.

Orel, 35, from Jamaica, says he was “treated like a slave” while employed on a farm in the Niagara region for several years, enduring 10- to 12-hour work days seven days a week for seven months straight.

Claudia, 48, from Mexico, says she was threatened with having her contract terminated when she wanted to take time off to recover from illness and see her family.

All four were granted entry to Canada through the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program, which allows Canadian employers to hire migrant workers to fill temporary jobs to address shortages in the labour force. (The Star has granted anonymity to three of the workers and given them pseudonyms as they could face repercussions for speaking publicly.)

For more than 50 years the controversial program has supplied Canadian employers with migrant workers who can be paid less than Canadian workers while often working longer hours with fewer benefits. Now, thanks to an unprecedented labour shortage that has seen the number of job vacancies in the country skyrocket to a record high of nearly one million, the program has been quietly undergoing a massive expansion.

The number of approvals to hire temporary foreign workers shot up by more than 60 per cent in the first half of 2022 over the year before, and in April the federal government loosened restrictions introduced years ago to prevent employers from abusing the program.

Under the new rules, employers across most sectors are now permitted to hire up to 20 per cent of their workforce through the low-wage stream of the program, which pays workers as little as $15 per hour. That’s double the number of workers allowed under the previous 10 per cent cap — and employers such as hotels and fast food restaurants can hire even more, up to 30 per cent of their workforce.

Economists and worker advocates are concerned about the sudden expansion. They told the Star that while the changes help farms, nurseries, restaurants and trucking companies hire more workers when labour is tight, in the process, the program is creating a rapidly-growing second tier of workers without the same basic rights and protections that resident workers have, resulting in abuse and mistreatment of workers who are threatened with deportation if they complain.

“This absolutely creates a two-tier workforce. In many ways that’s what it’s designed to do, is to have this temporary workforce where people are treated simply as workers as opposed to full human beings. They are here to work under conditions that enable them to be exploited and then leave,” said Fay Faraday, a labour and human rights lawyer and professor at Osgoode Hall Law School.

Amelia came to Canada in 2019 as a live-in care worker. She told the Star she left behind two children to whom she regularly sends money. She has had to endure working 10- to 12-hour days with little time off, often getting paid for only six to eight hours at minimum wage.

Her contracts are precarious and she has often been in the position where she has had to scramble to find a new employer to maintain her status in the country, as was the case when she says she was sexually assaulted by her employer’s father. 

“I have to keep quiet because I have no power here. I live with my employer so I can’t complain. I need to send money back to my children so they can survive, and I need to survive here and pay rent,” Amelia said.

“I had so much hope coming to Canada. But now it’s like I’m in a nightmare. I miss my children, I can’t see them, I can’t touch them. But I have to be strong so I can give them a better life.”

Like Amelia, Orel came to Canada from Jamaica in 2015 to provide for his two children and wife back home, doing seasonal work on a farm in Niagara, harvesting and pruning plums and peaches with about 120 other workers. For several years, Orel said he worked for 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, often for several months in a row.

In Ontario, farm employees are not entitled to daily and weekly limits on hours of work, time off between shifts and overtime pay.

“They treated us like animals, like we didn’t have any rights,” Orel said.

He added that if his employers thought workers were too slow, they would threaten them with deportation.

“He (the employer) used it as a weapon every day,” Orel said. “The government calls our work essential, but there’s no way to get permanent residence. It just feels like we’re being used and thrown away, that’s how we’re treated.”

The abuse some temporary workers are enduring today was not part of the original plan.

The program kicked off back in 1973 with the aim of addressing labour shortages for jobs Canadians could not or would not fill, including agricultural workers, domestic workers and highly skilled jobs, such as specialist physicians and professors.

In 2002, the program was expanded to allow companies to apply to bring in foreign workers to fill jobs in new sectors, including food service and hospitality jobs, under the “Low Skill Pilot Project.”

