Program overhaul draws concern

A majority of employers in the agriculture sector are opposed to a federal plan that would allow foreign workers to change employers within the same industry because they fear this would encourage “employee poaching,” says a new study.

Ottawa is looking to overhaul its temporary foreign worker program in response to incidents of abuse and exploitation of workers who are restricted to working for their sponsored employers.

As Ottawa is looking to overhaul its temporary foreign worker program, 59 per cent of the agri-businesses owners said they would prefer a multi-employer work permit that would let farm owners share a foreign worker, according to the report released Wednesday by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

The same proportion of operators said they don’t support Ottawa’s move to issue so-called sectoral or regional work permits to migrant workers, which are meant to afford them the mobility to leave a potentially exploitative workplace and work for someone else in the sector and/or geographical area. About half of the 544 respondents from across Canada also opposed the idea of having a third party recruit and dispatch a pool of foreign workers to employers.

“With sectoral and regional open work permits, employers are at greater risk of losing foreign workers in whose recruitment and training they have invested a lot of money,” warned the report, titled “Harvesting a solution: Temporary Foreign Workers key to mitigating agricultural labour shortages.”