Relaxing temporary foreign worker regulations not the answer to labour shortage, expert says

High rental costs, low margins and a lack of staff are pushing small businesses out of Vancouver, but leaning on vulnerable temporary foreign workers won't necessarily fix the issue, according to the director of the labour studies program at Simon Fraser University.

Instead, allowing workers into the country with an open work permit, rather than tying them to individual employers would reduce the vulnerability of foreign workers, according to Kendra Strauss, director of the labour studies program at Simon Fraser University.

"It's a question of why are people considered good enough to work in Canada sent back after four years," Strauss told CBC Early Edition host Stephen Quinn.

• Is it time to relax temporary foreign worker rules to help small business?

• Canada adds 79,000 jobs in December, pushing jobless rate to lowest level since 1976

Rules unclear

However, the federal government wrote in an email that the rule requiring workers to leave after four years was eliminated in December 2016.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada pointed to a statement that cited the elimination of that requirement. It also affirmed Ottawa's commitment to "developing pathways to permanent residency so that eligible applicants are able to more fully contribute to Canadian society."

However, Strauss said she has been unable to find any "clear guidance" on whether or not open work permits are being accepted with the scrapping of the four-year rule and said that pathways to permanent residency are limited.

"If nothing else, all of this suggests that the actual rules governing lower paid workers in the TFWP are very opaque," she wrote in an email.

Temporary workers still vulnerable

As small businesses in Vancouver struggle to find and retain staff, some have made calls to relax rules regarding temporary foreign workers, after reforms were made to the program in 2014.

But Strauss said B.C. is already behind on regulating recruiters and immigration consultants, which has resulted in foreign workers being taken advantage of and even charged thousands of dollars in illegal fees.

Many workers will take on debt to pay the illegal fees to recruiters and consultants, which makes them even more vulnerable when they do arrive, especially when they are tied to a single employer.

"They're bound to send this money home or to pay recruiters on top of the money they were already hoping to send home to help their families and, of course, they have to pay to live in Vancouver, so it can be a very tough situation for these workers," said Strauss.

She pointed to Manitoba and some Maritime provinces as examples where stricter regulations have been put in place to protect workers.

Labour shortage here to stay

Strauss also suggested foreign workers should be allowed to change employers without risk of deportation.

But the issue, she said, goes beyond regulations. As long as high rental costs plague small businesses and wages remain relatively low in certain sectors, the labour shortage likely won't go away, and the effects could soon be felt by consumers.

"Vancouverites, maybe, just need to be willing to pay a little bit more for these goods. The coffee, the bagels, the muffins that we buy from these small businesses that many of us value might have to go up a little bit. This is a very expensive city and, in a sense, I think the solution involves all of us."

The federal government says all workers, including temporary workers, are entitled to the same work safety standards. Permitting temporary workers to switch employers would make enforcement of these standards more difficult.

With files from The Early Edition