Foreign workers should consider staying away until we vow to protect them

In 2022, when Ottawa opened the door wider to temporary foreign workers, the Canadian jobless rate was as low as 4.9 per cent.
The number of temporary immigrants in Canada with work permits has since exploded to 1.2 million, more than double the number just three years ago.
The general unemployment rate has since increased to 6.4 per cent in July. The jobless rate for young workers aged 15 to 24 years is 14.2 per cent, the highest level in a decade outside the pandemic.
And the unemployment rate for younger immigrants in Canada for the past five years is estimated at 23 per cent.
Back of those numbers is an economic slowdown that has reduced hiring across the board, something Ottawa should have anticipated in 2022 when it deregulated its temporary foreign worker program (TFW).
Ottawa is now unwinding those ill-thought-out policy changes, which were meant to be a “last resort” for employers, according to Employment and Social Development Canada.
Instead, the policy changes have resulted in cheap labour pricing many workers out of the market, including newcomers.
Ottawa needs to hasten its repairs to the TFW program even though it’s under pressure from Canadian business not to do so.
There are both moral and practical issues at stake here.
The moral dimension is highlighted in the recent report on Canadian labour market conditions by the UN’s special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Tomoya Obokata.
Obokata found that Canada’s temporary foreign worker program serves as “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.”
The UN report asserts that jobs held by temporary foreign workers often are “precarious.”
Migrant workers can’t object to poor working conditions without risk of being fired and losing their legal status in Canada.
Abuse of migrant workers is not new nor is it unique to Canada. The phenomenon of ill treatment of “guest” workers has long been widespread in rich countries. 
In Canada, reports of paycheques arbitrarily withheld by employers, dangerous workplaces and inhumanely extended hours of work have been routine for many years.
Those reports have lately expanded beyond the agricultural sector into manufacturing, retail, health care, hospitality and other industries.
In an abrupt course correction, Ottawa this year said it will cut temporary resident inflows by 20 per cent over the next three years.
That measure brought a howl of outrage from Canadian business, which has long lobbied for increases in cheap imported labour.
The feds’ planned cuts will have “catastrophic economic consequences for companies,” warned an Aug. 1 letter sent by the business community to federal cabinet ministers.
It was signed by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and other business groups.
But economists argue that employers would have an easier time hiring if they offered higher pay. For now, many employers use the low-wage stream of the TFW as a crutch for inefficient operations.
The moral issue here is the mistreatment of migrant workers, whom employers are permitted to pay below provincial median wages.
And a practical issue is that overreliance by business on the TFW’s low-wage stream harms the wider economy.
Condemning migrant workers to poor pay is a constraint on consumer spending, the biggest driver of the Canadian economy.
It also sustains Canada’s laggard status in productivity gains, one of the chief measures of quality of life.
Many Canadian employers are content to operate sweatshops rather than invest in modern plant and equipment that would increase their productivity, lower their costs and make them more competitive.
Canada’s productivity gap with the U.S. and other rivals has become a sufficiently urgent problem that the Bank of Canada earlier this year described it as a national “emergency.”
Ottawa has more to do in fixing the TFW.
It needs to restore its earlier rule that employers can fill only 10 per cent of their positions with temporary foreign workers.
In 2022, Ottawa raised that level to 20 per cent. In seven sectors where labour shortages were most acute, including food service and construction, the feds bumped it to 30 per cent.
The government also needs to reinstate its earlier restrictions on foreign hires where unemployment is six per cent or higher, a rule it waived in 2022.
Bristling at the “slavery” accusation while scrambling to reform a system that gives rise to it, Canadian Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault has vowed this month to end “abuse and misuse of the TFW program.”
But advocates for immigrants say the UN’s indictment will stick as long as work permits are tied to one sponsoring employer who wields undue control over his or her migrant employees.
It’s not that foreign workers are unwelcome in Canada.
It’s that they should consider staying away until Canada has reformed its labour market to protect them. And in doing so, reinstating economic opportunity for all Canadians.