Ottawa Seeks to Address Fraud in Temporary Foreign Worker Program, Reduce Use

Minister of Employment, Randy Boissonnault, speaks at a news conference in Ottawa, on May 9, 2024. (The Canadian Press/Justin Tang)

The federal government is tightening the screws on its temporary foreign worker program as it attempts to reduce overall temporary immigration in the country.

Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) announced new measures are being implemented to reduce fraud and misuse of the system by Canadian businesses.

The department said Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault met with representatives of Canada’s largest business associations on Aug. 6 to convey the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program cannot be used to avoid hiring qualified Canadian workers.

“I’ve been clear over the last year; abuse and misuse of the TFW program must end,” said Boissonnault in a statement. “Bad actors are taking advantage of people and compromising the program for legitimate businesses.”

ESDC said the program is responsive to the labour market, adding that changes were made during the COVID-19 era to deal with shortages. A return to a more balanced state requires a readjustment of the program, the department said.

The measures outlined by ESDC do not appear to be new and instead involve applying current rules more stringently.

Those include “enforcing consistent application” of the 20 percent cap on temporary foreign workers companies can hire in low-wage positions at specific locations.

Along with “applying a stricter and more rigorous oversight” when conducting workplace inspections and processing labour market impact assessments. Businesses seeking to hire a foreign worker may require such assessments in order to demonstrate the need cannot be filled locally.

ESDC reported conducting more than 2,122 program inspections last fiscal year and found that 6 percent of employers were not compliant. They were fined a total of $2.1 million in penalties, an increase of approximately 36 percent over the previous year.

Other measures being considered by Ottawa to reform the foreign worker program include raising the processing fees for labour market impact assessments to fund the increased departmental scrutiny, as well as changing regulations to reduce employer eligibility.

Boissonnault also told business associations he is considering refusing to process requests in the low wage stream.

The moves come as the federal government is recalibrating its approach to temporary immigration, as it faces pressure over the availability of housing and services.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller said last week his government would announce new measures to scale back population growth.

“The era of uncapped programs to come into this country is quickly coming to an end,” Miller told Reuters. The minister, who is known to speak candidly, said earlier this year Canada’s immigration system is “out of control” and “a bit of a mess.”

Miller also said immigration could become the top issue in the next election scheduled for October 2025. His party has been trailing the Conservatives in the polls by a large margin for an extended period.

Canada’s population currently sits in excess of 41 million. The latest data from Statistics Canada indicates temporary immigrants and their family members who hold a permit to stay in the country amounted to more than 2.4 million in the second quarter of 2024. This is an increase of more than 700,000 compared to the same period last year.

The tightening of the temporary foreign worker program comes after Ottawa announced in March it would put its first cap on temporary immigration in 2026.

Ottawa has not revised its permanent resident targets for the next few years, aiming to reach 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025 and 2026. The capping in 2026 comes after a steady increase in target levels in recent years.