ARMINE YALNIZYAN
Globe and Mail Blog
Posted on Thursday, May 3, 2012 6:00AM EDT

In 2011, 156,000 economic immigrants entered Canada as permanent residents, while 191,000 people entered with a temporary work permit, granted to employers by the federal government. Many of these permits extend beyond a year, so as of Dec. 1, 2011 there were 300,111 temporary foreign workers in Canada, the highest number on record. The number of temporary foreign workers has more than doubled since 2006.

The federal government is promoting the temporary foreign worker program as a solution to skills shortages now faced by employers, particularly in the West. Yet 35 per cent of the nation’s temporary foreign workers are in Ontario, and almost one in five (18 per cent) are in Toronto, which has an unemployment rate of 8.6 per cent. Labour shortage? I don’t think so.


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