In a recent article from Business in Vancouver, Jock Finlayson, executive vice-president at the Business Council of BC, urged government policymakers to develop a more aggressive work visa program to address growing labour shortages.
Like many other advanced industrial countries, Canada is about to come face to face with the economic and social challenges arising from an aging population and a sharp slowdown in labour force growth. These hugely important demographic trends promise to change both the human resource practices and the marketing strategies of many businesses.
At a more macro level, they will put unprecedented stress on pension and health-care systems and reshape the nation’s job market. The labour shortages being experienced by an array of industries — from construction and mining to oil and gas, health care and advanced technology — are but a foretaste of what lies ahead.
Consider the following factoid: forecasts point to approximately one million job vacancies in BC over the next dozen years, yet only 650,000 young people will move through the province’s K-12 school system over the same period. Even if all of these K-12 graduates stay in BC, the result will still be a shortfall of 350,000 prospective workers measured against the expected number of job openings.
Several options exist to lessen the impact of anticipated labour shortages, including extending the “normal” retirement age, encouraging more older workers to stay on the job, tapping into underused labour pools such as aboriginals and persuading more prime working-age Canadians living in other provinces to move to BC Immigration is another oft-cited strategy to address the looming labour supply crunch, but it is far from being a panacea.
In recent years, immigrant landings in BC have hovered in the vicinity of 35,000 annually — a tiny inflow when compared with the 2.1 million people who make up the province’s workforce. Moreover, not all immigrants end up employed. Under Canadian immigration policy, many enter as “family class” immigrants or as refugees. In fact, over the five-year period from 2000 to 2004, the “skilled worker” category accounted for only 48 per cent of the immigrants arriving in BC, and even this figure significantly overstates the actual number of skilled newcomers since it includes the spouses and dependent children of the principal applicants.
The figures cited above refer to permanent immigrants. But there is another category of foreign workers that should not be overlooked: those holding temporary work permits.
Last year, about 19,000 foreigners entered BC on temporary work visas. Most were care-givers, nannies and farm workers, but modest numbers of academic researchers and other highly skilled individuals also come to BC with work permits. In most cases, temporary foreign workers must have approved job offers from Canadian employers prior to entry. In determining whether to issue work visas, federal government agencies strive to ensure that the admission of foreign workers will not adversely affect job opportunities for Canadian citizens.
As skill shortages grow more acute, government policy-makers should be looking to develop a more aggressive work visa program. Qualified foreign visa-holders can help to meet specific labour market shortages — especially short-term shortages. For example, the current construction boom in BC and Alberta will undoubtedly wind down within a few years’ time. Domestic workers can’t fill all of the trades positions now required by the construction industry.
But is it really wise to train many tens of thousands of Canadians to fill 100 per cent of these positions, given that that many construction jobs probably won’t exist once the current boom passes?
Bringing in foreign workers for two or three years can be an efficient way to meet short-term labour demand. Once they have acquired Canadian experience, foreign visa-holders can also be an attractive pool from which to select permanent immigrants.
Canada’s immigration rules should be overhauled to make it easier for both temporary foreign workers with needed skills and foreign students graduating from Canadian education and training institutions to apply to become landed immigrants once they have spent some time in the country.
Adapted from "Should Canada make greater use of immigrant guest workers to meet rising labour demand and increased labour shortages?", originally published in Business in Vancouver June 20–26, 2006
