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The Benefits of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program

Temporary foreign workers, or TFW’s have been the subject of much controversy and strife within discussion with Canadians. While there have been some small number of cases where the program has been abused, the majority of people who utilize the program have found that the benefits of the program cannot be denied.

In a nutshell, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program allows Canadian businesses (predominantly those located in West-Central Canada) to hire foreign workers on a temporary basis to meet short-term demands for skill and labour, when Canadian and permanent residents are not available. For a broad overview check out this previous blog post on the temporary foreign worker program in Canada.

The benefits of Canada’s temporary foreign worker program are (according to Employment & Social Development Canada):

–Responsiveness and speed: when it comes to helping fill high and low skilled labour positions when no other Canadian workers are available to fill the position.

–Increased competitiveness: any foreign workers have skills and talents that help businesses compete in an increasingly global marketplace.

–Help develop your global presence and new potential markets: temporary foreign workers generally speak languages and bring new information about other cultures that can help establish and develop new global markets (on both a local and larger scale)

–Increase organization effectiveness: fresh perspectives, especially from someone outside of the country can stimulate thinking and introduce more effective ways of doing business for an organization.

-Increase the likelihood of valuable network connections: foreign hires bring with them global connections to other workers and organizations, which may help to create opportunities to link to other prospective employees and national / international organizations.

So what are the alternatives? Unfortunately, alternatives are not as clear cut as they may seem (which is why many businesses in skilled-worker starved sectors greatly prefer the hiring of TFW’s). Announced in the Economic Action Plan 2014 (actionplan.gc.ca, 2014), Immigration Canada plans to improve the process in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program amidst complaints that some businesses are abusing the system to hire more foreign workers who can work longer hours for less pay.

The Canadian government will more rigidly enforce this program, to allow Canadians the first chance for available jobs to avoid being displaced, and make sure foreign workers are being paid the same wage to discourage businesses from using a purely economic standpoint to hiring workers. This is an ongoing process that all of Canada will be intently observing in the months and years to come.

 

Source Urls:

http://www.esdc.gc.ca/eng/publications/evaluations/skills_and_employment/2013/july.shtml

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/61669-temporary-foreign-workers-positive-and-negative-impacts

http://actionplan.gc.ca/en/initiative/temporary-foreign-worker-program