Simone Smith
“We welcome this most recent federal announcement and the additional PR pathways for TFWs doing critical work in the food industry and other frontline sectors, but much more action is urgently needed.” Paul Meinema (UFCW Canada National President)
It was recently announced that the federal government will be creating an additional 30,000 permanent residency (PR) opportunities for more than 100 critical occupations, including farm, greenhouse, and food processing workers. A further 20,000 PR opportunities were announced for temporary foreign workers (TFWs) currently in healthcare roles, and 40,000 for international students.
The voice of Canada’s food workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has led the effort to advance fairness and rights for migrant food workers in Canada, and the union has played a critical role in achieving PR pathways for TFWs in this sector, including the Agri-Food Pilot launched in 2019.
The agri-food pilot was announced in July 2019 by Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussein, has provided an additional 2,700 permanent residency opportunities for temporary foreign workers engaged in the sector, the meat industry in particular. The aim of the agri-food pilot is to better protect migrants by requiring participating employers to collaborate with unions in order to receive a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) for a 2-year period. Unionized employers will require a letter of support from the union to qualify for the announced LMIA, and non-unionized employers will engage with the union in a discussion about worker protections through a tri-partite working group.
Throughout the pandemic, UFCW Canada has helped advance a number of public health and protective measures for migrant food workers. One of the initiatives is the pay protection and Employment Insurance (EI) eligibility for migrant and temporary foreign workers who: are laid off, have become ill, or have to quarantine due to COVID-19.
Increasing pathways to PR and citizenship is one of 14 core recommendations by UFCW Canada outlined in the union’s annual Status of Migrant Farm Workers Report.
To be eligible for the PR opportunities announced on April 14, workers must have at least one year of Canadian work experience in one of the identified occupations, and the streams will remain open until November 5, 2021, or until they have reached their limit. For full details regarding the announcement, visit the federal government’s statement on permanent residency with recent Canadian work experience in essential occupations.
