Ryan Comeau

New website jobwatchcanada.com is calling out businesses that exploit the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to hire cheaper foreign labour instead of Canadians. Showing businesses with high temporary foreign worker usage that shut Canadian youth out of the job market.

This summer, young people across Canada have been struggling to find work. Teenagers used to walk into a local business with a resume and walk out with a summer job. This is how it was for my first job, which wasn’t that long ago, but just a few years later, it doesn’t seem that straightforward anymore. Today, that path is clouded with jobs being offered internationally and young Canadians being shut out.

Entry-level work that once offered youth their first paycheque and an opportunity to learn some responsibility are vanishing with the always expanding Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

While youth walk in with resumes and walk out empty handed, the jobs are being posted online to sites like LMIA.ca and the government-run Job Bank GC to be advertised internationally. These jobs are being advertised here under the premise that they couldn’t find a Canadian to fill the job, the original intent of the program. Now it has become a pipeline for foreign recruitment.

Examining these sites, you’ll often see the abbreviation LMIA (Labour Market Impact Assessment) used. These assessments are part of the foreign worker program that determines whether businesses need a foreign worker. Now it has become nothing more than a rubber stamp.

Sites like LMIA.ca are a part of Canada’s emerging immigration consulting industry. Firms across the country have sprung up with a specialization in navigating LMIA paperwork to help businesses import labour. LMIA.ca is just one example in recruiting internationally. These firms help businesses do everything from applications, permits, and then advertising their jobs. What was once supposed to be a last resort has turned into a business model.

If you take a look at the jobs being advertised with LMIA approvals, you’ll see titles like restaurant manager, cook, kitchen helper, restaurant support staff. The website JobWatchCanada shows that some of the businesses with the highest TFW usage are the fast-food places, take a look for yourself.

These are not obscure specialized roles that these businesses can’t find a Canadian for, they just don’t want to find a Canadian to fill the role. These are the same jobs that young Canadians have always relied on for part-time work.

For generations, young Canadians have worked in these industries. Today, these jobs are being offered internationally. Youth are handing out resumes without knowing that the very jobs they’re applying for are listed online, up for international grabs.

Recently, a post on r/torontoJobs gained traction of a 16-year-old looking for work in Toronto. Not because they wanted some extra spending cash, but because they needed money to help out their family. They applied to places you’d expect, food service and retail, but came up empty-handed.

This story is too familiar to many young Canadians, and it shouldn’t be this way. It’s a signal that what we’re doing now isn’t working.

Behind the curtains of the foreign worker pipeline and the shared struggle of young Canadians are lobbyists in groups like Restaurants Canada. Regularly pushing for more access to foreign workers, with some of their releases calling these food service jobs “hard-to-fill”. Framing this as a labour shortage, but Canadians are seeing through this. There’s no labour shortage; businesses don’t want to invest in training young Canadians. They’d rather import cheaper labour.

This is more than just businesses abusing the program, it’s a policy failure with real consequences. It’s not only about young Canadians being denied these jobs, it’s about the dignity of young Canadians. They aren’t only being denied some summer spending money, but they’re being denied the same opportunities that came easily for previous generations of Canadians. They’re being told that they’re not able to learn how to do these jobs, that there are better options internationally.

The truth of LMIAs is ugly. It’s not an inability to find Canadian workers, it’s an abuse to protect the bottom line. Businesses have figured out that it’s cheaper in the long run to rely on foreign workers, and these consulting firms have figured out how to profit from this business need. All the while, young Canadians are being cut out of everything.

This can’t go on. If we care about the future of our youth, we need to give them the same opportunities that we had. That means demanding accountability from your local businesses that abuse foreign worker programs. Take a look on JobWatchCanada to see which of your local businesses are hiring temporary foreign workers.

Young Canadians are ready to work and are ready to learn how to do these jobs, but businesses need to be ready to hire Canadians.

It’s time to put Canadian youth first.

Ryan Comeau is a contributor to Trending Politics.