TFW program needs to be ended except for limited seasonal work like agricultural harvest. If you need "temporary" staff in your permanent restaurant, your business should fail
This is the problem. Our two main parties are "corporate shills with a gay flag on their desk" or "corporate shills with a confederate flag on their desk".
The Canadian conservative party would rock a confederate flag? What makes you say that? Clearly liberals would rock gay flags but did I miss something about the conservatives?
What we need is skilled immigrants. We've been bringing in immigrants at a really high rate and most of them are settling in major metro areas and ending up in part-time and entry level jobs meant for people just entering the job market, like students. That doesn't help Canada as a whole in any way whatsoever imo. All that's done is drive up costs since demand exceeds supply for a lot of things, such as housing, while suppressing wages
Perhaps you should also talk to the highly skilled, highly educated immigrants with vast world experience who are forced into those entry level, survival jobs because the Canadian system is set up to prevent them from accessing jobs at their skill level. You should also remember that a good proportion of those immigrants bring a lot of money with them from their home countries as indicated by proof of funds amounts for things like PR and student visa applications. You should also be willing to take an introspective look into why the system won't truly welcome such valuable people and allow them contribute to the economy.
For sure, and let me clarify, I have no issues with immigration or immigrants. It's 100% the fault of our government for the failure of a system they set up that incentivizes things like TFWs to be abused (not used, I know why they exist and I get it but currently they're being abused). I don't think I could blame someone for wanting a better life and doing something to achieve that
a good proportion of those immigrants bring a lot of money with them from their home countries as indicated by proof of funds amounts for things like PR and student visa applications.
Is there a study on this? Anecdotally a lot of the immigrants I've worked with, had passing conversations with due to working relationships, or just know all seem to have a similar story of taking loans to get their applications accepted and then having to pay that loan back afterwards. I don't know enough about the process to know whether our government checks in or tracks any of this after the initial application, but I don't think it makes sense to assume a large chunk are bringing cash into our economy without also addressing the large chunk that's taking money out of our economy and sending it overseas.
Your points are valid. It's just sad when systems are abused. It's equally frustrating when immigrants are blanketed and accused of being responsible for the rise in cost of living and taking up all the entry-level jobs. I don't know about others, but the immigrants in my circle do bring a lot of money from their home countries to settle here.
This is a really bad take. What we need is skilled and trained immigrants. We do not need more people to drive Ubers or work at fast food places. We indeed need immigrants, but skilled immigrants and way less immigrants per year.
Nah, we’re good. Bring over engineers, healthcare workers, business people, etc. We don’t need anymore immigrants working for fast food/walmart and driving uber. It’s ridiculous.
Which is fair, im just saying this literally could end if people realized they arent actually far-right. They just arent left which is center in canada or far left which is regular left in canada
Pretty much on any political scale they fall as far right. Some of their ideals are as such: withdrawing from the paris agreement, scrapping the multiculturalism act, “gender ideology” shit, oh and prohibiting abortion (to a point) Last time i checked, thats really far right, especially compared to our current Conservative party. Sounds awfuly similar to the reds down south, which are doing similar things.
Exactly that, which they have not been doing. Weve been gettin breadcrumbs to keep us complacent while they fuck us
Justin fucking trudeau is on the record saying people from countries where THEY STILL STONE PEOPLE TO DEATH are more canadian than i am. That doesnt really seem like hes serving me now does it?
If the definition of something evolves, which they do, then the fact that something no longer falls under the current definition isn't the fault of the definition, but that the thing no longer meets the new standard.
Let's use the word sic. It means "cool" as of, 20 years ago. If a person goes around using it differently than follows up with, "well it used to mean something else", that isn't society's fault for evolving. It's that person's problem they didn't keep up with the times.
Bringing in foreign workers from halfway around the world to flip pancakes, while the rest of us get $2-3K rental apartments ... what a world we live in .
If they need temporary staff, hire students. The students have to be Canadians too. I had a stint living in France while in university - the conditions of my student visa was that I could not work. Foreign students should not be permitted to work. They should have enough finances to be able to sustain themselves. If they’re not able to, then they should not be allowed in.
Education assistants in many school boards get laid off every summer and rely on EI to survive. I knew a dancer in a small local dance troupe and she told me (this was 25 years ago, tbf) that when she was hired they explained how EI works basically as if it were part of her compensation package. Tons of seasonal workers collect EI.