As a result, between 2000 to 2012, the population of temporary foreign workers in Canada more than tripled to 338,213 from 89,746, according to a report by the Metcalf Foundation, authored by Faraday. By 2014, a total of 567,977 people were working with temporary immigration status, the report said. 

Following allegations that McDonald’s was abusing the program in 2014 — which lead to a federal probe — new regulations were implemented by then employment minister for the federal Conservative party, Jason Kenney, which put a cap on the number of foreign workers employers can hire and limited low-wage workers to no more than 10 per cent of a company’s workforce. Employers were also barred from hiring TFWs in regions where the unemployment rate was above six per cent.

Then, in April of this year, the regulations changed again.

In a bid to address a record-high number of job vacancies in the wake of the pandemic, the federal government amended the TFW program to make it easier for employers to access low-wage temporary foreign labour by increasing the number of migrant workers a company can hire.

The latest numbers show Canadian employers are doing just that. According to recent data from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), the government department responsible for the TFW program, there was a massive surge in requests from employers to hire foreign workers in the first half of 2022. 

ESDC numbers show that between January and June of this year, employers received 108,595 approvals to hire workers through the program (data for the last two quarters of 2022 have yet to be released). That’s up by more than 60 per cent from the 67,233 approvals granted in the first half of 2021, and more than the pre-pandemic annual total of 108,056 approvals for all of 2018. 

To hire a TFW, an employer must first submit a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) to ESDC for approval, demonstrating that there is a need for a foreign worker to fill the job and that no Canadian worker or permanent resident is available to do the job. 

Once the LMIA is approved, the worker can apply for a work permit. A single application can include several positions and so one LMIA approval could equate to several worker permits issued, and there is no limit on how many positions an employer can apply for with an LMIA. 

Since 2016, LMIA approvals to hire TFWs have steadily increased, with a slight dip in 2020 due to pandemic closures. In 2021 there were a total of 132,027 approvals, up from 87,760 in 2016.

The majority of approvals in the TFW program are for farm workers. From 2017 to 2021, 249,867 LMIAs for farm workers were approved, according to ESDC data. This number is followed by home child-care providers, which had 22,839 approvals between 2017 to 2021.

Cooks are also in high demand, with 20,614 approvals in the same period. In Q2 of this year, there were 7,644 approvals for positions in accommodation and food services, a leap from the same period in 2021, when there were only 2,979 approvals.

According to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), 4,144 work permits were issued for cooks in the TFW program from January to October this year, a steep climb from the 112 work permits issued in 2016, and 1,167 work permits in 2017.

Farm workers in the TFW program had a total of 315,484 work permits issued by IRCC from 2016 to October 2022, the highest number of permits among occupations.

But as the program expands, TFWs continue to live with precarious immigration status and are tied to one employer as a condition of their work permit, which means that complaining about an employer could cost a worker their job and legal status in Canada. 

Without permanent status, the threat of deportation hangs over any worker who dares complain about abusive conditions, making workers vulnerable and hostage to their employers’ demands.

“What we’ve had over the past two decades is a series of tweaks here and there which try to sharpen or smooth off some of the rough edges of the temporary worker program,” Faraday said. “There hasn’t been anything that has addressed fundamentally the way in which the laws we have create precariousness and exploitation of workers.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Julie Lafortune counters that changes have been made to the program to protect workers. She said in an email that as of 2019, foreign workers with an employer-specific work permit are able to apply for an open work permit if they are being mistreated by their current employer.

As well, in September 2022, IRCC and ESDC announced amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations concerning TFWs, which mandated that employers provide all TFWs with information about their rights in Canada and prohibited punishment by employers against workers who bring up complaints.

Enforcement of the rules is rare. But last June, Scotlynn Growers — an Ontario farm where a COVID-19 outbreak claimed the life of a migrant worker — was convicted of violating workplace safety laws. The farm pleaded guilty to one count of failing to take all reasonable precautions to protect a worker and will be fined $125,000.

Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, is not convinced that workers are truly protected. He says TFWs in Canada date all the way back to Chinese railroad workers in the 1880s and before, but “we just didn’t call them that.”

“The excuse of a labour shortage is just one of the reasons that are being used to justify the program and to access cheap labour,” Hussan said.

Economists and activists say a worker crisis is developing as the program balloons, creating a surge of cheap labour which disincentivizes companies from raising wages and improving conditions.

“We don’t have a labour shortage. We have a wage shortage because people aren’t being offered the wages they are looking for to take certain jobs,” said Sheila Block, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

“What we’re seeing is workers for the first time in decades have a great deal of bargaining power with employers, and that has the potential to improve wages and conditions,” Block said.

“But rather than increase wages and shift the way workers would be organized, the government has instead agreed to increase the number of low-wage workers who have very limited rights.”

Block stressed that foreign labour is not taking any jobs away from Canadians and the solution to protect migrant workers is to grant them permanent status or open work permits at the very least.

“This is not an argument against expanding immigration. It’s an argument against the elements of this policy that create a second tier of workers,” Block said. “We should not bring people into this country to work without providing them with status.”

Claudia, 48, who came to Canada from Mexico in 2021 to work in a lobster shop in New Brunswick, agrees that giving foreign workers the same rights and pay as resident workers is the solution. 

“Many of my friends who I lived with over the last year can’t speak English or have access to a computer. It’s a very sad situation because you don’t have someone who can help you or explain the rules,” Claudia said.

She worked 12-hour shifts, cleaning, weighing, sorting and packaging frozen lobster tails. During the peak summer months, Claudia said worked without any weekends for three months straight.

“When I was sick, they told me to just take a pill and keep working,” Claudia said. “When we come here we don’t know if it’s legal so we just follow the rules or what they tell us.”

Claudia hopes one day she’ll be able to get permanent status in Canada.

“I like Canada. I pay taxes like everybody. I make the economy of the province better, so why don’t I have the same rights?”

Source: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is ballooning to fill the labour gap, but workers say they’re abused and poorly paid. Is that the solution we want?

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P.E.I apple orchard firm ordered to pay thousands to foreign workers in ‘cash for pay scheme’

2022/12/09 Leave a comment

Classic case of exploitation and abuse:

P.E.I.’s Employment Standards Branch has ordered an apple orchard company in Kings County to pay thousands of dollars to four foreign workers who refused to participate in what the province’s chief labour standards officer called a “cash for pay scheme.”

Canadian Nectar Products has been ordered to pay the former employees sums ranging from about $5,000 to nearly $15,000 for unpaid wages. A related company, Fruits Canada, was ordered to pay one former employee $233 for unpaid wages.

The companies, and others linked to them, are the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Canada Border Services Agency related to similar allegations, in which workers claim their employer demanded cash payments in exchange for paycheques of lesser value than the cash that was remitted.

Source: P.E.I apple orchard firm ordered to pay thousands to foreign workers in ‘cash for pay scheme’

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Canadian employers are ramping up their search for temporary foreign workers amid labour crunch

2022/08/13 Leave a comment

Of note. My concerns regarding productivity implications cited:

Canadian employers are moving to fill more jobs with temporary foreign workers, as they face a sustained labour shortage and the lowest unemployment rate in decades.

In the first three months of 2022, employers received approval from the federal government to fill about 44,200 positions through the TFW program, according to a Globe analysis of figures from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). That was the most in at least five years, and 73 per cent higher than the quarterly average from 2017 to 2021.

As usual, farms were the biggest source of labour demand. Nearly half of the approvals in the first quarter were for general farm workers. Jealous Fruits Ltd., a large cherry producer in Kelowna, B.C., was authorized to fill roughly 640 roles, the most of any employer.

