Visitors coming to Canada can no longer apply for work permits during their stay as the federal government tightens its rules for foreign workers amid abuse concerns.
On Wednesday, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) ended the COVID-19-era policy that was introduced to help visitors who couldn’t leave the country due to pandemic-related travel restrictions.
Foreign nationals can still apply for a work permit from outside Canada and in some special cases, inside the country.
The temporary policy, which allowed visitors in Canada to submit work permit applications from within the country, was introduced in August 2020 and was set to expire on Feb. 28, 2025.
But IRCC said it was scrapping it early as part of “overall efforts to recalibrate the number of temporary residents in Canada and preserve the integrity of the immigration system.”
This comes as Ottawa is moving to restrict the number of low-wage temporary foreign workers in Canada, with the exception of some sectors.
Starting Sept. 26, the government will refuse applications for low-wage temporary foreign workers in regions with an unemployment rate of six per cent or higher.
For employers, there will be a cap of 10 per cent of employees coming from the low-wage stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program and a reduction of maximum duration of employment from two years to one, according to Employment and Social Development Canada.
In June, the federal government also announced that foreign nationals will no longer be able to apply for a Post Graduate Work Permit (PGWP) at the U.S.-Canada border in an attempt to curtail “flagpoling,” which allows temporary residents to bypass normal wait times and receive same-day immigration services.
Meanwhile, a cap on international students announced in January is expected to result in a 35 per cent drop in enrolment in 2024 compared with last year.
In its release on Wednesday announcing the end of the work permit allowance for visitors, IRCC said it was aware that “some bad actors were using the policy to mislead foreign nationals into working in Canada without authorization.”
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland also alluded to some of those concerns, saying that Canada’s international student and temporary foreign worker programs have seen abuses.
“We see them (international students and foreign workers) as new Canadians who have so much to offer and so much to contribute. That is a great thing about Canada. Having said that, there have been some abuses to the system,” Freeland told reporters in Toronto on Thursday.
The temporary foreign worker program has grown dramatically over recent years and has come under fire for suppressing domestic wages and leaving workers vulnerable to abuse.
The number of temporary foreign worker positions has more than doubled since 2016, according to Employment and Social Development Canada data. That’s the year after the federal Liberals were first elected in 2015.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday that the program has helped the economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, but with inflation slowing down and employment levels up compared with before, the country no longer needs as many temporary foreign workers.
“We need Canadian businesses to invest in training and technology and not increasing their reliance on low-cost foreign labour,” he said.
— with files from Global News’ Uday Rana, Reuters and The Canadian Press.