00:00:00.000So what's going to happen is you're going to have almost like an exodus of all these individuals that are in Canada on work permits who are going to have to leave or they can't stay in the country with work permits at least.
00:00:16.520Today on True Patriot Love, I have Nir Rosenberg, a friend of the show, back to talk about LMIAs.
00:00:25.000Thank you so much for having me again.
00:00:26.100Yeah. So you and I had an offline conversation about LMIAs about two weeks ago, and I left and my jaw dropped. And, you know, I asked you the question, I said, what was the LMIA program supposed to do? And how far did the system go adrift?
00:00:44.800So let's start with the first question. LMIAs, for people out there who are not familiar with
00:00:51.760the LMIA system, what was it put in place to do and when kind of approximately was the program
00:00:58.320started and what did the government really want it to achieve? So first of all, I think the program
00:01:07.040began well before my time being an immigration consultant. I've been doing this for about 20
00:01:11.920years. It's been around for a lot longer than that. There's a department in Canada called
00:01:17.860Employment Skills Development, ESDC, Employment Skills Development Canada. And what they do
00:01:24.340is a part of their, there's a division in there for temporary foreign workers. So what they do
00:01:31.880is they assess essentially the labor market. So prior to when I became an immigration consultant,
00:01:37.360this used to be called a labor market opinion. Employers would submit an application. It used
00:01:44.140to be a two-page application, very simple, explaining what they're looking for, why they
00:01:49.260can't fill a particular position. And there were no advertising requirements. It was fairly simple
00:01:56.980to do. You basically explain what you're looking for, why you need to fill a position that you
00:02:01.600can't find a local Canadian citizen or permanent resident to fill the job or their specific
00:02:07.780skills that you're missing and you're identifying a foreign worker to fill the position and
00:02:12.980you're requesting ESDC to assess the labor market to determine whether that position
00:02:19.160is going to be a positive, neutral or negative effect by filling it with a foreign national,
00:02:25.980whether that's going to be a positive, neutral or negative effect to the Canadian labor market.
00:02:30.360used to be called a labor market opinion. So they used to give this opinion that said,
00:02:34.840this is a positive effect on the labor market or negative. And with an approval or with this
00:02:42.120positive opinion, an employer could then go and hire a foreign worker. A foreign worker could
00:02:46.840then submit an application for a temporary work permit. Over the years, the government's made
00:02:52.600some changes to this program and they essentially also changed the name of it. So it is a labor
00:02:57.080market impact assessment and it's now a little bit more accurate to the labor market so they're
00:03:02.120looking at labor market conditions it's a much more in-depth application these days and the
00:03:10.280department assesses the labor market conditions to determine whether or not again this position
00:03:15.080is going to have that positive neutral or negative effect on the labor market with a positive effect
00:03:21.800they will issue a labor market impact assessment approval and then the foreign worker could then
00:03:27.560apply for a work permit so this has been a this has been years this has been for for decades
00:03:33.400um but the way they run the program kind of changes with the times and with the economy
00:03:40.280and with what the labor market conditions look like and in different provinces and in different
00:03:44.840cities right right and and the program so if i understand it correctly the program the lmia
00:03:52.360program is not cancelled but they've now adjusted it or they've restricted it heavily
00:03:59.240um so if i'm an employer now i have kind of new rules if i'm a worker i see a new
00:04:06.360uh new world in front of me um but is this and it doesn't feel practically like a ban at this point
00:04:13.640like is it starting to feel because you know when we you and i had our conversation you know we were
00:04:18.760talking about some of the challenges of different businesses and then right after we had the
00:04:24.200conversation uh companies like tim hortons came out and they're basically saying now you know
00:04:30.680they're going to stop using the temporary foreign workers program um they're going to start hiring
00:04:36.120locally again so talk to me a little bit about sort of you know the challenges you're seeing on
00:04:42.120the ground. Is it practically a ban? So it's not necessarily a ban, but it kind of looks like one
00:04:52.840and it almost feels like one. What they've done is September of 2024, they realized the unemployment
