Ottawa adjusts wage threshold for Temporary Foreign Worker Program

Issues around TFWP

In 2024, the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) called on the federal government to close the Recognized Employer Pilot (REP) under the TFW program as it is being exploited by low-wage employers.

Ottawa launched the REP in August 2023 to “essentially fast-track approval of  LMIAs. This equates to the “loosening of the TFWP rules,” said AFL.

“The issue the [AFL] continues to have with the TFWP is that it allows employers to forgo wage increases in the face of so-called labour shortages. Median wages in many of the occupations listed in the Recognized Employer Program are below what would be a living wage in most Canadian communities,” said the group in its report titled End Low-Wage Employers’ Addiction to Guest Workers.

Temporary foreign workers in Canada have shifted to working in low-paying jobs in the country in the previous decade, according to a previous report from Statistics Canada (StatCan).

In the third quarter of 2021, there were 1,305,206 non-permanent residents in Canada, AFL noted in the report, citing data from StatCan. By the fourth quarter of 2023, the number went up to 2,511,437, it said.