Poilievre calls for temporary foreign worker program to be scrapped

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 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 Agriculture Worker Program (SWAP) 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.

"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.

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.

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."

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 still 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.