Canada News: Immigration minister says foreign caregivers can work elsewhere when contract ends - thestar.com

Canada News: Immigration minister says foreign caregivers can work elsewhere when contract ends - thestar.com
Dale Brazao and Richard J. Brennan
Staff Reporters

Ten thousand “open work permits” have been issued to foreign caregivers across Canada in a move one activist said frees them from bondage and slavery.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s orders came in response to a year-long Star investigation that found foreign nannies were treated as servants and forced to stay with one employer. Often, their passports were held by families that hired them, paying wages far below the poverty line.

“Finally they are released from bondage, the bondage of poverty, slavery and neglect,” said Terry Olayta, coordinator of the Toronto Caregiver Resource Centre. She said the average nanny nets about $250 a week.

“If we truly want to eliminate poverty, if we really want to eliminate neglect, exploitation and slavery, that is the thing to do — expedite their open work permits.”

Until the federal immigration department’s move, caregivers had to wait as long as two years for an open permit. Many were kept in abusive and exploitive work situations and forced to live in their employer’s home long after their original contract ended.

With an open permit, granted after their work requirements under the federal Live-In Caregiver program are met, caregivers are now free to take another job and move out of their sponsor’s homes while they wait for a decision on their applications for permanent residency.

Olayta said her group submitted a report to Kenney last September asking for just that. Waiting times for open permits in recent years had gone from just a few weeks to as much as 24 months, a situation she said kept some caregivers indentured and at the mercy of abusive employers.

One of the cases of alleged exploitation highlighted by the Star involved former Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla. Nannies complained to the newspaper they were hired by Dhalla to work at the family home in Mississauga and routinely toiled five days a week, earning $250 a week for 12- to 16-hour days. Plus the Dhalla family did not obtain the necessary federal approval under the Live-In Caregiver Program for the women to live and work in their home.

“After serious allegations of abuse were brought forward by live-in caregivers against Ruby Dhalla, the Minister engaged in consultations with various live-in caregivers regarding how to further improve the program. This policy is a direct result of those consultations,” said Kenney’s press secretary, Candice Malcolm.

In an interview at the time, Dhalla said she was “shocked and appalled” at the allegations.

“Anyone who has ever worked in our home has been treated with a lot of love, with a lot of care and compassion and money has never, ever been withheld from anyone,” Dhalla told the Star in an interview.

The Star series also prompted the Ontario government to pass legislation to further protect nannies. The new law makes it illegal for anyone to charge placement fees either directly or indirectly, putting the onus on the employer to pick up any costs involved with the recruiting and hiring of nannies.

The investigation showed widespread abuse with some recruiters charging as much as $10,000 for bogus jobs. Caregivers also complained of having to work 12- to 16-hour days for employers without being paid any overtime, and of being afraid to complain for fear of jeopardizing their applications for landed status.

Under the terms of the Live-In Caregiver program, applicants are obliged to work for two years, or 3,900 hours, and then become eligible to apply for permanent residence. In both 2009 and 2010, about five per cent of all permanent residents to Canada were admitted through the program.

In a press release, Kenney says the granting of open permits will go a long way to address those issues.

“Too many live-in caregivers have completed their work obligations but must continue living in the home of their employer, waiting for their application for permanent residence to be reviewed,” Kenney said.

“This is understandably frustrating. That’s why we have started issuing open work permits to live-in caregivers as soon as they have completed their obligations and submitted an application for permanent residence.

“The change I have announced (Thursday) will help caregivers settle into their new life in Canada while they wait for their permanent resident applications to be processed,” Kenney said in a statement

Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North) said he applauds the issuing of open work permits to live-in caregivers, saying there is little doubt that some have been taken advantage of.

“Quite often there are employers I would classify as questionable and they can make very difficult for a live-in caregivers … so the government is moving in the right direction saying they can change employers,” he said.

However, Lamoureux said there are issues that need to be resolved that are equally important, one of them being the treatment of caregiver when they get sick while they are working in Canada. He said now if it is serious enough they are deported.

“I have had dozens of stories told to me with regard to this whole health issue and to me that issue is just as important as the exploitation issue because the health issue has just as much as an impact, if not more, than exploitation issue,” he said.

