Premier David Eby said the national temporary foreign worker program must be changed or cancelled to protect Canadian jobs and stop immigrants from overburdening services such as food banks and homeless shelters.
"The temporary foreign worker program is not working," he said. "It should be cancelled or significantly reformed."
In remarks at an unrelated news conference in Surrey on Thursday, Sept. 4, Eby blamed Ottawa for allowing a program to continue to put "strains" on the provincial budget, saying the majority of people using food banks have been in the country for less than two years and homeless shelters are filling up with new arrivals instead of people already living on the streets.
"It's time for a serious and adult conversation about addressing these immigration issues in our province and in the country," he said. "We can't have an immigration system that fills up our homeless shelters and our food banks."
Prime Minister Mark Carney said earlier in the week that the program is under review, which Eby welcomed. Meanwhile, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said the program should be cancelled.
Like Poilievre, Eby called for change with protections to enable farmers to keep hiring the workers they need. He blamed several of the province's chronic issues on temporary foreign workers, including high rates of youth unemployment, overburdened school systems and a lack of affordable housing.
"We can't have an immigration system that outpaces our ability to build schools and housing," he said.
Eby also suggested there is fraud within the system that requires prospective employers to conduct a labour market impact assessment to be allowed to hire these workers.
"Here in Surrey, we see the sale of temporary labour market assessments, temporary farm worker labour market assessments," he said.
Eby offered to convene a meeting between interested provinces and the federal government to discuss how to improve the immigration system.
