'This extraordinary delay in hiring foreign nationals who are required yesterday severely prejudices Canadian employers'
While it’s still a valued program that does help employers address labour shortages, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) needs major fixes, says one academic who studied the program in-depth.
It all started after RBC got into hot water back in a 2013 with a plan to replace Canadian workers with foreign employees — even directing the terminated employees to train the new workers.
That’s when Catherine Connelly, professor human resources and management at McMaster University in Hamilton, decided to take an in-depth look into the issue.
“So many people were upset and angry — people cancelled their bank accounts — but I was looking at it from a different perspective,” she says.
“I embarked on this massive study of Canadian temporary foreign workers and also their employers, and I talked to people in every province, and every stream of the temporary foreign worker program because there’s four different streams and many different industries.”
RBC eventually apologized for its behaviour 10 years ago, but not before a media blitz of bad publicity.
Sluggish worker program hinders employers
The result of Connelly’s research is a new book, Enduring Work: Experiences with Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program, based on more than 100 interviews with employees and employers.
“When I talk to managers, you ask them ‘When you need someone, when do you need them?’ And the answer is always ‘yesterday’ and so they need someone urgently. The program is so complicated and slow that it just doesn’t meet that need. The reason they’re using the program is because they need someone right away but because they’re using the program, they cannot find somebody right away,” says Connelly.
This sluggishness inherent in the program causes all sorts of headaches for employers, says an immigration lawyer.
“Now that the new system has transitioned [online], pretty much once the application is submitted, we don’t know when they are expected to be finalized. And the big challenge for employers is that they don’t know; there are several delays and lengthy processes and unpredictable processing timeframes because there’s no specified timelines described by Service Canada when the applications will be processed,” says Veena Gupta, immigration lawyer at Nanda Lawyers in Mississauga, Ont.
“Some of these applications can take several months to process.”
The government has attempted to make periodic changes, says Connelly, but they haven’t always worked out.
“It’s potentially a very problematic program that we’ve had for years and I’m sure we’ll have it for many more years, but it keeps on changing. There’s so many changes to all the regulations that even with all the tinkering, it’s still a bad program.”
Assurance or inequity for immigrant workers?
Where it does work, according to Gupta, are in limited applications.
“There’s at least an assurance that, contractually, they’re bound to work with them at least for a certain duration of time and so it works well for both the foreign worker and the employee in terms of addressing the labour shortage, at least in the short-term.”
However, some employees are not allowed to quit the employer if things don’t work out, leading to an inequity for this type of immigrant, says Connelly.
“In terms of the protecting the employees from abuses, the real culprit is really the closed permits. When people come in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, they are tied to that employer and that’s very different from pretty much everything else that we have in terms of the international mobility program, or students who come and they work on the side.”
“Canadians, everybody else, is able to, when they see something is not working out, they can jump ship and just vote with their feet and get out of that bad situation,” she says.
While researching for the book, Connelly heard some horror stories.
“Someone told me his employer had provided accommodations as part of his arrangement for working there but there was not enough beds for the people who were staying there. So they either sleep in the bed when someone was having their shift, or it was sleep on the floor, and so he slept on the floor for three months.”
“Then he got very sick because it’s crowded and conditions were terrible,” she says.
This behaviour goes against what the hiring organization is bound to uphold, says Gupta.
“Employers are expected to comply and to meet the employment conditions, including wages and working conditions that have been offered to their employees. By signing a declaration, the employers are agreeing to do that.”
The federal government recently announced a plan to loosen some requirements for TFWP workers.
Speeding up the TFWP
When it comes to what should be done to reform the system, it begins with the application process, according to Connelly.
“It absolutely needs to be speeded up so if somebody is going to apply and pay their $1,000, they need to hear back relatively quickly so some kind of service standard would be so helpful. It doesn’t mean that they all have to have everything approved but just to hear back quicker — or even to have clarity on how much longer it’s going to be before they know — that would help immeasurably in terms of the staffing process.”
This streamlining should also apply to Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIAs), says Gupta.
“Definitely, there should be timeframes specified to make it more efficient in terms of processing and employers who are genuinely in need of foreign nationals to work for them have to contend with non-specified timeframes for procession of these LMIA applications,” he says.
“Keep in mind that if there’s a long, prolonged delay on the LMIA application, that has an effect overseas because immigration has their own timeline and so this extraordinary delay in hiring foreign nationals who are very skilled or are required yesterday for these positions severely prejudices Canadian employers who are genuinely in need of hiring foreign workers.”
In addition, a “trusted-employer” system could go a long way to making the system more efficient, says Connelly.
“There are companies that use the program constantly with many employees; they have excellent internal HR processes, it’s a well-oiled machine and so if they have that track record, then maybe they could have an expedited process and pay for it. Pay maybe $2,000, maybe $5,000, just to have it quicker, it would be so helpful,” she says.
“Something like the Nexus program, where there’s maybe more vetting at the outset but then once that’s been done, you’re fine for the next five years, or seven years.”
