Above photo: Egmont MP Bobby Morrissey poses with a group of temporary foreign workers following a meeting in which they told him about many of the challenges they face.
Worker Advocates and Fishing Industry on P.E.I. Applaud End of Four-in, Four-out Restriction
In 2013, a group of Filipino women working on Prince Edward Island as part of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program wrote a letter to then Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander.
The women were rapidly approaching the end of their time in Canada under the four-in and four-out rule.
They were desperate, so they reached out one of the few people who had the power to help them.
“From our first-hand experience, four years has not been been enough time to earn and save enough money. We are proud to work hard in order to support our families and loved ones from the other side of the world, with the goal that our work in Canada will fund our children’s educational future and a dignified quality of life for our families. We hope to someday return to a bright future in our home country as a result of our years in Canada. Despite our best efforts, achieving this goal has not been possible in the past four years.”
The four-in, four-out rule the women were referring to did not end in time to allow them to stay and work in Canada — but its recently announced end in late December, 2016, may allow them to return sooner than they’d planned.
Introduced in 2011 by the then Conservative government, the four-in, four-out rule was part of a larger effort to discourage Canadian companies from habitually using TFWs instead of investing in new ways to attract and retain Canadian workers. It stated that a foreign individual could work in Canada for a total of four years under the TFW program before being disqualified from re-applying for another four years, after which they were allowed to apply again.
The TFW program, as its name alludes, does not have a built-in avenue for people hired under it to eventually become Canadian citizens. That meant that in many cases participants worked for years under the program, often for the same employer.
Submitted photo
“The government’s response to that, rather than building in an option for immigration, was to put in this four-year rule to ensure that the TFW program was dealing with (only) temporary workers. Not that the jobs themselves were temporary — just the people doing them,” said Josie Baker, an advocate for TFW rights with the Cooper Institute of Charlottetown.
The introduction of the rule, regardless of its intended consequences, had a very real impact on a lot of vulnerable people’s lives, said Baker.
“It’s caused a lot of difficulty because if you’re living somewhere for four years, you become part of the community in that time — people were just sort of running out of time,” she said.
“There are real people’s lives in the balance here and people are living unlivable situations because of the level of precariousness perpetrated by the policies of the program.”
The introduction of the four-in, four-out rule was opposed by both worker advocates and industries who relied on those workers to fill unskilled labour positions, many in rural areas where resident populations are aging and declining.
On P.E.I., the fish processing sector was particularly vocal regarding the challenges the policy put it under.
“One of the challenges to staff a plant is to find quality employees that are familiar with the industry so when their time limit would run out for a temporary worker we would then have to go through the whole process to retain another one,” said Dennis King, executive director of the P.E.I. Seafood Processors Association in a recent interview with CBC.
“We’ve been trying really hard for the last couple of years to put some consistency around the temporary foreign worker file.”
King estimated that there were about 250 temporary foreign workers employed in P.E.I. fish processing plants in 2016.
According to current Immigration Minister John McCallum, who recently announced the end of the four-in, four-out rule, the new Liberal government intends to announce further reforms to the TFW program in the near future and make it more open to immigration.
“This really represents a victory for migrant workers who have been advocating for changes to this program that’s impacting their lives. That’s really significant in terms of worker advocacy; they’ve been listened to, because it’s not like these people can vote, it’s not like using their voices is a risk-free activity. So, it’s really significant,” said Baker.
Both King and Baker were pleased with that statement, and are eager to hear more.
“What we’re really pushing for is for migrant workers to have a more permanent residency in Canada,” said Baker.
“That’s our hope, that there will be a comprehensive reworking of this program and people will have more stability security and stability in Canada.”
