According to a recent Canadian newspaper article, the Canadian Government is finally moving towards adjusting laws and regulations that govern temporary foreign workers. In the past, Canada adds to its workforce by utilizing the temporary foreign worker program (TFWP) or the International Mobility Program, sometimes referred to as IMP. The former program is usually used by companies that want to outsource employees. These jobs are generally the ones that Canadian citizens are not keen on performing.
The latter program is usually employed to allow foreigners to get a job that a Canadian may very well do. This program is used to get the best-skilled person for a job irrespective of their nationality. The International Mobility Program notably does not require an employer to submit the Labor Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) document instead of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which requires the document.
The LMIA is a document that an employer is required to submit to prove to the government that the organization tried to employ a Canadian citizen but could not find anyone suitable. The government has in recent times discovered that most of the TFWP employees do not understand their rights and thus cannot use them in their defense. TFWP is, as expected, a source of cheap labor for employers; this motivates them to avoid bans on hiring more TFWP employees.
Employers avoid these bans by hiring employees through ally companies that they may own or may be owned by close business partners. The consequence of this deception is that employees get engaged and have little to no access to proper medical care. TFWP employees also incur illegal charges for recruitment to the benefit of the recruiters and employer.
Since TFWP employees are ill-informed regarding their rights, they are afraid of losing their jobs should they raise their concerns. Adjusting to life in a new country is hard, and lack of information only contributes to making employees more vulnerable. To ease the plight of TFWP employees, the government has decided to put measures in place to improve employee protection.