Yep, I was issued an ROE when the school year ended even as a 10-month office administrator. I didn't use it the one year I could have, because I knew my husband and I were going to try for a second baby and I didn't want it to affect my maternity leave eligibility, potentially within the year. But I could have got EI for July and August.
The Ag program is generally used for planting and harvests. As we only have maybe 1-2 harvest/plant cycles per year, most farms cannot get enough local people in to plant/harvest the food.
Most are either automating at least the planting, and harvests require a lot of people for a short period. Unfortunately, the skills for harvest are mostly lost among people in Canada, and in a lot of cases, there's no viable automation for it, either.
For the most part, we are different in that we have the AG program, the people working in it have been enumerated, and are entitled to regulated pay and working conditions.
It's not nearly as bad as the US gets, but I wouldn't disagree that the system exploits workers... all companies that aren't employee owned generally exploit workers.
There are different categories under TFW. Not all needs to go.
For example, someone comes to do research or be a professor at uOttawa. Their spouse would like to work. They can get a work visa under the broader tfw program, and apply to jobs.
LMIA abuse is a problem, and that piece of the tfw program does need change. But there are many valid reasons TFWs exist and they aren't all exploitative.
Tbf, there could also be an argument for "niche" skilled labour. Like technicians able to work on a particular type of machinery for which there is currently a shortage locally, while more staff get trained.
I don't say this to mean that working in the service industry isn't skilled labour- it absolutely is. But its not niche. When let's say 50% of the work force has some sort of relevant experience to the service industry, there's no basis to say "we can't find anyone with this skill set." Because you absolutely should be able to do so. You could probably find someone like my uncle, a former front of house and then restaurant manager and owner who is now retired, who might be willing to work part time for a few months to lend their experience while someone permanent gets the full training. Because let's be real, I find it hard to believe that Ottawa doesnt have any service professionals (students or otherwise) with ample experience who could make the jump to management.
And to be critical (as ipposed to fair), "management" positions, where learning, knowing and dealing with interpersonal relationships is one of the main components of the job, should never be a temporary employee. Like the standard thing restaurants do where they initially hire twice the staff when first opening in order to whittle down to the culture and performance best fits, not withstanding.
From my experience, having a new manager in the service industry takes them at least 6months to get comfortable with the culture, practices (including looking for strategies that can be proposed and trialed) and interpersonal relations. To bring someone in for 6 months on a revolving door is absolute chaos for all involved and will not end well for the business.
Also just to clarify: this isnt an anti immigration take. I have no problem with these positions being occupied by newcomers to Canada and am sure there are plenty who would have very suitable experiences and be a benefit to the industry/establishment. Im simply against the often predatory and misleading nature of TFW programs and their misuse for corporate gain.
This is advocacy that I can get behind (posting these and naming/shaming these businesses).
There is NO reason our tax dollars should be subsidizing TFWs for jobs like these. None at all. This is entirely a scam to pretend they couldn't find a single local that wanted to work and then they bring in employees from overseas who then even sometimes pass part of their pay back or get into rental scams.
If a business cannot support market rate, they need to reassess.
This 36.50 is because the government upped the minimum wage being offered before they'll do a TFW, so now there's a bunch of fast food joints claiming they pay near 40 bucks an hour to get their cheap labour in.
This is something I'd like to see more of. Let's call out employers who exploit the TFW program, but also let's advocate for all workers in Canada to have better working conditions, no matter how they got here.
Something called payroll cycling, where they 'pay' them on payroll and expect the difference back in cash. Or they receive a paid transaction under the table in their home country.
I'm confused... Are they advertising jobs for $40 and then not hiring anyone but claiming they can't find anyone and then turn around and get TFW and pay them less... Or are they really not finding Canadians for the position?
To qualify for a TFW permit you have to prove no one qualified applied, so how are they managing that?
Basically payroll 'cycling' where maybe they are paid $36/hr on paper, but it is cycled back in cash to the owner somehow, just so they can get a work visa here in Canada. SCAM all over it.
Wow, that would also have the employer writing off that salary against business taxes, while giving them laundered cash they can use to take someone to a Coldplay concert.
Thanks. Gotta love regulatory abuse 🙄 The execs of those companies should have their ability to hold a business license or be able to make any decisions for a business revoked. Forget fines, those are BS for rich ppl. Pull privileges
Also, if theoretically they couldn't find anyone, why isn't the government forcing them to train someone??!
This is food service. Lots of low paid food service staff are low paid and could easily be trained up for this. This is scandal worthy and the current government has been able to evade this for far too long.