The restaurant industry is turning more to foreign labour as well. The second most in-demand workers in the quarter were cooks, at 2,100 positions, almost double the previous quarter. Companies were also permitted to hire nearly 1,700 food-service supervisors, who often work for franchisees of fast-food chains, such as McDonald’s Corp.

The use of foreign labour is poised to rise even more.

In April, the federal Liberals overhauled the TFW program, largely to give companies more access to low-wage workers from abroad. And employers still have plenty of jobs to fill: At last count, they were recruiting for about one million positions.

Companies say the pool of domestic workers is severely constrained. As of July, Canada’s unemployment rate had ebbed to 4.9 per cent – the lowest in more than four decades of data.

The TFW expansion was cheered by business lobby groups. But the move was panned by labour advocates and many economists. The TFW program has been dogged by controversy in past years over concerns about unpaid wages, unsafe living conditions for migrants and companies passing over Canadian job candidates. Critics also say it shields employers from the need to raise wages for domestic workers or make investments that improve the country’s languishing productivity (meaning its economic output per hour worked).

“How’s this really helping productivity?” asked Andrew Griffith, a former director-general at the federal immigration department. “The government is making it easier for them to bring in more workers and just keep doing the same thing with more labour, rather than trying to really invest in productivity.”

To hire through the TFW program, an employer must submit a Labour Market Impact Assessment to the federal government, demonstrating that it can’t find local workers to fill positions. Once the government approves the roles, foreign workers must get the required permits to begin their employment in Canada. The quarterly IRCC figures refer to approved positions, rather than workers with permits.

Companies are inclined to fill whatever positions have been approved, said Meika Lalonde, an immigration lawyer in Vancouver. “It’s administratively burdensome” for employers to apply, she said, and they also pay a filing fee of $1,000 for every position requested.

Maple Leaf Foods Inc. has ramped up its use of foreign labour, chief executive officer Michael McCain told analysts on a call last week. And Recipe Unlimited Corp., which owns several restaurant chains, including Swiss Chalet, Harvey’s and the Keg, is helping franchisees use the TFW program, CEO Frank Hennessey said on an Aug. 3 investor call.

At the end of 2021, there were roughly 82,000 foreign workers with TFW permits, the most since 2014, when the Harper government tightened access to the program following a string of controversies. Companies rely more on the International Mobility Program – which was hived off from the TFW program in the 2014 overhaul – to recruit temporary foreign labour.

The IMP includes a range of foreign workers, such as company transfers from abroad and those with postgraduate work permits. Notably, companies do not need to file LMIAs to hire through the program. At the end of 2021, there were more than 695,000 people with IMP permits.

International students have become another major source of labour supply. The number of international students with T4 earnings – that is, employment income – has soared to 354,000 in 2019, from 22,000 in 2000, according to Statistics Canada.

Source: Canadian employers are ramping up their search for temporary foreign workers amid labour crunch

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‘Politically invisible’: temporary immigration soars in Quebec as official targets left unchanged

2022/06/21 Leave a comment

More on the Institut de Quebec report. Given that similar increases in temporary workers occurs in the rest of Canada, it may be time for the immigration levels plan to include temporary residents (IMP, TFWP and students) to provide a more comprehensive picture):

While Quebec’s official immigration targets have remained largely stable in recent years, the real number of newcomers in the province has surged due to an increasing reliance on temporary workers who often face more precarious conditions and long waits for permanent residency, a recent study has revealed.

The publication by the Institut du Québec found that while non-permanent residents represented nine per cent of international immigration to the province from 2012 to 2016, that number had climbed to 64 per cent by 2019.

Three experts who spoke with The Canadian Press said the growth in temporary immigration can help companies meet their needs in a tightening labour market, but the province needs to do more to adjust to the new reality in order to better serve both newcomers and its own goals.

Source: ‘Politically invisible’: temporary immigration soars in Quebec as official targets left unchanged

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