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Canada must end reliance on cheap foreign labour, says minister Marc Miller
Marc Miller introduced a limit on foreign student visas last month, cutting them by 35% for this year. He will announce further changes soon to restrict students’ off-campus work hours and he’s also reviewing the country’s temporary foreign worker programme
Canada’s immigration minister is taking steps to curb the country’s dependence on temporary foreign labour and international students, prompting pushback from business groups that say there aren’t enough domestic workers available to sustain parts of the economy.
Marc Miller introduced a limit on foreign student visas last month, cutting them by 35% for this year. He will announce further changes soon to restrict students’ off-campus work hours and he’s also reviewing the country’s temporary foreign worker programme, he told Bloomberg News in an interview.
“We have gotten addicted to temporary foreign workers,” Miller said. “Any large industry trying to make ends meet will look at the ability to drive down wages. There is an incentive to drive labour costs down. It’s something that’ll require a larger discussion.”
The minister is wrestling with a surge of foreign students and temporary workers that has helped drive up housing costs, sparking a backlash against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.
While the US and many European countries are grappling with a surge in undocumented migration, Canada’s geography has allowed it to keep better control over population inflows. But country instead is nevertheless struggling to cope with increases in temporary newcomers, who’ve arrived to work in farms and factories, or study at its colleges and universities while also working.
Statistics Canada estimates there are more than 2.5 million non-permanent residents, over 6% of the population, and they play a key role in filling the labour-force gaps left by an aging population. But rapid growth, particularly in the student population, has led to soaring rents and house prices, hurting Trudeau’s popularity.
Miller’s first step was tightening the rules on students. In addition to capping student visas, he ended a policy that allowed spouses of foreign students to gain work permits and introduced new restrictions on work permits available after graduation.
He’s now turning his attention to a temporary measure that has allowed students to work as much as 40 hours a week off campus. The policy was introduced in 2022 in response to pandemic-related labor shortages. More than 80% are now working more than 20 hours a week, Miller said. Still, he defended the move as necessary at the time, and said the new rule will likely allow more than 20 hours of work, but less than 40.
Miller said he’s working with employment minister Randy Boissonnault to review the temporary foreign worker programme, which allows firms to bring in employees from abroad on time-limited visas. The minister declined to elaborate, but said he’s concerned about abuse in some lower-wage sectors.
“I will have to be a little more surgical than I have in prior steps I’ve taken,” Miller said. “There are consequences to taking a decision that would limit that flow of people for businesses, for the economy.”
Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said the government appears to be in “panic mode” and making sweeping changes without thinking through the ramifications, particularly for smaller and rural communities that have come to rely on migrants to work and to buy goods and services.
“I worry that we may be scapegoating the temporary foreign worker programme and the international student programme to too great a degree and thinking that this is some big panacea or big fix,” Kelly said.
Companies are already lobbying against the planned reduction in permitted work hours for students, Miller said. “Some of the big-box stores, some of the businesses that have international students, have pushed relatively hard to preserve the 40-hour work week,” Miller said. “Some student groups call for it as well because a lot of employers want you to be able to commit to more than 20 hours.”
