Christian Michaud, a farmer based in Bouctouche, N.B., is getting ready to house six temporary foreign workers from Mexico, who will help him harvest vegetables this summer.
He has been employing them for the past four years, because there simply aren’t enough people to hire locally, he said.
“Without these people coming in to give us a hand it would almost force me to shut down,” he said on Monday.
As demand for housing construction mounts, New Brunswick’s construction industry is also feeling the pressure from staffing shortages.
Nadine Fullarton, president of the Moncton Northeast Construction Association, said there are currently between 2,000 and 3,000 vacancies in New Brunswick alone.
When asked what was causing the worker shortages, Fullarton said, “A lot of it is retirements, a lot of it is demographics…we don’t have enough people in New Brunswick to fill those gaps,” she said.
She said her group was trying to fill vacancies with many different approaches, like increasing apprenticeships, efforts to make the profession more attractive to women and other under-represented groups, and lobbying government to make it easier to bring in immigrants through programs like the temporary foreign worker program.
“(Hiring temporary foreign workers) is an option but it hasn’t traditionally been for construction,” she said.
“So we are lobbying government to open it up more so that it’s easier for our businesses to be easier to access.”
Tracy Glynn, a researcher at Fredericton’s Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre, said major changes need to happen before expanding the temporary foreign worker program.
“Based on what we know from the temporary foreign workers that are approaching (the centre) they’re experiencing some serious workplace issues, whether that’s stolen wages or abuse and harassment from their employers,” she said.
She noted that construction could be a dangerous industry, and said the government should ensure all temporary foreign workers had access to Medicare.
Currently only those on a one-year permit have access to Medicare.
While she acknowledged not all employers mistreated temporary foreign workers, she said more protections need to be legislated.
“We know too many of these stories of migrant workers who, because of their precarious immigration status, they’re being taken advantage of. They’re not reporting cases of abuse because they live in fear of being fired, which could lead to a deportation,” she said.
Fullarton said the construction industry was a “highly regulated” workforce and there was “no question” there should be regulations in place to ensure employers were abiding by the rules.
“In terms of having concerns that our companies would abuse (the program) I don’t necessarily have those concerns at this time,” she said.
In April 2022, the federal government eased rules on temporary foreign workers for some industries in desperate need of employees.
Among these changes was to allow employers from the construction industry to hire temporary foreign workers for up to 30 per cent of their low-wage workforce, compared to the previous 10 per cent.
A spokesperson for the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada told Global News that the measures were extended and will remain in place until Oct. 30.
Comments