Member of Parliament Blake Richards updated Improvement District No. 9 (ID 9) last week on temporary foreign workers (TFW) and International Experience Canada (IEC) programs in the area.
ID 9 council made it clear to the Wildrose representative that businesses are struggling to find workers to support the popular tourist destination of Lake Louise.
Richards, who also serves on the parliamentary tourism caucus, shared some knowledge of what he’s heard and discussed from across Canada on the matter. Richards said he’s looking for a more permanent solution to the area’s problems.
“Going forward, we need to come up with solutions to labour challenges that we continue to face and I don’t think they’re temporary, so obviously a temporary program was trying to be stretched into something that’s not a temporary problem,” Richards said at the council meeting on July 9 at the Juniper Hotel in Banff.
“We’ve been allowed to have some changes in our area, so primarily that allows us to currently have 20 per cent of the work force for the employer under that labour market opinion,” Richards said.
Last year the federal government announced a reshaping of the TFW program when allegations surfaced of Canadian businesses abusing the program and underpaying TFWs. The feds put a cap on the number of TFWs a business can employ for a low-wage job (10 per cent of staff by July 2016) and said the change was also a way to guarantee Canadian residents have first crack at available jobs.
To help the transition, a phasing period over three years was put in place. On July 1, 2015, it was reduced to 20 per cent from 30 per cent
It differs from region to region and provinces and territories alike, particularly in Alberta where certain areas are severely challenged with a lack of workforce in the service and hospitality industries.
Councillor Ghada Wirth asked Richards how changes have affected his office and if minds have changed towards the TFW.
“With the changes that have happened with the TFW program, a lot of it kind of started as far as a resort town and tourism wasn’t at is full capacity yet, but now that it’s hit full capacity, many of us have seen how it has affected us and everybody’s struggling. I don’t think I’ve talked to anyone in this industry that’s not challenged with finding people to work,” Wirth said.
Richards said tourism has been at full capacity for some time now and said it’s been an ongoing problem for the area.
“I don’t really think the challenges we faced when the program was being redesigned are any different than what we face now,” Richards said. “I don’t think our situation has changed in the past year as much as it continues to be a problem; that’s why I think it’s important to talk about permanent solutions.”
In 2014, visitation in Banff National Park was up 10.4 per cent to 3.6 million visitors. The hamlet of Lake Louise has had trouble serving tourism with its small population of approximately 1,200.
Richards met with Darren Reeder, executive director of the Banff Lake Louise Hotel Motel Association and said one of the biggest challenges has been the “bridging aspect” and a need to fix the provincial Immigrant Nominee Program.
Reeder has been collecting statistics for two months and discussions with the Hotel Association of Canada have been “very positive” because if life is going to be given to the idea of a Canadian seasonal lodging program there needs to be accurate data for different regions under labour pressure. Reeder says the government has lumped Banff and Lake Louise with other regions 750 to 800 kilometres away in Grande Prairie and Peace River.
New Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) applications were introduced in April, which includes a standard $1,000 fee per position requested. The TFW program started using the latest Labour Force Survey results for 2014 showing unemployment rates. The rates determine which regions are eligible to submit LMIAs for low-wage workers where the unemployment rate is six per cent or higher.
“If you look at the employment data for the month of May 2014, we were at 3.6 per cent, so to our point about getting in under the six per cent threshold, we were well within that. This year we’re at 6.2 per cent and that in no way correlates to what’s really happening in Banff Lake Louse,” Reeder said. “We are chasing people to fill jobs that go unfilled … my concern is the government looks to broad-based economic data as a basis for decisions.”
Reeder says last month, a third of the service and hospitality job market was available for employment. In total, 485 jobs were filled out of 696.
Richards says one area they are in talks with may be to bring Stoney Nakoda First Nations members to participate and fill the needs within the industry.
“It would obviously be beneficial to the industry,” Richards said. “We’ve been doing quite a bit of work towards trying to create a tourism program to work out.”