00:05:00.200rate is way too high in the country, across the nation. And what they did was they started cutting
00:05:06.280back. And what they're doing is they're in order to achieve their goals. And we've had conversations
00:05:12.920about the government's immigration goals in last episodes with Phil Mooney and myself,
00:05:20.200where the government is trying to cut back on the number of foreign workers that are essentially
00:05:24.760coming in. So there's a lot of individuals today in Canada with work permits that are set to expire,
00:05:31.560about 1.3 million that are going to expire this year of 2026 what the government is trying to do
00:05:37.960is they're trying to avoid bringing in more foreign workers essentially they're responding
00:05:45.800to labor market conditions whether it's the right way to do it or not that's a different
00:05:50.840topic but what they're doing is they're essentially cutting back as of September of 2024
00:05:57.400any employer in a region in the country that is experiencing six percent or more unemployment rate
00:06:06.280is in a in an area where there is what they call refusal to process policy in place and what that
00:06:13.960means is you can't apply as an employer you just can't not unless you're putting uh what's called
00:06:21.320a high wage application so the government of Canada created a threshold for example in Ontario
00:06:28.120it's I believe $36 an hour anything above 36 or above an hour allows you to submit an application
00:06:35.320it's called a high wage application and you can submit that for a chef a cook a truck a truck driver
00:06:40.440whatever as long as it is a high wage application you can apply with low wage applications you are
00:06:47.880capped at 10% of your workforce, which has been around for a little while now, used to be 15,
00:06:55.400it used to be 20% that went down to 15%. And now they're down to 10. And what they've done is
00:07:00.520they've also applied that 6% rule. So if you are in a region that has 6% or more unemployment wage,
00:07:06.840which is in fact, the entire country, nearly the entire country, there's very, very specific areas
00:07:13.080that in the country that are not 6% or a little bit less than that, and that those are the
00:07:18.200regions where you can apply for a low wage position. Now, there's a lot of employers in
00:07:23.080Canada that are struggling to find workers or retain workers. And remember that the 1.3 million
00:07:32.120work permits that are set to expire in 2026, those are individuals that are working in low wage
00:07:37.240positions a lot in the food sector a lot in the construction industry those individuals may or
00:07:43.800may not be able to renew work permits those employers may or may not be able to retain those
00:07:48.600workers so what's going to happen is you're going to have a almost like an exodus of all these
00:07:54.280individuals that are in Canada on work permits we're going to have to leave or they can't stay
00:07:59.960in the country with work permits at least so the government is responding to to the labor market
00:08:06.600conditions again whether or not that is the proper way to do it or the way that they're essentially
00:08:13.080blanketing uh low-wage applications is is is uh it could be another topic for discussion because
00:08:20.840what they're they're expecting is to bring down the temporary foreign worker or the temporary
00:08:25.240resident percentage to under five percent by 2027. so that means they're just not accepting
00:08:32.040applications they're making it very very difficult for employers to hire foreign workers even high
00:08:37.240wage applications we're finding that employers in high wage applications that are paying 40 45
00:08:43.800an hour to individuals that they need to retain they can't I've got clients that are stuck getting
00:08:50.120refusals on LMI applications that we're working very hard to to convince ESDC of of the need for
00:08:56.440these individuals and ESDC says no we're refusing this because they're just essentially looking
00:09:03.240it's coming from the from the top they're basically the way we see it is that it's coming
00:09:07.000from the top they're basically saying try to find any reason to refuse employers try to find any
00:09:12.200reason and even if you had an LMI as an employer a work permit is a separate application we're
00:09:19.480We're seeing employers get approvals on LMIAs and then refusals on work permits.
00:09:25.620So they're getting approved on LMIAs to bring in the foreign workers.
00:09:29.080And then IRCC, which is Immigration Refugees Canada, the Department for Immigration, is actually refusing the work permits.
00:09:36.760And we're finding them providing unreasonable reasons for refusal that are not very reasonable.
00:09:47.640They'll find almost any reason we find today that they're refusing these work permits and