By Admin, #OasisVisas 
Recently, Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced that the government is nowadays looking and working on making some serious changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP).
Speaking to the Liberal caucus in Edmonton on September 10, Carney stated the TFWB “must have a focused approach that targets specific, strategic sectors and needs in specific regions,” and emphasized that the government is actively working to achieve these objectives.
Carney did not put much light on the nature of these changes which they are looking for in the near future.
Temporary Foreign Worker Program, Canadian government program that allows employers to hire foreign nationals to fill temporary labor shortages when no qualified Canadians or permanent residents are available for the job. It is required to have a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) before the worker applies for a work permit.
The LMIA, conducted by Employment and Social Development Canada must demonstrate that there will be no effect or positive effect on the Canadian Labour Market so that the jobs of Canadian citizens and permanent residents will remain the same and there will be no negative impact on the Canadian citizens and the ones with PR.
Pierre Pollievre (Opposition Leader) is completely against TFWP and argues that it is reducing job opportunities for Canadians ,while the conservative party of Canada has urged that TFWP should be abolished.
In last one and an half year government has made a lot of crucial changes to make TFWP more effective. Some of them are:
- Setting a target of 82000 net new admissions of TFWP workers for 2025;
- Imposing a moratorium on processing low wage LMIAs in regions where unemployment is 6% or higher;
- Increasing the wage threshold for the high wage stream of the TFWP to 20% above the median regional wage.
- Reducing the caps on the share of an employers workforce that can be hired through the TFWP;
- Restricting availability of spousal open work permits (SOWPS) to spouses of TFWP holders employed in TEER 0 to 1 occupations, or in select in demand TEER 2 or 3 occupations and it is required that TFWP worker having at least 16 months remaining on their work permit.
Issuances of work permit have seen an overall downfall of around 50% in between January-June in 2025 in comparison to last year and there were just 33,722 net new TFWP work permits were issued over the period which is really very low.