Government officers told to skip fraud prevention steps when vetting temporary foreign worker applications
As the Trudeau government promises to crack down on a temporary foreign worker program it admits has been abused, a Star investigation has revealed the government is fast-tracking applications by directing processing officers to skip crucial steps designed to prevent fraud.
Beginning in January 2022, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) directed staff to apply “streamlining measures” when evaluating the legitimacy of applications by employers who want to hire temporary foreign workers.
According to internal ESDC documents obtained by the Star and interviews with a current ESDC employee, routine checks meant to ensure the system is not abused by unscrupulous employers have been suspended in an effort to process applications faster
Those checks include contacting employers to confirm they actually applied to hire a worker, verifying that lawyers and consultants applying on behalf of employers are in good standing with their regulator, and clarifying the overtime, vacation and benefits promised to the worker.
“This really shows a complete contradiction between the public-facing government policies and how the program is actually run,” said Catherine Connelly, a professor at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business who has been studying the temporary foreign workers program for more than a decade who examined the internal ESDC documents.
“On one hand, we’re told the government will crack down on everything, and then on the other hand, we see from the documents that this is clearly a rubber stamp,” she said. “If the government is not going to do even basic checks, how can the public have any confidence in anything?”
On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced changes to the temporary foreign worker program he said were designed to reduce the number of low-wage foreign workers business can hire and prompt companies to hire more Canadian residents.
Applications for low-wage workers in regions with high unemployment will be refused for many sectors, employers will be limited to hiring a maximum of 10 per cent of their workforce through the program, and the low-wage worker employment period drops from two years to one. Workers in the agriculture, health care, construction and food security sectors — the sectors hiring the most migrant workers — will be exempt from the changes
In an email to the Star, ESDC said the government understands that the process for approving labour market impact assessments — the applications Canadian employers submit to hire a foreign worker — “needs to be improved.”
The government is “taking concrete steps to restrict access to the TFW Program to only employers that can demonstrate a genuine labour market need,” ESDC said in response to inquiries about the streamlining instructions.
“The changes announced today are expected to reduce reliance on temporary foreign workers,” ESDC said, adding that the government is exploring further measures, including raising application fees and implementing “future regulatory changes regarding employer eligibility.”
Neither the government announcement nor the ESDC’s response to the Star said whether it would abandon the expedited process and return to the checks and safeguards that were once in place.
A long-time ESDC employee on the front line of labour market impact assessment (LMIA) processing told the Star that as the TFW program ballooned and businesses were allowed to hire more and more workers, checks that curbed fraud in the program have been eroded, prioritizing speed over scrutiny. (The Star granted the employee anonymity due to concerns they could lose their job for speaking out.)
The checks and balances have been reduced so much that there’s very little we can do,” the employee said. “People have complained to management, but nothing has been done.”
The employee said that since the directive to speed up application reviews came down from national headquarters, staff have scaled back on approximately “50 per cent of what we’re supposed to read on the application” and that while potential fraud is reported, “nothing” happens.
One of the most alarming revelations in the streamlining documents, the ESDC employee said, is the department’s awareness of the risks associated with overlooking information while skipping steps.