As of Sunday, all live-in caregivers who have met their obligations and who have submitted an application for permanent residence have had their files reviewed. Those who submitted an open work permit application with no missing information are being issued open work permits, according to the immigration department.

In 2010, Citizenship and Immigration Canada admitted a record 14,000 permanent residents through the Live-in Caregiver Class, the news release stated. The program allows Canadian families to hire workers from abroad to provide care for a child, en elderly person or an adult with disabilities.

Ottawa has taken a number of steps to protect live-in caregivers from abuse and exploitation with regulatory improvements in the program in 2010 and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program in 2011, according to the immigration department.

In the wake of the Star stories, the Ontario government set up a hotline where nannies can call and report any abuse or exploitation, and the federal government instituted a system to black list bad employers. Anyone found to be abusing a temporary foreign worker would be banned from being able to employ one for at least two years.

Canadian government to impose face veil ban during oath swearing

Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced Monday that the government is imposing a face veil ban for people swearing their oath of citizenship. This move will prohibit face coverings, such as burkas and niqabs.

On Friday, Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, stated in a press release that the government will investigate approximately 6,500 for allegedly obtaining permanent resident status or citizenship illegally. In the summer, Kenney began to revoke the citizenship of 1,800 citizens and now that has increased to 2,100.

Speaking in Montreal on Monday, Kenney declared that the government will immediately place a ban on face veils during their oath of citizenship swearing ceremony, according to CBC News. This ban will take effect immediately.

Citizenship and immigration officials will require those taking the oath to do so “openly” because, according to Kenney, it’s “public declaration that you are joining the Canadian family and it must be taken freely and openly.”

“To segregate one group of Canadians, to allow them to hide their faces, to hide their identity from us is contrary to Canada's commitment to openness and to social cohesion,” said Kenney during a press conference in Montreal, where he is visiting with various cultural groups, reports Global Montreal.

The immigration minister said he has received numerous complaints from Members of Parliament and citizenship representatives regarding face coverings because it’s hard to tell if they are actually reciting the citizenship oath – this is mandatory to become a Canadian citizen.

As of Dec. 12, 2012, Muslim women will be required to remove face veils before they swear their oath of citizenship. Department officials will inform them of the requirements and give them two warnings. Citizenship judges will be forced to enact the rules during these ceremonies.

If a person chooses not to remove their face garments, then they will remain a permanent resident and not be able to vote, run for public office or even hold some jobs. It is possible that they be deported from Canada if they commit a crime.

Kenney said women who were allowed to cover their faces was “frankly, bizarre.”

Canada is not the only country to take such measures. France stirred controversy worldwide after they imposed a public ban on face coverings in public places. Choosing to refuse could result in a ban.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/315989#ixzz1gLh4nBxw

Canadians more tolerant of immigration levels: study | CTV News

MONTREAL — A new study suggests Canadians have grown more tolerant of the country's immigration levels -- even as the number of newcomers has increased over the years.

A poll of 2,020 people, taken for the Institute For Research on Public Policy, found that 58 per cent of Canadians surveyed last year supported the country's level of immigration.

The findings also suggest that Canadians have had positive views of immigration levels for more than a decade.

The results tell a contrary story to one occasionally found in news headlines that suggest Canadians might be increasingly fed up with accommodating newcomers.

There were actually two prominent news stories Monday in Quebec related to disputes over minority accommodations.

Talk TV was exercised over a report on a Montreal-area municipality's decision to remove Christmas and Hanukkah decorations at city hall. A community group had requested to have Islamic symbols erected as well, and the Town of Mount Royal responded by taking down symbols from all religions, save for a Christmas tree.

There was also a report on the city of Gatineau's immigrant guide book, asking newcomers not to take part in honour killings or cook smelly foods.

But the research director for IRPP's diversity, immigration and integration program said while disputes make flashy headlines, they overshadow the many positive stories of integration that are never told.

"We think sometimes these debates are kind of tough in Canada and things are getting worse -- but we're in a lot better shape, in all kinds of ways, than a lot of other countries," Leslie Seidle said Monday in Montreal.

"Contrary to many other countries, particularly in western Europe, we have a strong majority who think that the level of immigration we have right now is about right."

