Photo credit: BBC
Canada’s Prime Minister, Mr Justin Trudeau, has urged businesses to hire Canadians as his government announces new restrictions limiting the number of low-wage temporary foreign workers in the country.
The government is also considering lowering its annual targets for permanent residency, which would be a potentially major shift in the Liberals’ immigration policy.
Speaking in Halifax on Monday, Trudeau said his government had loosened the rules to help businesses experiencing labour shortages recover from the pandemic. However, as the economic situation has changed, Canada “no longer needs as many temporary foreign workers.”
He said, “We need Canadian businesses to invest in training and technology and not increasing their reliance on low-cost foreign labour.
“It’s not fair to Canadians struggling to find a good job, and it’s not fair to those temporary foreign workers, some of whom are being mistreated and exploited.”
Meanwhile, in a related development, the Immigration Minister, Marc Miller, said the federal government is looking at several options to reevaluate permanent resident levels in Canada and said that upcoming changes will not be “cosmetic” but “significant.”
He said, “Now it’s time to take a look at them and put real options on the table for the prime minister and for other cabinet ministers to look at and not cosmetic changes simply to deal with public opinion. Real significant change.”
