50K+ jobs to foreign workers in Q1. Why?
The Q1 list of Liberal approved applications for temporary foreign workers is out. Read the List of Shame and weep.
Last month, the federal government quietly released the list of positive Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIAs) approved in the first quarter of 2025.
What this data revealed - particularly given the current economic climate and declining public sentiment towards immigration - is objectively insane.
Regardless of your political leanings, this data is bound to provoke you into fits of despair. From labour unions to unemployed young Canadians, it should ignite alarm over the government’s use of immigration policy to stymy the ability of Canadians to find jobs. One group, however, stands to benefit: corporations that exploit government policies that foster a low-wage underclass in order to turn a profit.
For those unfamiliar with the terminology often used in immigration policy, here's a quick overview. In Canada, employers seeking to hire temporary foreign workers (TFWs) typically require a positive LMIA from the federal government before a work permit can be granted. In principle, the LMIA process ensures that importing a foreign worker for a specific role does not deprive a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of that job opportunity.
In practice, over the years this has proven to not been the case, and this most recent data proves how broken this supposed failsafe to ensure Canadians get jobs actually is.
This most recent data shows that in the first quarter of 2025 alone, over 50,000 Canadian job opportunities were approved by the federal Liberals to be filled with TFWs. Over 30,000 of those fell outside legitimately difficult to fill seasonal, non-permanent primary agriculture roles like food harvesting and processing. Within the low-wage TFW stream - for positions like food service workers, for example - the federal Liberal government approved over a mind-blowing 15,000 temporary foreign workers in the first quarter of this year alone. Even more concerning, approvals for purely numbered companies (often shell entities with minimal transparency) totaled close to 4,000 positions (when excluding seasonal agriculture).
The Q1 LMIA approvals span arguably unjustifiable categories, including immigration services businesses themselves hiring TFWs for marketing and administrative roles, blue-chip corporations like McDonald's filling food worker positions, and hands-on sectors approving truck drivers and cooks - all while qualified Canadians struggle with simultaneous jobs and affordability crises.
These absurd LMIAs decisions have the potential to:
Exacerbate unemployment, particularly among youth, whose unemployment rate stands at 14.2% (and even higher among returning students, 17.4%.)
Directly suppress wages by artificially increasing the supply of labour amidst unemployment and inflation crises
Remove vital opportunities for Canadian youth to learn entry level job skills, thereby creating long-term career setbacks as the economy is being transformed by Artificial Intelligence
Enable and exacerbate proven exploitation of foreign workers.
The Q1 List of Shame
To illustrate the dysfunction, consider these (few) examples (there are many, many more, and I encourage you to look through the list yourself):
Companies and public sector entities that got approved to hire entry-level and food services labour:
Companies and public sector entities that got approved to hire white collar jobs with TFWs (my personal favourite here is the Grain Growers of Canada (a lobby group) receiving a positive LMIA decision for a communications position….come on guys, for real??):
Immigration consulting firms that often help companies get approved for TFWs got approved for TWFs too:
Companies that got approval to fill trades jobs with TFWs:
The arguments that many companies most commonly use to justify their use of the TFW program (particularly the low-skilled stream) are that:
Canadians don’t want to do the work
That only a foreigner could do the job, or
That government benefit programs often prevent people from taking jobs.
In many cases, these arguments wouldn’t pass the smell test for an ordinary Canadian, so they shouldn’t for the Liberal government either.
In reality, outside of a very few regions where unemployment levels significantly defy the current national rate of 6.9%, and in certain segments of the seasonal agricultural industry, many of these jobs can and should go to available Canadians. And, there won’t be change unless the Liberals stop buying into bunk arguments for temporary foreign labour and find ways to reform the program, or, as the case may be, incent Canadians to work. Wages that aren’t suppressed by an open floodgate of low skilled temporary foreign labour would probably be a good place to start.
Ironically, on that front, all the Liberals had to do upon taking office in 2015 was not bend to the will of powerful corporate lobbyists clamouring for the reversals of program changes made by the former Harper Conservative government. I was in cabinet at the time and remember the gnashing of teeth and wailing from employers that were accused of seriously abusing the program.
Nonetheless and to his credit, Jason Kenney, as Minister of Employment and Social Development, introduced major reforms to the TFW program and LMIA process in 2013 and 2014. In 2013, key changes included requiring employers to pay temporary foreign workers at prevailing wages, introducing processing fees for LMIA applications, extending job advertising periods to recruit Canadians first, and adding scrutiny on outsourcing impacts. The 2014 overhaul was more comprehensive: it imposed a 10% cap on low-wage foreign workers per worksite (phased in from higher limits), barred low-wage hires in regions with unemployment above 6%, limited low-wage worker stays to two years, introduced moratoriums in sectors like food services, boosted inspections and fines for violations, and split the TFW program from the International Mobility Program to reduce overall reliance on foreign labor, leading to an 80% drop in low-skilled approvals.
But after taking power in 2015, the Liberal government caved to pressure and almost immediately rolled back many of these changes. By 2022, changes included raising the low-wage worker cap to 20% for most employers and 30% for sectors like food services (from 10%), eliminating automatic LMIA refusals in sectors like accommodation, food, and retail, removing limits on low-wage hires in certain seasonal industries, extending LMIA validity from 9 to 18 months, and increasing maximum employment durations for high-wage workers to three years. These adjustments contributed to a 70% surge in temporary foreign workers, from about 324,000 in 2015 to over 549,000 by 2021, effectively reversing much of the prior tightening.
Fast forward to today, in the midst of a national youth employment crisis and an economic modality change precipitated by artificial intelligence, the Liberal government is still juicing the approval of permits for jobs that Canadians should be filling, and still caving to powerful corporate lobby groups who profit from suppressed wages by filling jobs that should be filled by Canadians with temporary foreign labour.
Conservatives believe in reducing the number of TFWs and setting a hard rule that Canadians must always come first for Canadian jobs.
If the Liberals don't fix their broken system soon, that low-wage underclass they’ve created won't be limited to the foreign labour they’ve allowed companies to marginalize for profit - it will be everyone.