The federal government says it will publish a full accounting of temporary foreign work permit holders in Canada after The Globe and Mail discovered that more than two decades of data had been altered without explanation.
More than one million people held work permits through the International Mobility Program at the end of last year, according to figures that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada published in February.
However, the federal immigration department recently made significant downward revisions to those numbers, indicating there are now around 675,000 permit holders. The figures for all previous years, dating back to 2000, had also been reduced.
IRCC said it removed work permit holders who are primarily in Canada for reasons unrelated to the labour market, such as students and refugee claimants.
The department said the revised numbers were not properly labelled. “When this new data set was published, the incorrect title/description was mistakenly published to accompany it,” spokesperson Matthew Krupovich said in a statement.
How Canada became a hotbed for low-wage foreign labour
IRCC said it intends to publish figures on both the narrower and broader groups of work permit holders, but did not indicate when that will happen.
Some economists were frustrated with how IRCC handled the data revision and expressed concern that lowering the numbers would obscure how many temporary foreign workers are in the country.
“The data is just a mess,” said Mikal Skuterud, a professor of labour economics at the University of Waterloo.
By not counting international students with work permits, for example, “one would understate the growth of the IMP,” Feng Hou, principal researcher at Statistics Canada, said by e-mail.
The International Mobility Program accounts for a large share of temporary foreign workers in the country. Within the program are several categories of permit holders, including postgraduate workers and spouses of skilled workers.
Canada’s population is growing rapidly, in large part because of the influx of temporary residents, including workers and students. Many of those people are accruing postsecondary degrees and Canadian work experience in hopes of getting permanent residency.
The use of temporary foreign labour by Canadian employers has soared in recent years. The trend has been criticized by many economists for helping companies minimize their labour costs, among other reasons.
Matt Lundy