The IRPP study cited a 2010 survey that found close to 60 per cent of people in the United Kingdom thought there were too many immigrants in their country. By comparison, less than 20 per cent of Canadians felt the same way.

In the poll taken by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Canadians were also found to be more tolerant of immigrants than people in Italy, Spain, the U.S., France, Netherlands and Germany.

But Canadians' views toward immigrants haven't always been as welcoming.

The study by IRPP, a non-partisan, Montreal-based public policy think-tank, suggests there was a shift in public opinion about a decade ago.

From the late 1970s until the early 1990s, the majority of Canadians held negative attitudes about the country's immigration levels.

Following a shift in the 1990s, Canadians' view of immigration has been more positive than negative since the latter part of that decade.

The country opened its doors to 280,000 immigrants last year and has accepted more than 200,000 newcomers annually since 2000, according to Citizenship and Immigration Department statistics cited in the study. In the mid 1980s, fewer than 100,000 immigrants per year came to Canada.

The report argued that Canadians who support immigration believe that multiculturalism is a source of national pride and creates economic benefits.

The research also found that attitudes about immigration varied by region, though each area had majority support for existing levels.

The Prairies (62.8 per cent), Atlantic Canada (62.5 per cent) and Quebec (61.8 per cent) scored higher than the Canadian average. The other regions, included British Columbia (57.4 per cent), Alberta (54.4 per cent) and Ontario (53.5 per cent).

Seidle was asked whether he was surprised the study found one of the most pro-immigration areas in Quebec, a province that has been at the centre of heated debate over minority accommodations.

He blamed Quebec media for putting too much emphasis on disputes, such as a request a few years ago by a Montreal Jewish community group that a local YMCA frost its windows.

The group no longer wanted its youth to be able to see people wearing revealing clothes as they exercised inside.

"These stories have been blown up," said Seidle, who, for example, added that little adjustments to accommodate diet, dress and days of religious observance are made in schools throughout Montreal every day.

"But maybe we end up paying too much attention to this kind of stuff because it's got conflict underneath it."

Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20111206/canada-immigration-attitudes-study-111206/#ixzz1fmOCHvSnCanadians more tolerant of immigration levels: study | CTV News

Balancing social and economic interests with family sponsorships

On Nov. 4, the Canadian government announced it was taking immediate action to cut the backlog of parent/grandparent sponsorship applications by suspending any new applications for the program. It vowed to decrease the backlog of 165,000 files by increasing the number of those backlogged applications processed during 2012. In addition, the government will be introducing a new “Parent and Grandparent Super Visa,” which will allow eligible applicants a 10-year visa valid for multiple two-year stays in Canada. This Super Visa will become available on Dec. 1.

The reaction of the immigration bar to this announcement has been mixed. While some counsel applaud the government’s efforts to address the extensive processing times (five years and counting), others are concerned that the unspoken “truth” is that the government no longer places an importance on sponsoring parents and grandparents.

There’s been much discussion about the various benefits and drawbacks of the parental sponsorship program. Among the benefits are the importance of family reunification as a tenet of the Canadian immigration program, the benefits that parents and grandparents provide with respect to familial issues such as childcare, and the liquidated assets that many parents and grandparents bring to Canada when they land as immigrants. The drawback arguments have included the possible increased demand on health-care services from elderly new immigrants and the general lack of contribution to the Canadian workplace as elderly new immigrants may be less likely to enter the Canadian labour market.

The theory is the Super Visa would deal with the positive aspects without incurring any of the negative ones. While information kits are not yet available online, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has indicated that Super Visa applicants will be required to undergo an immigration medical examination; demonstrate they have purchased private Canadian medical insurance; and provide a written commitment of financial support from a child or grandchild in Canada who meets a minimum income threshold. If approved, they will be allowed to remain in Canada for two years at a time without access to health care or the labour market.

While I can appreciate the benefit of having parents or grandparents visit for a long time, and the positive effects this could have for Canadian citizen and permanent resident families, in my mind it falls short.

The Super Visa will allow foreign parents and grandparents to come to Canada, to visit for up to two years at a time and to spend their money, but it will not allow them to make Canada their home, to build a life here with their Canadian citizen/permanent resident children, or the certainty of where they will be if they unfortunately require some sort of long-term care or treatment. It also creates uncertainty for the Canadian citizen/permanent resident offspring who is concerned about long-term care options for a family member, which would be alleviated by having a Canadian permanent resident parent.

