Until recently, the only reason we used the temporary foreign worker program was that the front door for permanent entry was closed to us, under the old points system. There was no way you were getting in as a tradesperson under the old points system, so what we would do is bring them in under the temporary foreign worker program and hopefully put them into a permanent entry program through one of the provinces, the provincial nominee program. Later on, when new programs became available, Canadian experience class, we could stream them into permanent entry. The main reason we used that was to get more permanent workers into Canada.
In fact, our first option is always to hire locally, just based on cost alone.