Reduction in foreign workers hurting northern B.C., employers say

New restrictions on temporary foreign workers are harming smaller towns in northern B.C., business and economic leaders say.

It comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney forges ahead with plans to reduce the numbers of both foreign workers and students in an effort to curb population growth over the next few years.

In Prince Rupert, on B.C.’s North Coast, the population is stagnating despite being home to Canada’s third-busiest port.

Employers say they simply aren’t able to find enough locals to hire for much-needed jobs.

“We’ve done numerous job fairs,” said John Farrell, the executive director of Community Futures in Prince Rupert, a non-profit focused on supporting small business and community development.

“We’d rather hire local — but the locals just aren’t there, and if they are, they’re already working.”

WATCH | Farrell says Prince Rupert will collapse without foreign workers:

‘We depend on these people’: community leader on temporary foreign workers

John Farrell, a small business owner and the executive director of Community Futures, says his community of Prince Rupert, B.C., needs the temporary foreign worker program because there is a ‘chronically short, limited local workforce’ in his region. This comes as Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for Ottawa to scrap the program in its current form.

Making matters worse, he said, the changes are resulting in existing temporary foreign workers, once on track for permanent residency in Canada, having their applications to remain in the country denied or delayed.

“Some of them are [restaurant] servers and some of them are managers, and they’re all going home,” he said.

“There just isn’t anybody that’s picking up those jobs.”

WATCH | Massive cuts to immigration:

Why Canada’s making massive cuts to immigration | About That

The federal government is cutting the number of new permanent and temporary residents to be welcomed into Canada as part of what’s been described as a ‘dramatic revision’ to its immigration plan. Andrew Chang explains the reasons behind the government’s stated goal of pausing population growth by breaking down the struggle to keep up with a post-pandemic population boom.

Prince Rupert isn’t alone.

Concerns about limits on foreign workers and students have been raised by other northern communities, including Fort Nelson and Prince George, where cuts have been felt at both job sites and on college campuses.

Coast Mountain College, which serves northwest B.C., has closed one of its campuses in response to the reductions.

‘Left behind and helpless’

Among those currently in limbo are Samjhana Khatri and Sudhan Battari, who until recently worked at the Crest, one of the most prominent hotels and restaurants in Prince Rupert.

Waiting for word on their future, they say, has been very stressful — as they are unable to save money or pay bills while waiting to find out if their work permits will be renewed.

“I feel left behind and helpless because I want to work, support myself and continue living legally in Canada,” Battari said.

Khatri’s and Battari’s employer is the Gitxaala First Nation, which owns the Crest.

Gitxaala business director Blair Mirau estimates they’ll be losing upwards of 30 people in the coming months to similar circumstances.

While some of those holes can be plugged by hiring locally, he doesn’t expect all of the positions will be filled.

“Prince Rupert is a small, rural and remote community, so there’s not a whole bunch of people … where they’ve got a degree in hospitality and ten years’ experience managing five-star hotels,” he said.

“And if it does exist in Prince Rupert, I guarantee that we’ve already hired them.”

Earlier this year, Farrell led local businesses in delivering a “call to action” to their MP Ellis Ross, asking that exemptions to the foreign worker cuts be carved out for rural, remote and northern communities.

But Farrell says Ross declined to bring it forward.

Ross did not respond to requests for comment from CBC News, but he is a member of the Conservative Party, whose leader Pierre Poilievre has called for the complete scrapping of the foreign worker program.

Poilievre has argued the program shuts youth out of jobs by instead relying on poorly-paid workers from other countries who are “ultimately being exploited” by the businesses they work for.

Farrell said that may be the case in bigger cities.

But in Prince Rupert, he says his experience is that businesses will not only pay fair wages, but also put funding towards travel and housing, in order to get people to work in everything from hospitality to construction.

Over the past few months, the non-profit leader has seen multiple employers on the ropes due to the federal changes.

“We definitely need a different approach to immigration in the north,” he said.