In an area where lucrative oil and gas jobs are plentiful, the local workforce for lower-paying service jobs has been depleted, leaving local businesses to rely on the temporary foreign worker program.
In an area where lucrative oil and gas jobs are plentiful, the local workforce for lower-paying service jobs has been depleted, leaving local businesses to rely on the temporary foreign worker program. But a moratorium on the use of the program for food service employees has thrown that sector into a chaos that has local businesses looking for answers.
The Lac La Biche Chamber of Commerce met on May 22 with Conservative MP Brian Storseth, from the neighbouring riding of Westlock-St. Paul, to get some answers on changes to the program. The changes will respond to concerns that employers have been flaunting the process in order to get cheaper foreign labour, which led to a moratorium on the program for food service businesses last April.
"When the program gets shut down to the level that it did... it can be very impactful to the sustainability or the viability of some businesses,” said Chamber of Commerce President Reuel Thomas. "At the end of the day, without temporary foreign workers, for a number of our businesses locally, they would be out of work. They would have to shut down.”
Storseth told about 12 business owners and managers at the meeting that the moratorium, in place since April, would be lifted in early June and that there would be changes around enforcement of rules for the program to ensure that Canadians get the first swing at available jobs.
"I wanted to make sure that people knew that the moratorium was going to be lifted and when it's going to be lifted and that there's going to be changes made to the program and to be ready for it,” Storseth said.
Businesses asked questions about the fees, the length of applications and the risk involved in paying to have workers come to town.
“You guys deserve better service from the program than you’ ve been getting in the past, and you deserve better certainty,” Storseth said in the meeting.
“We need this program for sure, but with lots of changes,” said Mani Balaraman, a manager at Sobey’ s. “Fraud is the main problem with this, it’ s where they need to change that.”
Storseth said regionalization of the program is key, given the challenges businesses face filling lower-wage roles in the region, which has a 4.1% unemployment rate.
“We’ re not able to meet those needs with the people, the small population we have,” said John Nowak, Lac La Biche County’ s acting deputy mayor. “We need these people, and any way we can facilitate bringing in quality people from other countries... the better.”
Thomas said the moratorium will affect the viability of service industry businesses.
“The reality of the restaurant industry, and I worked in the restaurant industry... (is) they’ re high-stress, low-paying jobs,” Thomas said. “It’ s a necessary service, but it isn’ t something that’ s deemed the most important job.”
Storseth said he understood the importance of the program to the region, but cautioned businesses to use TFWs on a temporary basis and avoid relying on them alone.
“Communities like Lac La Biche and St. Paul have specific needs when it comes to our acute labour shortages... but we also have to recognize that 85-90 per cent of your business temporary foreign workers is a tough spot to be in,” he said. “It’ s not a good business model, because you’ re relying on a government program.”
Thomas said the temporary foreign worker issue are a larger part of the problem of labour shortages in this region.
“It is one piece to a very complicated puzzle that we’ re trying to solve, which is, how do we meet the demands of servicing rural Alberta while also providing employment opportunities for Canadians?” he said.
Storseth said that affordable housing, health care and infrastructure concerns needed to be addressed.
“The Temporary Foreign Worker program is a small aspect of this acute labour shortage,” he said. “We need to be able to take people that are living outside our community and keep them here, it’ s an affordable place to live.”
Storseth said any businesses with questions or concerns could contact his office in the absence of a sitting member of Parliament for the local Fort McMurray-Athabasca riding, and files could be transferred to the new MP when elected.
