(Montreal) It is this Monday that the new threshold comes into effect which allows companies in designated sectors to employ up to 20% of temporary foreign workers, rather than 10%.
The Minister of Labor and Employment, Jean Boulet, is delighted and recalls that this corresponds to a demand repeatedly repeated by employers in these sectors, for whom the 10% limit was an obstacle.
In an interview on Monday, the Quebec minister said he hoped the federal government would improve and speed up its processing of temporary foreign worker files.
Recently, the Exceldor chicken processing company announced that it had to euthanize thousands of chickens for lack of foreign workers in its facilities. Both the company and the union that represents these workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers (TUAC, affiliated to the FTQ), had denounced the extension of the processing times for files by the federal government.
Minister Boulet hopes that the temporary foreign worker program will be repatriated to Quebec. At present, it is joint with the federal government.