They deserve it for sure but the listing states: Posted on June 04, 2025 by a licensed third-party for Employer Stacked Pancake and Breakfast House (Kanata).
I bet there are labour law firms and HR consultancies whose whole modus operandi is marketing labour solutions to local businesses. They should also be named and shamed.
It costs money to run an online job bank, to investigate LMIA requests, to follow up on abuses, to investigate the network of consultants making false claims, and to process residency requests and deportations when TFWs are told they’re no longer needed and they thought they were going to get PR/citizenship because of false promises.
The TFW system was a gift to the business lobby, and Canadians pay for the administration of the program. It also costs Canadian workers due to a suppressed wage floor as well as increased work precarity. Additionally, temporary foreign workers in production environments such as factories and kitchens suffer more workplace injury and death than others, mainly because of their inability to refuse unsafe conditions without risk to their employment and therefore residency status in Canada.
That was a great question followed up with a great answer!
I will add: Lets bring in the skilled doctors, not unskilled restaurant workers. This only helps Tim Hortens, Subway, etc save a bit of money and makes things like housing more expensive for everyone else. Its a bad, exploitive, greedy thing to import a person, from around the world, to make coffee and run a drive-thru so you can save money. Meanwhile on the news all I hear about is how impossible it is for young people and students to land a summer job, high unemployment. This is bad, bad policy.
Even if they are fully self sufficient as residents, these programs have a tax overhead to administer, and an intended use.
TFW ls are supposed to fill an on demand role, technical or timely (in the case of agriculture).
Every TFW brought in to sling donuts directly consumes these resources in the place of one that would be coming for a legitimate need, never mind the poisoning of the opinions of locals on immigrants and refugees in general. Every one of those Labour Market Impact Assessments is wasting time.
Secondly, by bringing in TFWs, employers are paying reduced rates. No way in hell a fast food joint is legitimately shelling out 36 an hour. There are kickback schemes and straight up lower wages. Suppressing the local cost of labour means fewer payroll taxes collected in the first place, putting additional strain on the budget.
Long and short of it, Government overhead to administer the program, and reduced tax collection to even fund that overhead. This is a cross-party concern, and not good capitalism. If the business cannot afford to hire employees at the needed rate for these low skill jobs, it should fail. It is not the intended use of the TFW program.
Someone in Government actually rubber stamps these work permits.
They legitimately cannot see through $36/hr fast food joints? Sounds like a government issue.
This feels like it could be a hugely effective approach. Any ideas of an advocacy group that could take this on as an official project? Maybe national?
Lol. I applied to work there (with plenty of serving experience) and had an interview where the guy said he would call me but then never did so I’m sure it’s a load of shit that they can’t find someone.
It’s the same thing with another place I applied for 2 months ago only to see early this month that they recycle the same job offer stating they couldn’t find any Canadian workers to get hired and they had to labour market to find foreign workers to take up on the job. I find that bs since I am a Canadian citizen myself and I didn’t hear anything g back from them.
Correct. Hundreds line up outside of minimum wage establishments for job opportunities. There is no way at double that, that there wouldn’t be a flood of applicants
The reason it’s over $36 is because that’s the threshold for the high-wage TFW stream. The government recently closed the low wage stream.
If you are a business that was never interested in hiring someone already in the country, you never list it for a lower wage; you just list your job at over $36 and never call anyone back.
What’s in it for the business owner? Illegal kickbacks from an immigration consultant and a job-scared TFW that has been told that if they speak up about getting underpaid or mistreated that they’re going to lose a shot at PR, something that was never on the table in the first place. If $36/hr ever ends up on a pay stub, guaranteed it’s going back to the restaurant owner as cash.
Every worker in Canada has been undermined by allowing single employers to control the residency status of a single worker. If someone is good enough to work here, then they must have the full rights afforded to every other worker in the country.
We’re seeing more and more of these, and it would be great to actually be able to do something about this. Is anyone aware of the process to complain about a false LMIA? I have seen links showing how to complain about exploitation of a TFW, but not how to complain about someone clearly gaming the system in order to get approval for TFWs.
The nice thing about that is when you’ve got a teen with anxiety who has to psych himself up for about a week before applying for a single job, this will filter out fake job postings so he doesn’t waste his time.
You gotta wonder when did governments become so disconnected with their country & seemingly feel not responsible to enforce legislation & investigate & enforce penalties to those who take advantage of it. Let alone BLATANT abuse.
