Protecting Temporary Foreign Workers

Canada’s live-in caregiver program has been in the headlines recently, due to allegations that a Member of Parliament may have mistreated caregivers in her home. The affair has shone a spotlight on a very vulnerable population in Canada: Temporary Foreign Workers.

What hasn’t received so much attention is a report from the House of Commons Citizenship and Immigration committee, released last week. The report examines the situation of temporary foreign workers, and recommends changes to the program in order to reduce worker vulnerability and respect the social rights of workers.

As of December 2007, there were just over 200,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada. They are employed in fields such as seasonal agriculture work, caregiving work, and sectors such as construction, resource extraction and hospitality when employers can demonstrate that they are unable to hire workers locally.

The TFW program has expanded beyond what anyone envisaged when it was created, partly in response to the bottleneck of immigration. The backlog of applications combined with the criteria for economic class integration means that employers have difficulty accessing low skilled workers in a timely fashion. However, there are also criticisms that the TFW program is being used by employers to avoid paying good wages and investing in training and recruitment that would entice Canadian workers.

Temporary foreign workers do not all have access to permanent residency at the end of their work stay. Therefore, there is a division in access to Canada: those who are highly skilled and well-educated can become permanent residents, while those who lack education and skills can only stay temporarily.

The report recommends changes to the three routes by which TFW can become permanent residents, adding the recommendation that every worker should be offered the chance to become a permanent resident.

Another recommendation would allow all temporary workers, except those on the shortest stays, to bring their family with them and give their families work permits.

The report also targets dishonest recruiting practices and illegal and exploitative employment practices, arguing that workers need to know their rights but that monitoring, prosecution and penalties are necessary to prevent such abuses from happening.

Finally, the committee recommended that all temporary foreign workers be given choice in their residency, rather than coercing some to live with their employers or in residences owned by their employers.

According to the Toronto Star, a spokesperson for the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenney, said that many of these recommendations are likely to be included in changes to immigration policy this fall.