Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to present on the temporary foreign worker program. I'm the director general for the program at ESDC. With me is Katie Alexander. She's the executive director for program operations at Service Canada.
The objective of the program is to provide employers with access to foreign workers on a temporary basis when qualified Canadians or permanent residents are not available. It also aims to ensure that foreign workers are protected when in Canada.
In 2018, Employment and Social Development Canada, known as ESDC, approved approximately 108,000 positions under the temporary foreign worker program. The program has a very small footprint in the labour market, with less than 2% of all Canadian businesses using the program and temporary foreign workers comprising less than 1% of the Canadian labour force.
However, it is very important to certain sectors that tend to face recurring labour shortages, including the agriculture and agrifood, and tourism sectors. For example, approximately 64% of temporary foreign worker positions in 2018 were in primary agriculture occupations.
To ensure that Canadians continue to have first opportunity at available jobs, employers must submit an application for a labour market impact assessment before being permitted to hire temporary foreign workers. Applications are reviewed to ensure the employer and job offer are genuine, and that the employer has been in compliance with program rules and applicable labour laws.
Applications are also assessed against a number of labour market factors to ensure the hiring of a temporary worker will not have a negative impact on the Canadian labour market. Among these, the employer is required to demonstrate that they have advertised to and recruited Canadians and permanent residents, for example through common online platforms, including Canada's job bank, and their efforts must include efforts to reach out to under-represented groups.
Further, the onus is on the employer to explain whether and how the temporary foreign worker will have a positive effect on the local labour market by filling a labour shortage, transferring skills and knowledge to the local labour force, or supporting job creation and retention of Canadians.
Finally, employers must also certify that the hiring of a temporary foreign worker will not lead to offshoring or job losses for Canadians or permanent residents and will not negatively affect the settlement of labour disputes.
It's also important to note that to prevent suppression of local wages, employers are required to pay temporary foreign workers at the prevailing wage rate in their occupation and region.
Service to clients is a key priority area for the government. The program is committed to continuously reviewing its operations to ensure it effectively balances providing employers with timely access to workers with maintaining the thoroughness required in the assessment of employer applications.
Primarily due to a tightening labour market, there has been a 26% increase nationally in the volume of applications received from April to February compared to the same period in the previous year. This has resulted in longer processing times recently. Service Canada is making every effort to provide the best possible service to employers and is processing these applications as efficiently and accurately as possible to minimize the impact on employers.
Recognizing the urgent nature of the labour shortages across Canada, ESDC recently reallocated $3.4 million across all regions in Canada to handle the increased number of applications and reduce processing times.
Service Canada is also reviewing its current process to find new and better ways of service delivery for the program. In particular, Service Canada is considering, or already implementing, a number of measures to increase the quality, consistency and timeliness of assessment, and it is engaging with industry stakeholders to ensure their input is taken into account when developing policies and systems. This includes, for example, reducing the administrative burden for seasonal agricultural worker program employers by allowing multiple arrival dates on a single application.
We launched a national quality monitoring program in December 2017 to improve consistency in decision-making and processing of applications. In November 2018, the program was streamlined to focus on key critical factors, reducing the amount of time a review would take by approximately two hours.
In addition, the department has implemented a workload management strategy to help maintain consistent and timely decisions across Canada and will be piloting a new online platform starting in the spring of 2019.
To conclude, ESDC and Service Canada are committed to continuing to improve the efficiency and timeliness of the delivery of the program to ensure it works for employers, workers and the economy.
I would be pleased to answer your questions.