New report goes bold on temporary foreign worker program: Getting rid of it 'could solve this all'

The best way to fix problems with Canada's temporary foreign worker program may be to get rid of it, according to a new report.

The report — Permanent Jobs, Temporary People: Temporary Foreign Workers' Struggle for Permanent Residency in Prince Edward Island — is a joint project involving Dalhousie and St. Thomas universities, P.E.I.'s Cooper Institute and the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre. Released Wednesday morning, the research focuses on how the program is working on P.E.I.

The report's recommendations include improving workplace inspections, providing full access to employment insurance and health care, ending employer specific work permits, and ensuring reliable funding for groups supporting migrant workers.

But the first recommendation is simply to grant permanent residency status to workers when they arrive in Canada — that is, remove the "temporary" element.

"That overall recommendation is, OK, we could solve this all if we granted permanent residency upon arrival. Most of these things wouldn't be necessary," said Eliza MacLauchlan, lead author of the report.

The other recommendations are meant to clarify the other problems with the program, she said.

In preparing the report, researchers conducted 27 interviews with 29 participants, including 12 current or former temporary foreign workers; 10 current or former service providers; four provincial government employees; and three employer representatives. The interviews were conducted between October 2022 and July 2023.

The temporary foreign worker program was launched in the 1970s as a last-resort option for businesses that could not find enough workers in Canada. The farming and fish plant sectors were particularly in need.

But in the following decades, temporary foreign workers have become an essential part of the Canadian workforce.

It's a trend that has grown in recent years. An estimated 40 per cent of P.E.I.'s agricultural workforce is now made up temporary foreign workers. Adding in employees in seafood processing, the trucking industry and other jobs, the number of temporary foreign workers arriving on the Island every year grew from about 400 in 2015 to more than 1,600 in 2023.

Temporary foreign workers lack many of the rights that citizens and permanent residents do. Most of them are on closed work permits, tied to particular jobs with particular employers.

The report outlines how this creates a power imbalance: Temporary foreign workers who lose their jobs also have to leave the country, and those who complain about abusive working conditions may simply not be invited back the following year.

But the report also found employers were struggling with the requirements as well. In particular, taking part in the program requires a level of expertise in immigration that some companies and industries simply do not have.

"There was a lot of human resources challenges that came with administering this program [and] also supporting people with permanent residency," said MacLauchlan.