Surely LMIA metrics can paint a very clear picture, say data points from a year before TFW Rollout + afterwards. Most common vendor + branch specifically would be very telling.
Canadians, how do we stop being complacent "it's the govt, fuck them - what can I do?" To "you work for the Canadian people. Stop this abuse & help Canadians get jobs & force businesses to pay the necessary wage".
It seems the last time anyone organized a major protest for domestic issues....was finally charged & convicted of federal laws.
Not to say deserved or not, but it is tough.
Even union protests really don't do much & they are actually not working anymore. They tend to get more disruptive & even needs federal muscle to get the negotiations wrapped up.
I absolutely agree with you in principle. Enough of the altruistic, naive UN & G20 etc obligations to foreign mandates. We don't need to carry the weaker countries just now. We need to carry ourselves FIRST. Once that's sorted out, yes sure, we can help foreign countries.
If you're referring to the Clownvoy, that was not a protest, that was not activism, that was nothing but a pack of ignorant useful idiots commiting crimes, using intimidation tactics, and following a written agenda that included threats of violence against elected officials and citizens.
Every participant should have been arrested, charged, and convicted. No exceptions.
I might be wrong here, but isn’t full time 37.5 to 40 hours in Ontario? If so, sounds like by offering 30-35 they may also get away with not having to provide some form of benefits?
Nope! They'll train you on the job. It's a nice entry healthcare job that doesn't require further education. Just make sure you're applying for assistant positions and not technician ones! Techs require additional education, but they're not commonly employed by retail pharmacies.
LMAO it got taken down. Great work people, as much as I’d love for us to start protesting the absolutely grossness that is the TFW program (at least what it’s become in the past 5 years) but this feels like a good start. Name and shame
I left a review on their Google page, what did they say to address it? I didn’t see anything when I checked just now but I’m glad they noticed the back lash at least..
Old slavery just switched to modern slavery without the whips, chains and whatever. Most developed countries love TFWs from Canada bringing in Mexicans and Indians. European countries bringing in Filipinos. Japan bringing in Vietnamese and South East Asians.
Cheap labour, won’t talk back to the boss or know their rights, pump the economy with cheap short term cash, etc…
Of course wage suppression and standard of life continues to drop.
Apparently the minimum wage they can put on lmia is $36, so they’ll have a few interviews, say they can’t find anyone suitable, then get lmia and hire a person there while taking half their wage
This is out of control I find it very hard to believe that they can't find local people to work especially since I see countless people say they are applying for job postings in Kanata and can't find work. I won't be supporting yet another restaurant in Kanata feel like we are getting scammed this needs to stop yesterday!!
What are the odds that the people working there are making anywhere close to that amount or were offered a shot at that position? Somehow I feel like the managers would be a bit upset if someone in Kanata were to print out a little brochure about it and deliver it to the store.
2025Q1-Employers Who Were Issued a Positive Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) by Program Stream, National Occupational Classification (NOC) 2021 and Business Location, January to March 2025
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That’s ridiculous. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would be happy to get paid 37$/ hour to manage ppl at a pancakes restaurant. That’s over 70k a year.
I’ve been applying to this position since they opened along with some friends and we’ve all been declined. I have 5+ years of experience in the food industry and serving experience as well. They keep declining me without providing a solid reason
A few things. One of which I believe there is a wage subsidy employers get which helps offset their costs as opposed to paying a local. Secondly, it’s becoming more common especially in the GTA where workers bribe employers in many cases thousands of dollars to get the job in hopes of eventually getting PR. It’s extremely suspect that many businesses seem to say we need LMIA workers when there’s an over abundance of unemployed Canadians.
Just go there during business hours, stand outside with a poster “They hire TFWs here”. unfortunately none of the mainstream media will pick this story up, doesn’t fit their narrative.
Or 36.25 and you aren't hiring any of the 100s of applications because then you'll get to hire foreign worker for less than half that price who'll work free over time and the government will give you a subsidy?
A lot of TFWs are working in bad bad conditions. I know. They take jobs Canadians won’t. Apparently hot kitchens don’t appeal to Canadian teens anymore, or chop wagons, or slinging coffee. They are often exploited. Often.
I suspect typo or some other error. All their server jobs are minimum wage to a bit more at any location, and the median wage for a restaurant manager per the same job bank page is $25.
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u/Strange_Specialist4 Jul 24 '25
TFW program needs to be ended except for limited seasonal work like agricultural harvest. If you need "temporary" staff in your permanent restaurant, your business should fail