Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wants the federal government to axe the temporary foreign worker program, saying it has flooded the market with cheap labour and made it harder for young Canadians to find work.
“The Liberals have to answer, ‘Why is it that they are shutting our own youth out of jobs and replacing them with low-wage, temporary foreign workers from poor countries who are ultimately being exploited,'” Poilievre said in Mississauga, Ont., on Wednesday.
The Conservatives say that while they want the temporary foreign worker (TFW) program scrapped, they will create a separate, standalone program for legitimately difficult-to-fill agricultural labour.
Canada already has a separate immigration stream for farm workers called the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) that allows employers to bring in workers from Mexico and other participating Caribbean countries.
Poilievre stressed that he doesn’t blame the temporary foreign workers themselves but the Liberal government and “liberal corporate elites” who he says are exploiting these workers to enrich themselves.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called on the government to abolish the temporary foreign worker program at a news conference on Wednesday. Poilievre says the program has oversaturated the market with cheap labour, making it challenging for young Canadians to secure employment.
“Not long ago, young Canadians could gain vital skills in entry-level jobs, earn enough to pay for school and build a future,” said Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner in a statement. “In return, employers built a skilled domestic workforce. But the Liberals broke that deal.”
Poilievre said that while the Liberals promised a cap of 82,000 TFWs in 2025, the federal government has already handed out 105,000 permits.
“If they do the same number of permits for temporary foreign workers in the next six months that they did in the last, they will break the record again,” Poilievre said.
Permits include extensions
The Liberal government issued a statement saying the Conservative leader’s numbers “include inaccurate or incomplete information.”
Immigration Minister Lena Diab’s office says that between January and June, only 33,722 TFWs entered the country, which represents about 40 per cent of the total number of TFWs expected this year.
The 105,000 permits that have been issued so far this year include permit extensions for people who are already in the country.
“Overall, 125,903 fewer new temporary workers arrived between January and June 2025 compared to January to June 2024,” Diab’s office said.
Speaking in Toronto on Wednesday where he is meeting with his cabinet, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government is putting policies in place so that immigration as a proportion of the population will decline from seven to five per cent a few years out.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said the temporary foreign worker program has a role, but the government is reviewing it along with the immigration system as a whole. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called for the government to scrap the program on Wednesday.
Carney said that when he speaks to business leaders across the country, their No. 1 issue is tariffs and their second issue is how to get more foreign workers.
“That program has a role, it has to be focused in terms of its role,” Carney said. “It’s part of what we will be discussing — how well the temporary foreign worker program is working and how our overall immigration system is working.”
Dan Kelly, president and CEO of the Canadian Federation for Independent Business (CFIB) told CBC News that he supports both the measures the Liberal government took to open up spaces for TFWs during the pandemic and the tightening that happened since then.
“But to suggest that the program itself be permanently scrapped, is just ridiculous,” he said.
“The Conservatives know better.… If you’re trying to hire [someone] in rural Saskatchewan to come to work in your quick service restaurant, it’s unlikely that the unemployed kid from Toronto is going to move cross country.”
On Wednesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said the temporary foreign worker program should be ended, as it was driving down wages and not leading to younger Canadians getting jobs. Raul Gatica, who sits on the board of advocacy organization Dignidad Migrante Society, said the proposal was not constructive and sought to make a political point off the backs of vulnerable workers. He argued that an end to the program would lead to more migrants staying in Canada without documents.
Population growth stalling: StatsCan
In June, Statistics Canada reported that the country’s population growth stalled in the first three months of the year, making it the sixth consecutive quarter of slower population growth.
StatsCan said part of that decline can be attributed to decisions taken by the federal government in 2024 to “lower the levels of both temporary and permanent immigration.”
The slow growth in the first quarter of the year represents the “second-slowest quarterly growth rate in Canada since comparable records began” in the first quarter of 1946.
Immigration accounted for all of the population growth in the quarter because there were 5,628 more deaths than births in Canada.
Statistics Canada said that from Jan. 1 to April 1, the Canadian population rose by 20,107 people, the smallest increase since the third quarter of 2020 — early in the COVID-19 pandemic — when it contracted by 1,232 people. StatsCan says Canada now has a population of 41,548,787 people.
