On 16 September 2025, Heron Law Offices immigration and refugee principal lawyer Will Tao joins CTV Your Morning Vancouver to address potential flaws in the temporary foreign worker program.
The link to the recording of the live CTV Your Morning Vancouver is here: Canada’s temporary foreign worker program under microscope
On Will’s LinkedIn page, Will shared his speaking points (which he couldn’t fully get to due to the length of the interview):
1. It is important to get the data and terminology right. Failure to do so can not only create oversimplified/incorrect narratives (cc Laura Schemitsch for emphasizing this) but also harm and perpetuate the anti-immigrant great replacement theory narrative, which has influenced the Global North. Former MLA Katrina Chen has spoken eloquently on this. As economists have spoken about, we do not have the empirical data to show that the TFWP is responsible for youth unemployment, especially as TFWPs have decreased so much. Also failure to understand the International Mobility Program (“IMP”) as distinct from TFWP is a crucial gap.
2. Harm will be experienced if we start questioning if every racialized patient or those who are obtaining food bank services are temporary residents (or generally, immigrants). Furthermore, it ignores both the fact that many of the nurses and food workers who are keeping these critical industries afloat employ TFWs. We also haven’t (as Karina Juma pointed out) canvassed whether youth even want to do some of the jobs where there are shortages. I see more young people in coffee shops as patrons working on art and creative tasks in the gig economy. We forget the complex ecosystem of job and opportunity creation.
3. LMIAs are essential to a functioning immigration system. I do not do as much corporate or employer immigration as some of my colleagues, but I can assure you there would be industries wiped out without a TFWP program. Dialogue forgets how much of the tourism, film and television, health care, caregiving, food, and transport industries are not only reliant but create jobs on the basis of LMIAs. Many MNCs would leave Canada without access to LMIAs. Rural communities would also suffer.
4. Rampant fraud is a reality. Every week, I get approached by those who paid up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to come to Canada, with the LMIA often the first gatekeeper. These need to be shut down, and I think where efforts are being placed, but need to be investigated further.