It’s a fine balance between the economic and social benefits of having family sponsorship in general. As a society, we want to encourage the best and brightest potential immigrants, but this means offering more than just the possibility of jobs. It also means allowing them to sponsor their family members and to build a complete life in Canada. For many people, this will mean having the ability to sponsor parents or grandparents, and even siblings, who continue to be ineligible under the Canadian family sponsorship class.

It will be interesting to see how these changes affect the program and if the Super Visas decrease the number of overall applicants under this class if/when the suspension is lifted and the class becomes operational again. The Super Visa will likely offer a speedy option for parents and grandparents who are interested only in visiting their Canadian children, and it certainly addresses the issues surrounding access to health care, but it ignores many of the social reasons why people sponsor their parents and grandparents to Canada in the first place.

Written by: Jennifer Nees, http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/author/Jennifer-Nees.html

Super visas will make immigrants' lives easier

Super visas will make immigrants' lives easier

Reshape and rejuvenate workforce through immigration: Kenney

OTTAWA—Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has never suffered from lack of ambition and his latest goal is nothing short of reshaping and rejuvenating the Canadian workforce.

He envisions a nimble, efficient immigration machine that will help solve Canada’s demographic imbalance and boost the country’s competitiveness simultaneously.

Step one comes this week when he announces immigration targets for next year.

Kenney says when he is done with his multiple reforms of the system, the flow of newcomers into Canada will be predominantly young, well educated, highly skilled, and fluent in English or French.

They’ll be admitted to Canada within a year of applying.

And soon after, they’ll start paying taxes because they will have lined up a job prior to arrival or should be able to find one quickly once they land.

“Where we want to be in a few years time is a flexible, just-in-time … system where we admit people within a year of their application,” he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“Where people with pre-arranged job offers are given priority, because they succeed best. Where we continue to see a better geographic distribution of newcomers. And where we can more flexibly change the (acceptance) criteria based on developments in the labour market,” he explained.

“That’s where we want to go.”

But getting there is no easy amble. His critics don’t disagree with his goal, but they have qualms about how he will achieve it.

“It’s like saying ‘we want to have sun in January.’ We all want that,” NDP immigration critic Don Davies said in a telephone call from Vancouver. “He doesn’t explain how. He sets the goals but he doesn’t say how we’ll get there.”

Kenney foresees a multi-step process that will require changes to many different parts of Canada’s creaky immigration machinery.

His department has already undertaken major studies of what kind of immigrant succeeds in Canada and what kind fails. Kenney has followed up with extensive consultations and polling to find out what mix of immigration the public is willing to take.

Now comes the action. Kenney is expected to table the annual report on immigration on Tuesday. As usual, it will include his decisions about how many immigrants Canada should accept in 2012, and what kind.

The report will give a range of operational targets for each type of immigrant, from foreign skilled workers to parents and grandparents.

The key number is the overall number of immigrants Canada wants to let in — and that number is clearly not going up despite pressure from the opposition.

Under the Conservative government, Canada has let in an average of 254,000 immigrants a year, which is high by historical standards.

While some immigration observers argue that Canada could solve its demographic imbalance, workplace shortages, family demands and backlog issues all at the same time by opening the doors to far more immigrants, Kenney rejects that idea.

“I don’t think realistically we can increase the levels of immigration in orders of magnitude,” he said.

“I think it’s important for policy makers to listen to public opinion on immigration and not become disconnected from public opinion, which has arguably led to some of the problems in Western Europe.”

Immigrant-related riots in a few European countries over the past three years have become the spectre of what immigration policy makers around the world aim to avoid.

Kenney understands the logic in calculations that show Canada would have to at least triple the number of immigrants it lets in every year if it wanted to bring down the average age of its population and resolve expected labour shortages over time.

But Canada can’t absorb that many people, he said, nor would Canadians accept that kind of inflow. He points to polling last year done by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. It shows 47 per cent of respondents say immigration levels are just right, and 34 per cent say they are too high.

“That, in my view, is in no way a reflection of anti-immigration sentiment, because new immigrants are disproportionately likely to say that,” Kenney said.

