Why Alberta is giving the tourism industry its own immigration stream

As Alberta hopes to more than double the size of its tourism economy in the next decade, the provincial government is taking a new step to fill labour gaps by giving the industry its own dedicated immigration stream. 

The industry hopes the program will help fix its long-standing labour shortage, but critics say the program could have unintended consequences. 

Meanwhile, a national tourism industry group is watching the new policy and hopes to see it adopted more widely. 

"It's a great initiative for us to consider as a kind of pilot example … [that] we can build on and, if we're lucky, extend the model beyond Alberta," said Philip Mondor, president and CEO of Tourism HR Canada. 

Some provinces, like Saskatchewan, have their own immigration policies in place aimed at hospitality workers. But Mondor believes these other policies haven't been on the scale of what Alberta has announced.

The new immigration stream is aimed at temporary foreign workers who are already working in the province's tourism industry and wish to stay in Canada permanently. 

Workers in 18 job categories will be eligible, the province told CBC News, from cooks and cleaners to dry cleaners and tour guides.

The new stream falls under Alberta's provincial nominee program, which nominates people for permanent residence in Alberta.

Temporary foreign workers will be eligible if they've worked in tourism and hospitality for at least six months and have a permanent job offer in hand from an approved employer.

Businesses in food and accommodation have already been able to hire many more temporary foreign workers in recent years, after the federal government tripled the industry's hiring cap. 

But this new immigration stream means at least some of those workers will have a clearer path to staying in the province permanently. 

"Ultimately, there is a shortage of labour in this particular area, and we were contacted and we were lobbied by the industry to do something," said Alberta Immigration Minister Muhammad Yaseen in an interview with CBC News. 

The Alberta Hospitality and Lodging Association attributes its protracted hiring woes to "perceptions" about the industry, according to president Tracy Douglas-Blowers. She said it can also be tough in Alberta to lure people away from the oil and gas industry, which offers better wages, and to find workers in small towns, which have small pools of labour. 

"For a number of years, hotels have been sort of underneath a bit of a structural labour shortage, and that goes back to long before the the pandemic," said Douglas-Blowers in an interview.