It’s Time To End The Exploitative Foreign Worker Program

Data published online by the Government of Canada show that the value of fines issued against employers engaging workers through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) increased markedly in 2024.

According to data from Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada, the Government of Canada levied 153 fines against companies employing temporary foreign workers in the last calendar year. Taken together, these monetary penalties totalled $4,030,250, with the average fine coming in at $26,341.50.

This appears to largely continue a trend of growing fines and punishments witnessed over the past few years. Reporting by The Globe and Mail from May 2024 found that 194 companies were penalized for violating the rules of the TFWP in 2023, and issued $2.7 million in fines. Thus, while the total number of fines was down slightly in 2024, their monetary value was up appreciably.

Additionally, the average value of fines has been growing for several years. In 2023, the average fine was $13,841, up from $11,606 in 2022, $9,761 in 2021 and $3,077 in 2020.

Fines can range in size significantly, depending on the nature and extent of the infractions and the compliance record of the company. For example, the smallest penalty issued in 2024 was for $750, while the largest involved a $365,750 fine imposed last April on a lobster processing company based in New Brunswick for a series of violations, the most severe of which included failing to ensure the workplace is free of abuse of various kinds. In this case, the company was also banned from hiring workers through the TFWP for two years.

It appears that employer bans — in nearly all cases temporary — are also becoming more common. In 2024, 31 companies were temporarily banned from the TFWP for periods ranging from one to 10 years, while in one case a company was permanently banned. This latter company, a vineyard in British Columbia, also received a $118,000 fine for infractions related to failing to prevent abuse in the workplace.

Of course, abuse of temporary foreign workers is nothing new, but the growing number of these vulnerable workers employed in Canada has made the issue that much more prevalent.

As companies complained about a supposedly widespread labour shortage post-pandemic, the federal government responded by loosening the rules governing the TFWP and other programs facilitating access to immigrant and migrant workers.

After changes to the TFWP introduced in 2022, most employers could hire up to 20 per cent of their workers as temporary migrants, up from 10 per cent previously. Moreover, employers in seven industries identified as having significant labour shortages, including food manufacturing, food and accommodation services, and construction, could hire up to 30 per cent of their workforce through the TFWP.

Even as the labour market began to soften, employers ramped up their efforts to hire temporary migrants, particularly in fast food and construction, but also in the health-care sector. As employers gained greater access to vulnerable temporary migrant workers, the government has detected more instances of abuse.

The negative experiences of migrant workers employed in agriculture have received the bulk of media attention, but abuse in the TFWP extends far beyond this single sector, as a look at the government’s data makes clear.

Because the federal government has both expanded the range of industries that can access temporary foreign workers, and loosened the rules on employers looking to recruit these workers, exploitation and abuse of migrants is now taking place in more areas of the economy.

Yet the Liberal government has been highly inconsistent and seemingly incoherent when it comes to temporary migrant workers. After previously expanding use of the TFWP and other migration schemes in response to business pressure, the government then abruptly changed course last year and indicated it would rein in the number of temporary workers.

In part, this policy reorientation fit together with an overall effort to curtail migration and immigration to Canada, which often scapegoated new immigrants, foreign students, and migrant workers for such issues as rising housing costs and under-resourced healthcare services. Yet, the new restrictions on temporary labour migration were also a response to widespread concern about the exploitation and abuse of temporary migrant workers.

Throughout the latter half of 2024, there was renewed attention to the rampant abuse of migrants working in Canada through the TFWP and other programs. In particular, a damning report from the United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Tomoya Obokata, that heavily criticized the program received considerable media attention.

When the federal government and opposition Conservative MPs previously questioned the U.N. official’s characterization of the TFWP as “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery,” Obokata stood by his comments, though he said he needed to gather more evidence before issuing the final report.

When the report came in July, its primary recommendation — to end the system of closed work permits wherein workers are tied to particular employers — was largely ignored.

Instead, the debate became about the number of temporary foreign workers rather than the design of the program and the way it systematically generates risks of exploitation and abuse.

Closed work permits leave temporary migrant workers entirely dependent on employers for work, housing, access to healthcare and many other necessitates. Once in Canada, these workers are not ‘free’ to move to alternative employment, but are instead tied to the employer who hired them and facilitated their entry into the country. Moreover, because loss of work typically entails deportation, workers are reluctant to complain about abuse and mistreatment. The very structure of the program, which centres on closed permits tying workers to particular employers, generates vulnerability and the potential for exploitation.

Under these circumstances, government inspections and deterrence-oriented enforcement are the last line of defence, though they are not enough.

Seeing larger numbers of government-imposed fines of more substantive monetary values is a positive, though insufficient, step. As those researching employment standards compliance have long argued, effective deterrence requires meaningful punishment. Yet, despite the past few years of more robust punishment, many more cases of worker abuse likely remain undetected.

Companies who employ migrants in programs with closed work permits are supposed to be inspected for compliance with the rules of the program. But in reality, government inspection is simply not resourced enough to detect all instances of employer non-compliance and abuse.

As well, employers are often notified in advance of inspections and are typically given ample opportunity to correct wrongdoing to remain eligible to participate in the program and hire migrants.

Even employers who receive relatively large monetary penalties may pay their fines, commit to correcting past infractions and continue employing migrants. For example, a company fined $78,000 in March of last year for violating rules related to payment (the government does not release specific details about individual cases) is now again listed as eligible to participate in the TFWP. Indeed, 38 companies who were penalized with fines of varying sizes in 2024 are now listed as eligible to hire migrant workers.

Ultimately, the only way to truly address the issues at the heart of the TFWP is to do away with the program’s closed work permit system. Tying workers to specific employers is a form of unfree labour that is generative of exploitation, mistreatment and abuse.

Moreover, workers in general have an interest in ending such an exploitative system. Allowing closed work permits and temporary migrant labour to persist in its present form undercuts the social standards of all workers. As the old labour slogan aptly put it, an injury to one is an injury to all.

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