“So this is just, I think, a sense that Canadians have that there’s a practical limit to how many people can be successfully settled each year. The broad political consensus in Canada is pro-immigration, but the caveat on that is to make sure that we’re able to successfully integrate and employ the people who arrive.”

Once the levels of immigration are decided, Kenney will be turning his attention to getting rid of the enormous backlog of potential immigrants waiting in the queue to have their applications processed. There are about one million names on the list, many of whom have been waiting for years and years for word from Ottawa.

He has suggested capping the number of applications in some areas, perhaps starting with the parents and grandparents of permanent residents. That would cut down the backlog, make for a younger inflow, and reduce Canada’s costs for social services.

Then, once the numbers are under control, Kenney wants to focus on shaping the quality of the various immigration streams.

Next spring, the minister wants to re-jig the point system that allows economic immigrants to qualify. Youth and high-quality education will be worth more, and the emphasis on English or French fluency is likely to be increased. Quantity of education will matter less, the minister says.

But this isn’t the first time Kenney has tried to reform the stream of economic immigrants, points out Davies.

Kenney has given three major directives over the past few years to limit applications and put certain professions at the front of the queue. The fact that he’s rehashing the system yet again is a sign that his previous attempts have failed, Davies says.

It’s not enough for Kenney to simply be the “Energizer bunny” when it comes to shaping Canada’s future workforce and diverse population, he adds.

“I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. I think he should slow down.”

‘Satisfaction gap’ hinders the immigrant experience

A recent working paper by Peter Burton and Shelley Phipps of Dalhousie University studies the life satisfaction of youth who immigrated to Canada as children, plus immigrant parents. They used data on thousands of recent immigrants and Canadian-born families collected through the Canadian Community Health Survey from 2002 to 2008.

Immigrants’ lower satisfaction comes down, in part, to economics. The immigrant families Burton and Phipps studied had incomes approximately one third lower than those of comparable Canadian families. These income differences explained more than one quarter of the satisfaction gap between Canadian-born and immigrant youth. For parents, the loss of life satisfaction due to low income was even greater, perhaps because parents make sacrifices to shield their children from economic hardship.

Yet no one expects immigration to be easy. Coming to a new country, not speaking the language, and being separated from family and friends is hard. For girls in particular, ethnicity and language appear to explain a significant portion of the satisfaction gap between immigrants and non-immigrants.

Language and ethnicity are important to parents too. Burton and Phipps found that 43.5 per cent of the gap in satisfaction between immigrant and Canadian-born mothers could be explained in terms of language and ethnicity differences, with East Asian and Black parents (but not South Asian ones) experiencing lower levels of life satisfaction.

But does it get easier over time?

Burton and Phipps answered this question by looking at people’s sense of belonging, how they answered the question ““How would you rate your sense of belonging to your local community?”

Immigrants felt less of a sense of belonging than the Canadian-born. For youth, feeling like you don’t belong is a better predictor of being less satisfied with life than being an immigrant. Indeed, once Burton and Phipps controlled for people’s sense of belonging, the gap between immigrant and comparable non-immigrant youth went away. (That was not true for parents, however -- even immigrant parents who felt like they belonged to their local communities were still less satisfied than non-immigrants).

But is feeling like you belong just a matter of time, something that builds the longer you’re in Canada? For parents, the answer is yes: the longer immigrant mothers and fathers live in Canada, the more they feel like they belong to their local communities.

For teenage girls, however, the answer is no -- girls who have been in Canada for longer are less likely to feel a strong sense of belonging to their local community.

After reading Burton and Phipps’ paper, three things struck me.

The first was the sheer magnitude of the satisfaction difference between immigrant and Canadian-born mothers: 22.9 per cent of immigrant mothers -- those who have been in Canada 17 years or less -- are very satisfied with life, compared to 48.5 per cent of Canadian-born mothers. I wonder: are there policies that would reach out directly to immigrant mothers, getting people involved in the local community, whether that’s coming to meet the teacher nights, or joining school councils? Or is it just economics: immigrant mothers are shouldering the burden of making ends meet.

The second thing that struck me about Burton and Phipps’ was the pain of not belonging. How will immigrant girls who find themselves caught between different sets of cultural expectations sort it all out?

