Following a House of Commons standing committee report on the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, published last September, the federal government announced a suite of potential future changes to the TFWP in December. The announcement focused on the immediate repeal of the "cumulative duration" limit for low-wage migrant workers (also known as the "four-in, four-out" rule), while also suggesting it would explore further changes in the coming months, such as issues around permanent residency for migrant workers.
However, absent from the announcement was any mention of one of the most concrete and meaningful recommendations made by the standing committee: to change the designation of work permits from an "employer-specific" permit to a sectoral permit.
Currently, work permits under the TFWP limit a migrant worker's eligibility to work to one employer, one location and one job, as listed on their work permit. This means workers cannot change jobs, locations or employers without applying for a new work permit. The current permit system is deeply problematic, and has been consistently found to have a direct impact on the exploitation and abuse of migrant workers in Canada.
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The employer-specific work permit removes a significant amount of bargaining power from migrant workers, making their employment relationship a highly dependent and imbalanced one. Because migrant workers are effectively tied to their employer, they have strong disincentives to assert their legal rights in the workplace, or to launch complaints when those rights have been violated. This means unscrupulous employers can engage in a wide range of inappropriate and unlawful conduct with relative impunity.
In addition to the urgent problems this work permit system poses for migrant workers, those more concerned with the domestic labour market and resident workers in Canada should be equally troubled. Because the consequences associated with this work permit system result in widespread and known workplace abuses, and because migrant workers are very often hesitant to report such abuses, the work permit system facilitates the entrenchment of substandard working conditions and wages. This, in turn, results in job rejection by resident workers unwilling to accept or tolerate those substandard conditions. This makes the current state of affairs a loss on all sides.
A sectoral work permit system, recommended by the House committee report, is an option that would improve the bargaining power of migrant workers. A sectoral work permit would continue to place boundaries on migrant workers' eligibility in Canada, by constraining their authorization to work to a defined job category, industrial sector and, perhaps, geographic area. However, it would provide migrant workers with the option of job mobility – of leaving one employer and seeking out alternate employment. This can be a valuable bargaining tool for all workers in situations where their working conditions, wages or minimum rights are not respected. Without this tool, an employee has little to bargain with.
In effect, then, a sectoral work permit system would simply place migrant workers on par with resident workers in Canada. It would also create better access, in practice, for migrant workers to assert their legal rights in the workplace, or to report abusive employers to relevant authorities. This can, over the longer term, work to facilitate broader improvements in industries currently characterized by precarious work and substandard conditions, such as food services and hospitality.
The government's announcement signals an intention to taking the committee's report seriously, and to consider further reforms that will improve the efficiency of the TFWP for both workers and employers. While scrapping the "cumulative duration" limit is a good start toward this goal, it is not enough. Without serious reconsideration of the work permit system, other changes to the TFWP will fail to make meaningful inroads toward positive and visible improvement on the ground.
Creating better access to the labour market through a sectoral work permit system will not only go a long way toward addressing the significant problems migrant workers face in asserting their legal rights, it will make effective contributions toward the long-term improvement of working conditions and employment for all workers in Canada, especially for those in precarious industries.