Question Period Note: Labour Market Impact Assessment Processing

The Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program has seen a significant increase in overall demand. What measures have been put in place to improve processing times of Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) applications?

Employer demand for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has significantly increased, placing ongoing pressure on the Service Canada processing network.

The Department has initiated a number of measures to ensure that employers receive timely decisions so that temporary foreign workers can enter Canada to support key industries, such as agriculture and agri-food.

In September 2021 and January 2022, the Department took concrete action to speed up productivity and rapidly process applications from employers. This has included hiring more staff and implementing significant streamlining measures.

As of August 28, 2022, despite receiving a 56.6% increase in volume compared to the previous fiscal year, the TFW Program is still achieving the Service Standard in the Agriculture, SAWP, Caregiver, Global Talent and Permanent Resident Streams. The national network is continuing to improve service levels for the High Wage and Low Wage streams since the beginning of this fiscal year, having reduced processing times by 3.7 and 12.3 business days respectively.

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is designed to be responsive to the Canadian labour market by ensuring that Canadians and Permanent Residents are first considered for available jobs.

The Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) process is the key labour market test that provides the government with assurances that hiring temporary foreign workers will not have a negative impact on the Canadian labour market. The LMIA also establishes program conditions that identify standards to ensure the protection of TFWs and prevent bad actors from accessing the Program.

The Program aims to strike a balance between protecting the Canadian Labour Market, informing employers of their obligations and protecting workers once they arrive.

The Program has seen an increase of 55.6% in LMIA volume compared to the year-to-date forecasts. Through the introduction of facilitative measures and staff overtime, despite unprecedented Program demand, processing times have improved.

The Program has processed a record high number of files in 2021-2022, with nearly 70,000 files processed. Despite this increase, program modernisation efforts have enabled the program to improve productivity and the introduction of significant streamlining measures have shortened processing times, which has given Service Canada the capacity to absorb increased employer demand. As of September 11, the Program has already processed 46,995 files.

To that end, the program is currently meeting service levels under most streams, including the Agriculture and Seasonal Agriculture Workers Program Streams. In fact, as of September 5, 2022, the year-to-date average processing time is 32.7 business days, noting that processing times are longer in Quebec considering joint processing with MIFI. Once a Labour Market Impact Assessment is issued, the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada processes individual work permits for temporary foreign workers.

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