The restaurant industry, particularly fast food, could be heavily impacted by the changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker program

By Tommy Osborne

International Workers

Local restaurants could suffer under scaled back foreign worker rules

Sep 26, 2024 | 5:51 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Changes to the Federal Government’s Temporary Foreign Workers program went into effect today, which will restrict the amount of foreign workers a business can bring in. These cutbacks could cause headaches for the province’s restaurant industry moving forward, as restaurant owners and experts say they rely on foreign skilled workers.

“As an industry, we always want to hire Canadians first, but we don’t have many Canadians to hire, and that’s a fact. We don’t have a lot of kids going to culinary school wanting to become cooks and chefs. So despite what the Prime Minister says about ‘hire Canadians,’ we’d love to, but there’s no Canadians to hire,” said President of the BC Restaurant and Food Services Association Ian Tostenson.

The changes to the program include:

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• A 10% employer cap on temporary foreign workers, down from 20%.
• Limited to a work duration of one year, down from two.
• Inability to use the program if your area has an unemployment rate of over 6%, with an exception made for healthcare, construction, and food processing sectors.

“We’re about 20,000 people short in the industry. When you talk about culinary schools, you’re talking about hundreds of people, not thousands of people,” Tostensen said.

How much of an impact will this have in Prince George and Northern B.C.? Owner of Nancy O’s and Betulla Burning Eoin Foley says dine in restaurants like the ones he owns likely won’t be heavily impacted, but fast food could face some serious challenges.

“The full service places like us (Nancy O’s and Betulla Burning) are definitely going to be better position than fast food places that depend on on those that typically might have lower wages,” Foley said.

While he expects Prince George full service to be relatively unaffected, he says it’s a different story for smaller Northern B.C. communities.

“Smithers comes to mind as a prime example where the labour market is quite a bit different. There’s a much smaller talent pool so you end up having to depend on programs like this a lot more,” Foley said.

How can the restaurant industry respond? Tostenson says it could lead to simpler menus and less hours open to navigate less staff, as there’s no immediate solution to address these foreign worker cutdowns.

“There’s no Canadians to hire, it’s going to take years. And then he (Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) goes ‘well, just invest in training.’ It takes years to become a confident cook and chef,” Tostensen said.

“The government, I think, is really coming at this from a political point of view, not a practical point of view, because if they knew the situation in the restaurant industry they would have modified these rules,” Tostenson added.

These program changes were made in large part due to a United Nations Report calling the program a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery,” due to reports of workers being mistreated under the program. However, Tostensen calls this an ‘irresponsible statement,’ believing it does not fairly describe the restaurant industry’s situation.

“We have employment standards. We have human rights codes. We have all these different protections for workers. (…) When we bring in a skilled foreign worker, we’re not talking about counter attendants here. We’re talking about people with skills, so they’re making well over $20 an hour plus some gratuities for those jobs, so they’ve been well paid, and we’re not interested in bringing in cheap labor that the UN talks about,” he said.

“There are employers that are bad employers, if they’re restaurants and they’re bad employers and doing anything that’s against a foreign worker, they should close their doors or be fined or be put out of business,” he continued.

As for Foley, he says these cutbacks to the Temporary Foreign Worker program don’t even address the issue of mistreating foreign employees.

“If a foreign worker is on this program, they’re tied to that employer. So they can’t really just go and leave their job if they’re unsatisfied with how their employer treats them or behaves,” Foley explained.

“I’d much rather see the government crack down on those bad actors, rather than to kind of put blanket rules on other business owners that actually rely on the program and treat these these folks with dignity and respect,” he continued.

While both Foley and Tostensen agree the intentions of hiring more Canadian workers and limiting mistreatment of foreign workers is great, the implementation may have the unfortunate consequence of significantly harming the restaurant industry.

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