Quebec Premier Francois Legault and Immigration Minister Christine Frechette arrive to announce changes to Quebec's immigration policies during a news conference in Montreal on Aug. 20.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
Ottawa has approved a Quebec request to impose a six-month pause on new applications to the low-wage stream of the temporary foreign worker program in Montreal, with exemptions for several sectors.
Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault announced the decision on Tuesday, saying the pause will not apply to the construction, agriculture, food-processing, education and social-services sectors.
Quebec Premier François Legault said the six-month pause would only apply to about 3,500 workers filling low-wage jobs on the Island of Montreal. During a Tuesday news conference, Mr. Legault presented this as a first step and acknowledged that it represents only a small fraction of Quebec’s temporary residents.
The temporary foreign worker program has been around in one form or another for decades and is frequently a lightning rod for controversy. It has primarily been used by employers in the agriculture sector to cover seasonal labour pressures. However, use of an offshoot called the low-wage stream has grown sharply after the federal government loosened the rules in 2022 in response to calls from business groups warning of acute labour shortages after pandemic restrictions ended in workplaces such as restaurants.
Mr. Boissonnault has previously signalled that Ottawa intends to scale back the use of that program stream. The Globe and Mail recently reported, citing two senior government sources, that Ottawa is planning to cut the low-wage stream of the temporary foreign worker program back to prepandemic levels.
Government records show Ottawa approved 83,643 temporary foreign worker positions in the low-wage stream in 2023, up from 28,121 in 2019, prior to the pandemic.
The pause on new applications and renewals in Montreal will take effect on Sept. 3. “Our government will closely monitor this policy change as it makes its own determinations about future changes,” Mr. Boissonnault said in a statement.
Quebec’s Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette said the low-wage stream in Montreal applies to jobs that pay below $27 an hour. She said employers affected by the changes could choose to pay workers above that rate if they wish to renew a work permit.
According to Statistics Canada’s latest update, there are nearly 600,000 non-permanent residents in Quebec, more than double the figures for early 2022.
In the economic region of Montreal, employers were approved to hire 8,630 people through the temporary foreign workers program last year, an increase of 173 per cent from 2019. Nearly half of the approvals – 4,207 positions – came from the low-wage stream.
Quebec’s unemployment rate has risen to 5.7 per cent as of July, nearly two percentage points higher than a historic low that was seen in the fall of 2022.
Still, there are exemptions to the incoming rules that stop short of a blanket ban in the low-wage stream. The health care industry, which increasingly relies on foreign workers in Quebec, is one of several that are unaffected by the changes. Employers in Quebec were approved to hire more than 1,400 nurse aides and orderlies last year. There were zero approvals for these roles in 2016.
Mr. Legault reiterated claims that temporary residents, including foreign workers and students, put a strain on Quebec’s health and social services and contribute to the housing crisis. He also said they threaten the French language.
“Currently, Quebec has clearly exceeded its integration capacity,” Mr. Legault said. “I have the responsibility to reduce the number of immigrants, particularly in Montreal, to protect the French language.”
The Premier repeated his long-standing demands that the federal government should reduce by half the number of temporary residents under its sole responsibility.
Mr. Legault also announced Tuesday that Quebec will table a bill this fall to give itself the power to limit the number of foreign students in Quebec, after what he described as abuses by certain institutions. Mr. Legault said this would not affect institutions in remote regions, McGill University or Concordia University, but declined to provide further details.
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The Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal denounced the worker-program pause. The move “does not take into account the reality of the integrated labour market in the metropolitan area,” Michel Leblanc, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.
“The businesses most affected will be small businesses already facing challenges with liquidity, financing, supply, recruitment and retention of workers.”
Marie-Thérèse Chicha, a University of Montreal economist who studies immigration and the labour market, said Tuesday’s announcement will do little to resolve the province’s issues around the delivery of public services or housing. “The government is taking the easy way out” by focusing on immigration, Dr. Chicha said. Non-permanent residents “are contributing to the crisis, of course, but it is essentially attributable to improvised and often inconsistent management by the public authorities,” she said.
The temporary foreign worker program was singled out for criticism in a recent United Nations report, which described it as a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.”
Business groups have pushed back on that criticism, rejecting the UN report as an over-the-top analysis that plays down the fact that the vast majority of placements are successful.
With reports from Matt Lundy in Toronto