Finally, it’s not all bad news for immigrants. Immigrants are, on average, more likely to be in excellent health than the Canadian born. Researchers call this the healthy immigrant effect, and attribute it to diet. Immigrants are also more likely to live in two-parent families. By making good lifestyle choices, like instilling healthy eating habits, immigrant parents may be building the foundation for future life satisfaction.

Economy Lab - Globe & Mail

Changes to economic immigration programs will help further reduce backlogs and improve wait times

Ottawa, June 24, 2011 — Canada is adjusting its intake of applications from economic immigrants to further reduce the backlog and improve wait times while meeting the country’s labour market needs, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney announced today.

“The backlog of federal skilled worker applications is now half of what it was when we announced the Action Plan for Faster Immigration in 2008,” said Minister Kenney. “These measures will help us to continue that progress.”

Canada receives many more immigration applications than can be accepted every year. As part of ongoing efforts to better align application intake with priorities for immigration, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) is limiting the number of new applications it will consider in certain categories of the federal economic immigration stream.

Effective July 1, 2011, the changes will affect new applicants to the federal Skilled Worker, federal Immigrant Investor and federal Entrepreneur programs. The changes will not affect the number of permanent resident admissions in 2011 in these three categories.

“Canada continues to welcome historically high numbers of new immigrants each year, but the Government continues to receive applications that far exceed this number,” said Minister Kenney. “If we don't keep putting reasonable limits on new applications, backlogs and wait times will grow.”

In November 2008, the government first took steps to identify for processing those federal skilled worker applications that responded to Canada’s labour needs, such as applicants with arranged employment offers from Canadian employers or with experience in an occupation in high demand. In June 2010, the government released an updated list of 29 priority occupations and introduced a global cap of 20,000 for federal skilled workers, as well as a sub-cap of 1,000 under each occupation. Over the past year, CIC has received approximately 13,800 federal skilled worker applications under the priority occupations list (figure accurate as of June 24, 2011).

Now, for applicants who do not have an offer of employment in Canada, the government will further limit the number of new federal skilled worker applications that are considered for processing to 10,000 a year, beginning July 1. This limit will help better align the number of applications with labour market demand. Within the 10,000 limit, a maximum of 500 new applications in each of the current 29 priority occupations will be considered.

In addition, the Minister is introducing a cap of 700 on new federal investor applications. Although last year, CIC made changes that raised the minimum net worth and investment requirements, it continues to receive applications in excess of what is required. An annual cap on new applications will allow for progress on backlog reduction while ensuring that the Department has a sufficient volume of new files to meet its commitments.

The Minister is also introducing a temporary moratorium on new federal entrepreneur applications. Wait times for this program currently stretch to eight years in some visa offices. By ceasing to accept new applications as of July 1, the government will prevent further processing delays. The federal Entrepreneur Program will undergo a review in the coming months to ensure that Canada is better able to attract and retain innovative entrepreneurs.

The authority for these changes, which are being introduced through ministerial instructions, comes from amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Actapproved by Parliament in 2008 as part of the Action Plan for Faster Immigration. The instructions are meant to be a flexible tool that allows the government to align the intake of immigration applications with priorities for immigration.

Since these changes were implemented in November 2008, the backlog of pre-2008 federal skilled worker applicants has decreased by 50 percent. As well, priority applications are being processed in a period of months rather than years, as was the case prior to the 2008 changes.

The CIC website will be updated on July 1, 2011, with details on application requirements and procedures for affected programs

New rules to strengthen the Temporary Foreign Worker Program

Improvements to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) will ensure that the program continues to be fair to employers and maintain its focus on alleviating temporary labour shortages.

The regulatory improvements to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program include the most significant changes to the program in many years. There are three major elements:

• a more rigorous assessment of the genuineness of the job offer;
• a two-year period of ineligibility for hiring temporary foreign workers for employers who fail to meet their commitments with respect to wages, working conditions and occupation; and
• a four-year limit on the length of time some temporary foreign workers may work in Canada before returning home.

For more details on the regulatory improvements, please see Protecting Temporary Foreign Workers and Four-Year Limit for Foreign Nationals Working in Canada.

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is driven by employer demand and aimed at filling identified labour shortages where no suitable Canadian workers or permanent residents are available.