The temporary foreign worker programme is no longer working for Alberta and will be subject to changes, according to the province’s employment and immigration minister Thomas Lukaszuk.
"In my opinion, it was a programme that had fulfilled its mandate, (by) suddenly providing a large number of workers to an economy that suddenly had a massive shortage of workers," says the minister.
A series of roundtable discussions will take place to reassess the programme in Alberta and the results of those discussions will then be sent to Ottawa so changes can be made.
Alberta has seen the biggest increase in temporary foreign workers in the past five years, out of all of Canada’s provinces and territories. In December 2009, the province was home to about 66,000 people on temporary work visas, a massive increase from the 16,000 people who lived in Alberta in December 2005, under the same visa category.
Lukaszuk jokingly points out that the only company benefiting from these temporary visas is Air Canada, “because they’re flying people in and out” and adds that “probably the top 80% of temporary foreign workers, given the chance, would love to just stay.”
