{"id":399725,"date":"2025-09-05T10:24:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T10:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/399725\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T10:24:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T10:24:11","slug":"end-of-temporary-foreign-worker-program-would-harm-rural-communities-says-employer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/399725\/","title":{"rendered":"End of temporary foreign worker program would harm rural communities, says employer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The general manager of\u00a0one of Victoria County&#8217;s largest employers says\u00a0Pierre Poilievre&#8217;s call to scrap Canada&#8217;s temporary foreign worker\u00a0program shows the federal\u00a0Conservative leader\u00a0doesn&#8217;t understand the struggle that rural communities face in filling positions.<\/p>\n<p>Osborne Burke of\u00a0Victoria Co-operative Fisheries in Neils Harbour, N.S., was reacting to<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/poilievre-wants-temporary-foreign-worker-program-scrapped-1.7623864\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Poilievre&#8217;s assertion Wednesday that Ottawa should axe the program<\/a> because\u00a0it has flooded the market with cheap labour and made it harder for young Canadians to find work.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I ask\u00a0Mr. Poilievre, I challenge him: where are these workers that are unemployed that are looking for work?&#8221; said Burke,\u00a0a past president of the Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance. &#8220;Reality, contrary to what Mr. Poilievre says, is there&#8217;s nobody else left to employ.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Burke said the co-op tapped into the program for the first time in 2013, bringing in 10 workers. This year, that number swelled\u00a0to 35.\u00a0He said the temporary foreign workers, mostly from Mexico, are happy to work in the northern Cape Breton community.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re in competition with [the] national park, local restaurants, local hotels and the seafood industry, the harvesters as well, looking for crew members,&#8221; said Burke. &#8220;We do not have the labour pool. We do not have the workforce.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Conservatives say that while they want the temporary foreign worker program eliminated, they would create a separate, stand-alone program for legitimately difficult-to-fill agricultural labour.<\/p>\n<p>Canada already has a separate immigration stream for farm workers called the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program\u00a0that allows employers to bring in workers from Mexico and other participating Caribbean countries.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Stacey Gomez has long, black hair and is wearing a blue denim jacket. She is looking at the camera with lights and trees in the background.\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/stacey-gomez.JPG\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.4993646759847523\" data-cy=\"image-img\"\/>Stacey Gomez is the executive director of the Centre for Migrant Worker Rights Nova Scotia. She said Pierre Poilievre\u2019s comments twist the figures regarding Canada&#8217;s temporary foreign worker program. (Robert Short\/CBC)<\/p>\n<p>Advocates for the workers say Poilievre&#8217;s comments do more harm than good for migrants looking to provide for their families.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s easier to blame specific communities, especially a vulnerable one, than actually making changes concretely and in a material way to address these issues,&#8221; said Stacey Gomez, the executive director of the Centre for Migrant Worker Rights\u00a0Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n<p>She said the Conservative leader&#8217;s charge that temporary foreign workers are taking work away from young Canadians is unfounded.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The majority of migrant workers in Nova Scotia and across the country are employed in sectors like agriculture, fisheries and trucking. And these are industries where youth are not typically employed in the summertime,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The general manager of\u00a0one of Victoria County&#8217;s largest employers says\u00a0Pierre Poilievre&#8217;s call to scrap Canada&#8217;s temporary foreign worker\u00a0program&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3092],"tags":[51,897,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-399725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115151206568210282","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}