Yellowknife business owners fed up with proving labour shortage each time they want to hire a foreign worker

Members of Yellowknife's business community are urging the government to stop asking them to prove the city's labour shortage each time they apply to hire a foreign worker. 

They say it's well known that Yellowknife needs more workers and the step that has employers confirm the gap —- a labour market impact assessment (LMIA) — is redundant and slowing down an already cumbersome process. 

The LMIA is meant to prove that no Canadian is available to do the job, but Yukon and some provinces in Atlantic Canada have been granted LMIA exemptions in hiring workers from abroad and the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce says the Northwest Territories should be granted the same. 

Mark Henry is the co-owner of the Copperhouse restaurant in Yellowknife. 

"It's a bit of a silly exercise," he said. 

When he started his business, Henry said they always planned to lean on foreign workers as a resource to address labour shortages. 

He said since the process is so lengthy, the restaurant has developed a sort of pipeline philosophy to ensure they've recruited and processed individuals who are available to come when a position opens.

The entire process — from posting a job ad, completing an LMIA, and bringing over an employee from abroad — can take up to a year, Henry said, adding that the LMIA alone can take between six and eight months. 

"Your labour reality on day one when you were proving [that there's no local labour available] is completely different than it was on month 12," Henry said. 

Henry is part of a subcommittee with the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce lobbying to get an LMIA exemption. 

Melissa Syer, executive director of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce, says hiring foreign workers is essential to staffing Yellowknife businesses and the territory should press the federal government to streamline the hiring process. 

"Employers would love to hire someone local from Yellowknife or someone within the N.W.T., and certainly a Canadian willing to relocate to our beautiful city, but they're just not there," she said. "So we've identified immigration as one area where we can help address labour shortages."

'So frustrating'

Petter Jacobsen has been through the process of obtaining his work visa many times and he says it's taking longer now than in the past. 

Originally from Norway, Jacobsen has lived in Yellowknife for 12 years. 

In the past, he says, the process has taken two to three months, but after waiting 11 months — five of them succeeding the expiry of his visa — Jacobsen says it was like sending his application into a black hole. 

"It just becomes so frustrating," he said. 

Despite sending his application six months before his visa expired, the five months between its expiration and his renewal left him without a valid drivers licence and health card, though since Jacobsen received implied status — sometimes offered to foreign nationals while applications are processing — the delay did not impact his work.  

After reading similar stories, Jacobsen said he knew his experience was not a one-off. He says a dysfunctional system is hurting a jurisdiction with a shrinking population. 

"If Northern Canada wants people to come and work here, you've got to have a system that works," he said.  

The territory's department of education, culture and employment (ECE) has been meeting with the chamber's subcommittee on the issue.

Melissa Bannister, a spokesperson for ECE, said that the department takes "every opportunity" to advocate for "flexibilities" in federal immigration programs, but that it hasn't advocated for LMIA-exempt work permits since that would allow work permits to be issued to foreign nationals without consideration for locals. 

Instead, Bannister says the department facilitates programs like the nominee program where ECE supports employers in hiring employees from abroad who are waiting to become permanent residents. 

The nominee program allows employers to bypass submitting an LMIA by instead proving they first advertised the job to local and national prospective employees.

Bannister said that while ECE has not advocated for an LMIA exemption, it may in the future. 

Ahead of the territorial election this fall, Syer said the chamber will be putting forward its platform at the end of the summer with issues it thinks candidates should consider. 

"Immigration will be chief among them," she said.