‘It was only a temporary need’: Economist says demand for TFWs has dropped significantly

It wasn’t a temporary need, it was

>In September of that year, “several measures were implemented to reduce reliance” on the temporary foreign worker program, according to the federal government.

>Those measures, which prioritized local hiring and *increased penalties for program misuse,”* led to “a 50 per cent reduction overall in applications to the program and 70 per cent in the low-wage stream,” the government said.

The only demand for it was corporate greed. There was never any need for retail or hospitality to have any of them.

And the governments should never have allowed them to have access to any.

I think the issue was that Trudeau’s government thought it was a good idea to use the TFW program and NPR expansion as a way to stimulate the post-pandemic economy. The program was never designed be as large as it was after 2022 and it made the program heavily exploitative as a consequence (both to the TFWs/NPRs themselves that were largely unable to move between jobs and thus stuck in low wage positions as well as making it harder for young and lower income earners to find work etc.)

It’s unsurprising that companies loved it since it was an indirect government subsidy of cheap immobile labor, but it was obviously never sustainable and the current government is still in the process of cleaning up Trudeau’s mess in that regard.

For the people who haven’t been following this issue that closely. 

A whole industry popped up concentrated in India selling Canadian citizenships. 

You pay a fee to a consultant and they get you a temporary visa into the country, a minimum wage job, a paper diploma, and a few years residency.  The idea being that at the end of your temp visa, you have enough points to qualify for permanent residency.

It was essentially a scam, where entire businesses set up to exploit vulnerable people. The consultancy fee covers your wages, and the business owner also doubled as your landlord so a chunk of your pay went right back into his pockets.

Word got out on Indian social media about the life style and living conditions of the many people suckered into these scams and interest in immigrating to Canada has gone way done.

The government and the Canadian oligopolies don’t want the media running stories about the real reason why immigration levels have gone down, and they’re trying to get in front of the story with BS focus-grouped PR statements.

Wow they sure are eager to pretend they weren’t forced to do this by changes the government made to the program enforcement