Federal and provincial ministers are convening in Montreal on Friday to strategize on reducing the number of temporary residents in Canada.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller is slated to have his first in-person meeting with provincial and territorial counterparts since unveiling an unprecedented plan to impose limits on new temporary residents.
The goal is to curb Canada’s burgeoning growth by reducing the proportion of temporary residents from 6.2% of the population in 2023 to five per cent within the next three years.
Efforts are also underway to expedite the processing of asylum claims. Moreover, the recent federal budget introduced legislative measures aimed at expediting deportations when such claims are rejected.
Addressing temporary work permit holders, a category yet to be tackled, is of paramount importance. Miller has noted that the labor market has grown overly reliant on this workforce in recent years.
In 2018, there were 337,460 temporary work visa holders, a figure that surged to 605,851 by 2022.
A key focus of the ministerial discussions will be negotiating the allocation of fewer temporary visas, upon which employers have become heavily dependent.
However, navigating this shift is expected to pose challenges. In Manitoba, for instance, announcements from Ottawa about scaling back temporary immigration prompted a sharp increase in applications to the provincial nominee program for permanent residency.
Earlier this week, Miller acceded to Manitoba’s request to extend federal work permits for around 6,700 newcomers, whose visas were due to expire by year-end, to allow them time to seek permanent residency in Canada.
The new target for temporary visas will also notably slow population growth. While this could alleviate some pressure on housing costs and availability, it may also lead to labor shortages, cautioned Andrew Grantham, an executive director at CIBC Economics, in a report last month.
“Constraints on population growth might compel companies to offer higher wages to attract individuals to remain in or re-enter the workforce. We may see some businesses fold if they are unable to access low-wage foreign workers,” Grantham remarked.
The labor requirements of each province are anticipated to heavily influence Friday’s deliberations. The new targets for temporary visas will be released in the fall.
Meanwhile a labor union is urging the federal government to shut down certain channels within the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), alleging that they are being exploited by employers offering low wages.
Specifically, the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) is pointing to the Recognized Employer Pilot (REP) within the TFW program.
“The ongoing concern of the [AFL] regarding the TFWP is that it enables employers to avoid raising wages despite purported labor shortages. Median wages in many of the occupations covered by the Recognized Employer Program fall below what would constitute a living wage in most Canadian communities,” stated the organization in its report titled “Ending Low-Wage Employers’ Addiction on Guest Workers.”