The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has reported that foreign workers made up less than two percent of the overall labour force in Canada between the years 2002 and 2012, inclusive.

In that time, the number of work permits approved under the International Mobility Program and Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) tripled, from 0.6 to 1.8 percent of the labour force. Alberta and British Columbia saw rates of around three percent. The number of workers in low-skilled positions has declined by 20 per cent, while the number in skilled positions has increased 20 per cent. As a result, by 2012, the majority of foreign workers were in skilled positions.

The PBO, which provides independent analysis on the state of the nation's finances, government estimates, and trends in the Canadian economy, stated that its report provides ‘a high level overview of the relative importance of foreign workers in the Canadian economy between 2002 and 2012, with a particular focus on Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario.’ These provinces account for approximately 85 percent of low-skilled foreign workers in Canada.

The study measured foreign workers employed in Canada through two broad streams, the mobility program and the TFWP, but did not include new permanent residents or international students with the right to work part-time during their study program. The employers of foreign workers entering Canada under the TFWP must obtain approval from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) in the form of a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA), which, among other criteria, proves that the company could not find a Canadian to perform the job. However, almost 70 per cent of foreign workers were exempt from these assessments under the mobility program during the period under review in the report.

The initial mandate for the report — which was ‘to evaluate the impact of foreign workers on local labour markets for various occupations, with a focus on assessing whether there was a quantifiable need for foreign workers in low-skilled occupations arising from labour shortages’ — was deemed unreachable due to disaggregated data on labour demand and labour supply at the regional and local levels, particularly with respect to foreign workers under the LMIA-exempt International Mobility Program. Many of these workers had open work permits, which allow them to work for almost any employer across Canada. Consequently, information on their occupation skill level has proven difficult to obtain.

‘From an economic point of view, it is in principle considered desirable to allow foreign workers to temporarily fill positions,’ states the report. ‘Where there is a lack of suitable domestic workers, foreign workers allow the domestic economy to avoid losses of output by preventing wages from rising too quickly. This allows producers to adapt their production methods and avoid becoming uncompetitive, which otherwise could potentially result in closure. It also prevents inefficient interruptions in production by allowing vacancies to be filled relatively quickly.’

The Conservative government introduced new rules in June to limit the number of foreign workers that large- and medium-sized companies are permitted to hire in low-skilled positions. It says the changes are aimed at ensuring Canadians are first in line for jobs.