By Isaac Phan Nay | The Tyee
The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is helping Canada fill health-care staffing gaps and offering most participants a path to permanent residency, a recent Statistics Canada study suggests.
The study shows that nearly 60 per cent of temporary foreign workers in health care transitioned to permanent residency. More than half of those workers stayed in the sector five years after obtaining permanent status.
The retention and transition rate in health care is much higher than average for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, said report co-author and Statistics Canada immigration researcher Feng Hou. Only one-third of workers in the program as a whole transition to permanent residency.
“Most of the [temporary foreign workers] still work in health care,” he said. “What that means is that they can make a long-term contribution to the workforce.”
Hou said foreign workers who come for health-care jobs have access to more government support and higher pay and better working conditions than most people.
Stacey Fitzsimmons, a University of Victoria associate professor of international business, said the higher rate of transition to permanent residency suggests the Temporary Foreign Worker Program is an “appropriate and effective” strategy to address health-care worker shortages.
“It means we’re bringing people in who we value and we think are going to be important to filling vacant roles,” she said.
Fitzsimmons said having employees with diverse language proficiencies and cultural understandings is beneficial.
“We’re serving a multicultural society, here in Canada,” she said. “It is a real benefit to have employees who also are themselves multicultural and often multilingual.”
The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is one of several immigration programs intended to help address gaps in Canada’s labour market, and makes up 18 per cent and 10 per cent of Canada’s agriculture workforce and food and accommodation services workforce, respectively.
Hou and his research team noted the Canadian government has been recruiting internationally trained health-care workers to address worker shortages.
Over the past two decades, the number of temporary foreign workers in health care has ballooned. The number grew from about 3,200 in 2000 to about 57,500 in 2022 — which Hou said was the latest year from which data was available.
According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, workers under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program account for approximately one per cent of all people working in Canada. Workers in Canada under all foreign worker streams account for four per cent of the entire Canadian workforce.
The Statistics Canada report notes that temporary foreign workers account for 1.2 per cent of the total workforce in hospitals and three per cent of ambulance workers.
While Hou said that’s a relatively small portion of the health-care sector, temporary foreign workers also have an outsized contribution in certain types of specialized care.
In nursing and residential care facilities they make up about five per cent of the total workforce, and home health-care services account for almost eight per cent.
“There are still significant shortages in the health-care system,” Hou said. “What it shows is that temporary foreign workers, in particular in the health-care system, are just one of many ways we can rely on to address that.”
Hou added that temporary foreign workers who come to Canada to work in health care have very high rates of transition to permanent residency and tend to remain in the industry.
He compared the 60 per cent rate in transitioning to permanent residency with the agriculture sector, where only about 17 per cent of temporary foreign workers obtain permanent residency.
Statistics Canada data shows workers in health care earn an average hourly wage of $33.25. That wage is $25.04 in agriculture and $20.58 in accommodation and food services.
These workers are also more likely to be represented by unions. Statistics Canada data shows that as of last year, 50.4 per cent of health-care employees were covered by a collective agreement, compared with 5.1 per cent in accommodation and food services and three per cent in agriculture.
But the program is not designed to be a long-term solution to Canada’s health-care staffing shortage, Employment and Social Development Canada spokesperson Mila Roy said in an email.
“Ultimately, while the TFW Program can help address immediate, short-term staffing pressures in high-need areas like health care, it is not intended to replace long-term, sustainable workforce strategies aimed at developing and retaining Canadian talent in the sector,” Roy said.
She added the program is “one of several tools the Government of Canada has to protect the Canadian economy, support Canadian business and to respond to labour market needs.”
Roy said the federal government instead expects employers to train their staff and attract Canadians and permanent residents already in Canada to fill labour shortages.
Temporary Foreign Worker Program comes under fire
While the program might benefit Canada’s health-care sector, critics and human rights organizations have long said the program creates unbalanced work conditions that let employers cut labour costs while leaving employees open to abuse, exploitation and discrimination.
Both B.C. Premier David Eby and federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre have suggested shutting down the program this month.
But as the federal government cuts back on immigration levels, fewer foreign workers are getting work permits issued for B.C.
In July, migrant worker advocates told The Tyee migrant workers struggling to renew their work permits said they were feeling discarded.
Migrant worker groups including Migrant Students United Vancouver, Sanctuary Health and the Migrant Workers Centre said in a press release that cutting the program will leave workers at risk in Canada.
Instead, Cenen Bagon, member of the Vancouver Committee for Domestic Workers’ and Caregivers’ Rights, said permanent residency would help foreign workers improve their working conditions.
“If David Eby actually cared about stopping the exploitation and abuse inherent in temporary foreign worker programs, he would be joining migrant-led groups in calling for permanent resident status on arrival for all,” Bagon said.
The Hospital Employees’ Union has identified foreign workers as a key part of B.C.’s health-care workforce and is re-upping calls for governments to ensure foreign health-care workers get permanent residency.
The union, which represents more than 60,000 health-care employees in B.C., was not able to put up a spokesperson for an interview in time for publication.
The union has advocated for the federal government to create a dedicated pathway to permanent residency for foreign workers already working in health care in Canada.
In an email, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Mary Rose Sabater said that since 2023, IRCC has invited 23,350 health-care workers to apply for permanent residence.
She said that from January 2023 to June 2025, 10,025 of these candidates were admitted into Canada as permanent residents.
