Province of Alberta Lifts Temporary Foreign Workers Restrictions

Restrictions on hiring new temporary foreign workers have been lifted by Alberta starting May 1, 2022. Pending applications that include those who applied before May 1 are all subject to this change. Preceding the ch8ange, the province of Alberta released a “refusal to process” list that includes occupations for which employers could not submit applications to the Canadian government for them to be able to hire temporary workers in Alberta.

The temporary Foreign Worker Program is operated by the Canadian government, it was with the advice of the Alberta government to refuse the TFWP applications for these occupations. According to Alberta, these occupations had labor surpluses and the government was pushing employers to hire unemployed Albertans for these occupations. Based on Statistics Canada, Alberta currently has a total of 88,000 job vacancies; and the province has justified that the loosening of the TFWP restrictions will help support the sectors of the provincial economy that are struggling with labor shortages as well as finding Canadian workers.

It was also mentioned that this will help monitor the impacts of this change and also make necessary adjustments to make sure that the TFWP continues to benefit the economy of Alberta