Changes in Ottawa, standing still in Quebec: permits linked to a single employer, called “closed”, continue to be at the center of debate. From 2027, the federal government will allow temporary foreign workers in agriculture and fish or food processing to change jobs in the same industry. Meanwhile, in Quebec, the Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette, did not obtain the opinion on closed permits that she had requested, because unions and bosses were unable to agree.
Their numbers have exploded in recent years, surpassing in 2023 the number of permanent residents admitted to the province in one year. These permits, on which the name of only one employer appears, have long been criticized because of the abuse suffered by temporary workers. On the other hand, employers maintain that they pay fees and take a lot of steps to obtain the necessary authorizations for temporary work. Last fall, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery recommended that Canada allow workers “to freely choose their employers without any restrictions or discrimination.”
The proposal submitted for consultation and obtained by The duty shows that the federal government intends to issue sectoral permits following consultations and transitional measures within three years. The stated desire is “to offer workers greater mobility”, it is stated in the document. The historical component of the more general program, that is to say the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, already allowed transfers between farms, while the other components did not. It is therefore also a question of “improving consistency and uniformity”, describes the document, including what relates to housing inspection or its cost.
Mixed reception
The Union of Agricultural Producers (UPA) of Quebec welcomes sectoral permits, said its president, Martin Caron, at Duty : “It was even a request that we made. » Farmers approved for employment will find certain advantages: “Some jobs are more seasonal and last shorter. A worker could go from a maple syrup producer to a market gardener, then to blueberries or apples,” he illustrates.
The Support Network for Migrant Agricultural Workers of Quebec has said in the past that it is rather favorable to such permits, with certain reservations regarding the real mobility of the main interested parties.
The Quebec Employers Council (CPQ) says it is against such a permit. Approaches [de recrutement] take many months and generate a lot of costs,” recalls Victoria Drolet, public affairs advisor at the CPQ. “If we allow temporary workers to go elsewhere, there will be no predictability and human resources will lose the guarantee of having someone in a specific position,” she explains.
“At least we remain in agriculture and we do not become a gateway for other sectors,” underlines Mr. Caron, banking instead on understanding between agricultural producers and consultation around temporary workers.
“Our government has been clear since 2021 that we will expand sectoral work permits and strengthen compliance and inspections to ensure the health and safety of temporary foreign workers,” writes the office of federal Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault. It is in fact the Ministry of Employment and Social Development which is responsible for the program, even if the two ministries (provincial and federal) of Immigration also give their authorization during the process.
The federal government “has assured that the government of Quebec will be consulted in the development of these new rules,” indicates Duty the office of the provincial Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette. These changes will not affect other industries and other temporary migration programs such as the International Mobility Program.
The closed permit breaks the CPMT consensus
In Quebec, it was disagreements over the best avenues for “opening” the work permit that prevented the union, management and community parties from arriving at an opinion. It is very rare, even unprecedented, that the Commission of Labor Market Partners (CPMT), a multi-party body known for its power of consultation, does not achieve the consensus necessary to issue an opinion.
“As we saw during the multi-year consultations, the question of closed work permits is very complex,” explained Ms.me Frechette. She will meet the various members of the CPMT “to discuss the different possible avenues”, as quickly as next week, we were also told.
With one voice, all members of the labor sector said they were “excessively disappointed”. “The union college tried in vain to find ways to address the concerns of employers, but there are ethical and human limits beyond which we could not go,” they indicated to the Duty by a declaration signed by the FTQ, the CSQ, the TUAC, the UPA, the CSN and the CSD. The fundamental objective, they say, is “the abolition of closed licenses”.
For their part, members of the business sector argued during the discussions that abusive employers are “extremely rare,” as they also wrote in an open letter last fall. The rarity of abuse would therefore not justify opening the permits: “The program works and it meets the needs of the labor market,” reiterated to the Duty the CPQ.
The positions were “difficult to reconcile”, concedes Mme Drolet, from the CPQ. This body had notably proposed a closed 12-month permit which would allow “the employer to make profitable the costs generated by the arrival of a worker”. But this proposal “was not accepted,” she said.
Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller responded earlier this week to a long-standing request regarding one of the oldest temporary work programs. He is setting up a pilot project to grant permanent residence to caregivers upon their arrival, a program that will not apply in Quebec.