Restaurant industry responds to Alberta's temporary foreign worker reprieve

The federal government announced a plan that will allow some temporary foreign workers to stay in Canada for an extra year. 

Many of the workers had been facing an April 1 deadline to return home, but the change allows them to complete their applications for permanent residency.

Alberta's restaurant industry is a big employer of temporary foreign workers. Mark von Schellwitz, with Restaurants Canada, spoke with the Calgary Eyeopener's David Gray this morning.

What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation.

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David Gray (DG): What do you make of the one-year extension?

Mark von Schellwitz (MVS): Certainly it's very good news for these TFWs who have applied for permanent residency.

They've worked in Alberta communities, and set up roots in Alberta communities for years now already. It would be very unfair for them to have their applications cut short by an artificial deadline because their work permits expired.

DG: We're in February already. It kind of comes at the 11th hour, doesn't it? How many have made other plans you have to wonder.

MVS: Better late than never, and our members certainly appreciate that because in many cases these are key employees in their businesses and they would have been left scrambling as of April 1.

DG: How much do Alberta restaurants rely on temporary foreign workers to fill jobs?

MVS: It's important to note that not all Canadians — and we're doing everything possible to find Canadians — are cut out for the restaurant industry.

It's a pretty fast-paced, high-pressure industry that doesn't suit everybody.

DG: The TFW program went through a major overhaul last June that made it a lot harder for your members to hire and keep foreign workers.

How have things been going for your members since then?

MVS: Certainly it's been a struggle for many of them. I've certainly heard frustration from members — a simple little clerical error on an application and they're out a $1,000 where it's automatically rejected.

Where there is some need, there still are some abilities to get TFWs. But look, we're doing everything we can to hire Canadians first.

In fact we're working on a pilot project in Edmonton right now. It's been going since last March. We're hiring underrepresented Canadians to work in restaurant businesses there.

It's really demonstrating the challenges and the successes of hiring these underrepresented groups.

DG: The counter argument has always been, that restaurants could simply fill jobs by offering more money. Have you encouraged your business members to do that?

MVS: Well, certainly. I think they have done that.

But the bottom line is that you're talking about a highly-competitive industry where customers demand value. And if you raise your prices too high, you lose customers and ultimately go out of business.

So there are obviously competitive pressures there which do limit how much you can offer.

And there's certainly no way our industry and the margins that we have can ever compete with the resource industries and the compensation that they offer.

And I think it's also unfair to anticipate that people who are making good incomes in the oil patch are suddenly going to go work in a quick service restaurant — that's just not realistic.

DG: Or looking at the year ahead on that point, will the need for temporary foreign workers cool as the oil prices drop?

MVS: There may very well be a drop, but these are not usually the same employees. We shall see. If the economy cools down considerably, I think it will also reduce the demand for foreign workers.