The Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) History Essay

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The Temporary Foreign Worker Program, also known as TFWP, is a program introduced by the Government of Canada to allow brands and companies to hire employees from across the world. Since 1973, when the program was inaugurated, hundreds to thousands of foreigners have been brought to Canada for work purposes. In the beginning, most of the Canadian companies focused on hiring high-skill foreign workers such as engineers, doctors, and nurses. In 2002, it was announced that a low-skill workers category would be added, allowing more and more uneducated yet hard working people to move to Canada for the job. The program was eventually expanded, and it was decided that the wages would be increased to facilitate workers in a better way.
In April 2014, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program came under scrutiny when the CBC reported that a significant number of unskilled foreigners were hired by McDonald's Canada (2014). Finally, the fast-food company put the program on-hold to deal with the criticism. The CBC mainly targeted three franchises of McDonald’s in Victoria and one of its pizza shops in Weyburn, claiming that the local employees, who were receiving a good salary, were replaced by unskilled foreign workers who were forced to work for extra hours and get a low wage.
Dominique M. Gross raised the same issue in his article titled Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada: Are They Really Filling Labour Shortages? According to the author, the Canadian companies are not into filling the gap of labor shortage. Instead, they want to hire more and more low-skill or unskilled people from India, Pakistan, China, and Bangladesh to ask them to work for pennies (Gross, 2014). It means changes in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program from 2002 to 2012 made it easy for local brands and companies ...