Does P.E.I. need temporary foreign workers? Industries say yes, but economist warns of consequences

For years, the faces behind Prince Edward Island’s food industries have increasingly come from far beyond the Island’s shores.

Many are temporary foreign workers: people who come to Canada for a set period of time, often to fill jobs in sectors facing labour shortages.

On P.E.I., up to 20 per cent of the province's agriculture workforce is made up of people from other countries, said Donald Killorn, executive director of the P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture. These workers help operate farms, manage production and harvest crops.

“Without that labour… it wouldn't be possible for Prince Edward Island farmers to do the things they need to do to farm the land,” Killorn told CBC News.

The federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which began half a century ago, was originally designed to address short-term labour shortages in agriculture — but economists say it has expanded well beyond its original scope.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first budget, which passed earlier this month, includes plans to scale the program back, with significant reductions to the number of temporary foreign workers admitted to Canada over the next three years.

Still, experts say the program’s expansion has already impacted Canada’s labour market, raising questions about whether the reliance on foreign workers benefits the broader economy, especially as unemployment rates rise.

“I think we're becoming reliant on temporary migration in general to fill these jobs," said Christopher Worswick, an economics professor at Carleton University who has researched the program.

"I can't say that it's causing the high youth unemployment we're experiencing in Canada but, coincidentally, we have very high youth unemployment."

On P.E.I., Killorn said local hiring remains a priority, but the scale of the province’s food production far exceeds the available labour pool.

“We produce so much food on Prince Edward Island, it's difficult to fathom how much,” he said.

“We're always interested in strategies that grow the local workforce. It is a key part of building a resilient agriculture industry on Prince Edward Island…. But the fact is, with the amount of work that we're doing in agriculture, we do require an alternate labour source from just Prince Edward Islanders.”

It’s not just farms.

P.E.I.’s seafood processing sector has also depended on temporary foreign workers for more than 15 years, according to the Prince Edward Island Seafood Processors Association.