Professors baulk at exemption from foreign worker rules

Canadian universities that hire international academics under the government’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program will no longer have to submit a plan for how they plan to transition those jobs to a Canadian applicant following a change in the programme rules. One union representing academic staff calls it an “unjustified” exemption.

In June, the federal government tightened the rules governing the TFW programme, in response to public discontent with the way the programme was used to fill low-wage and low-skilled jobs by some employers. But the changes to the rules also included tougher regulations for higher-wage jobs that paid more than the provincial average. Universities complained that the changes would make it harder to recruit the best researchers from around the world, in part because the TFW track is often used as a quick way to get an new hire into their position, before going through the longer and more onerous process of getting a long-term or permanent work visa.

“Academic specialties can be very specific [and] that flexibility of being able to hire from around the world is important, as are the global connections that academics make,” Christine Tausig Ford, vice-president of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, told The Globe and Mail.