Canada’s Building Trades Unions (CBTU), representing over 600,000 skilled trades professionals nationwide, welcomes the federal government’s announcement that it will revisit and review the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). This is a critical opportunity to fix a program that, in its current form, is failing Canadian construction workers.
Let us be clear: CBTU supports thoughtful, sustainable workforce strategies. The skilled trades need long-term solutions, not quick fixes that sidestep the need to train, recruit, and retain workers already in Canada. Too often, the TFWP is used as a tool to suppress wages, bypass union standards, and avoid investment in domestic training programs. Meanwhile, temporary workers are left with few protections and little recourse in unsafe or unfair working conditions.
As the government re-evaluates the TFWP, CBTU urges them to adopt reforms that promote fairness, accountability, and stability across the construction industry.
Specifically, we recommend:
- Restoring mandatory union consultation in the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) process, ensuring employers engage local unions to verify the availability of qualified Canadian workers.
- Aligning TFWP wage requirements with the prevailing wage under the Income Tax Act, rather than outdated Job Bank figures that do not reflect the realities of the skilled trades labour market.
- Expanding the definition of “employer” within the TFWP to include unions or union-contractor joint entities, improving oversight and ensuring proper support for workers.
Canada needs policies that build a resilient, high-quality workforce, not systems that create dependency on vulnerable, temporary labour. CBTU looks forward to working with the federal government to ensure that TFWP reform reflects the needs of both workers and industry and protects the integrity of Canada’s labour market.