Employers using Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program are unhappy that the federal government is beginning unannounced inspections to make sure everyone’s papers are in order.
Last month, Service Canada, the government agency that oversees the program, sent an email to some 30,000 employers reminding them that it had the authority to conduct an inspection, with or without prior notice.
The inspections, which mainly focus on agriculture and caregiver employers, have left farmers believing they are being unnecessarily targeted.
One of the biggest, and most accepted, users of temporary foreign workers is the agricultural sector, which brings in thousands of workers at harvest times, but some Canadian farmers are unhappy with Ottawa’s announcement that it is beginning unannounced inspections of employers using the Temporary Foreign Workers Program. (Canadian Press)
“There are no concerns about doing the actual inspection, when there’s government programs involved there should be accountability and openness,” the executive director of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers association, Dave Quist told the National Post newspaper.
“But it seems like these guys can just come in and do whatever they want. There needs to be some due process and transparency involved here.”
Calling unannounced inspections “an invasive tactic,” an unnamed Western Canadian grain farmer told the National Post, that the intensity of the inspections is “unheard of.”
Last May, Canada’s auditor general, Michael Ferguson, released a report citing oversight problems in the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, calling them “rife.”
With files from Postmedia, CBC,
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