In the shadow of Canada’s soaring unemployment, Canadian employers seem to be an even more rhetorically despicable cadre as of late, on par with tone-deaf College and University Presidents and Government. The narrative surrounding Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs), international student caps, and the overall labour market has become increasingly volatile, primarily due to economic and market forces in recent years, including increased unemployment, manufacturing job losses, and high debt. This has led to Canada’s highest unemployment rate (excluding covid) in many years, with close to 30,000 manufacturing jobs lost, many public sector job cuts, and in Ontario, nearly 10,000 education jobs cut, resulting in the highest application rate for unemployment year-over-year. In fact, across 2025, Employment Insurance (EI) activity in Canada has trended upward with millions of EI applications and 13.2% increase year-over-year.
Emboldened by economic chaos, from skyrocketing debt to labor market turmoil, these corporate titans now openly declare that ditching Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) would cripple their empires. Take the story from Quebec A&W franchisees for example, who suggest that their stores will close without hiring TFWs, claiming a lack of local workers to fill roles. What is even more blatant, they admit their wages are low, leading to Canadians finding higher-paid work. Or what about Tim Hortons, lobbying Ottawa for fast-tracked TFW renewals amid “persistent shortages”, all while boasting that 95% of their staff is “hired locally.” But peel back the PR spin: “Locally” is code for foreigners already parked here on visas, not homegrown Canadians. It’s a slick semantic dodge to mask their plot to swap out citizens for cheaper imports.
Why would they want to do this? In this blog, I will describe the lies that are being perpetrated by employers regarding the “need” for TFWs and what their true intentions are – SPOILER ALERT! Its Greed.
Lie #1: Canadians Won’t do the Work
This claim deliberately confuses refusal with dignity. Canadians will do difficult, unpleasant, or physically demanding work. What they will not do, nor should they be expected to do, is accept conditions that amount to second-class citizenship within their own labour market. The issue is not the work itself; it is the terms under which the work is offered.
Employers invoking this claim routinely offer:
- Wages that do not match cost-of-living realities
- Irregular or excessive hours
- Minimal job security
- Unsafe or degrading working conditions
- Little to no opportunity for advancement
When Canadians decline such positions, employers label them “unwilling,” rather than confronting the obvious truth: the job is designed to be unattractive to workers with alternatives. TFWs, by contrast, are structurally denied those alternatives. Their legal status is often tied directly to their employer, meaning that leaving a job can result in loss of income, deportation, or both, as confirmed by a Carleton News and a House of Commons report [1] [2]. What employers describe as a “labour shortage” is in fact a shortage of workers willing to be exploited without recourse.
To say “Canadians won’t do the work” is therefore not an observation; it is an accusation. It reframes workers’ insistence on fair treatment as moral failure, while absolving employers of their obligation to offer humane and competitive employment conditions.
Lie #2: There Is No General Benefit to Hiring Temporary Foreign Workers
This claim is more subtle, but no less dishonest. Employers often argue that hiring TFWs provides no inherent financial advantage because wages may be similar on paper. This is a deliberate misdirection. The benefit is not found solely in hourly pay, it is found in precarity.
Employers benefit from TFW programs in several interconnected ways:
- Reduced bargaining power: TFWs are far less able to refuse overtime, demand raises, or report abuses.
- Lower training investment: High turnover among Canadian workers, caused by poor conditions, becomes an excuse to avoid long-term training altogether.
- Suppressed benefit costs: Employers are less likely to provide extended benefits, advancement pathways, or long-term incentives when workers are temporary by design.
- Implicit coercion: The ever-present threat of job loss doubling as loss of immigration status creates compliance without the need for overt force.
The savings do not always appear as a neat line item on a balance sheet. They appear as avoided costs: fewer benefits paid, fewer accommodations made, fewer disputes raised, fewer rights exercised.
To claim that this does not constitute a “general benefit” is specious. The benefit lies precisely in what employers can avoid providing, and in the asymmetry of power that TFWs are structurally forced to accept.
Lie #3: We Pay Market Wages
The phrase market wages are presented as if it were a natural fact, like a certain round number is considered a “market wage”, that is not the case. In reality, wages emerge from institutional arrangements, not neutral forces. Labour markets are not symmetrical arenas where free agents meet on equal footing.
When employers claim they pay market wages, they typically mean:
- Wages sufficient to attract workers who have limited alternatives.
- Wages calibrated to the lowest level at which labour can be reliably secured, not fairly compensated.
In sectors reliant on TFWs, students, or probationary workers, the “market” is artificially distorted. Workers cannot credibly threaten to leave, organize, or demand improvements without risking income or legal status. What is called a market wage is therefore a price set under constraint, rather than through competition.
This introduces the very real and researched analysis of TFWs and low-wage work being considered “slave labour” in Canada, as provided by Amnesty International.
Lie #4: If We Raised Wages, Prices Would Skyrocket
This claim relies on a simplistic pass-through model of inflation that employers themselves rarely apply to other costs. Capital expenditures, executive compensation, shareholder returns, and marketing budgets regularly increase without being framed as inflationary threats. In reality, wages are only one component of pricing, and in many low-wage sectors they constitute a relatively modest share of total costs. Empirical research consistently shows that moderate wage increases lead to small, often negligible price effects, particularly when spread across a large customer base [1] [2].
The deeper issue is not feasibility but distribution. Raising wages requires reallocating value away from margins, growth targets, or investor expectations. Employers frame this as an economic impossibility rather than a political choice. Thus, the “prices will skyrocket” argument functions less as analysis and more as a disciplinary warning: demands for better pay are portrayed as antisocial, even when the same firms absorb far larger cost increases elsewhere without complaint.
Lie #5: Young People Just Don’t Want to Work Anymore
This narrative reframes a structural crisis as a generational moral failing. Young workers are not rejecting work per se; they are rejecting an employment model that offers permanent insecurity without a pathway forward.
According to the OECD and Stats Canada, compared to previous generations, younger workers face:
- Higher housing costs relative to income
- Greater student debt
- Fewer pensions and benefits
- More precarious contracts and scheduling
Under these conditions, the promise that “hard work pays off” rings hollow. Refusal to accept low-quality work is not laziness – it is a rational assessment of diminishing returns.
Lie #6: TFWs are Treated the Same as Canadian Workers
Refer back to lie #2 with this one. On paper, TFWs may be entitled to similar wages and protections. In practice, their legal status transforms the employment relationship entirely. A worker whose right to remain in the country depends on their employer does not possess genuine freedom of exit.
This asymmetry produces predictable outcomes:
- TFWs are less likely to report abuse or unsafe conditions
- They are more likely to accept unpaid overtime or schedule changes
- They are less able to organize collectively [1] [2]
The result is not overt coercion but structural compliance. Employers benefit from a workforce that appears voluntary while operating under an implicit threat.
Lie #7: Automation Leaves us no Choice
Automation is presented as an external force: inevitable, neutral, and unavoidable. Yet employers exercise discretion over how and why technology is deployed.
Automation is often introduced:
- To weaken labour’s bargaining position
- To justify layoffs without reinvestment
- To increase surveillance and productivity pressure
Meanwhile, technologies that would reduce physical strain, improve safety, or enhance worker autonomy are frequently delayed or rejected due to cost. This selective adoption reveals that automation is not simply about efficiency; it is about control. The threat of replacement becomes a bargaining tool, disciplining labour even when automation is incomplete or impractical.
Lie #8: Workers Should Be Grateful to Have a Job
This claim reverses the logic of a functioning labour market. Employment is an exchange: labour for wages. Gratitude is appropriate when something is given freely; work is not a gift. To demand gratitude is to reframe employment as benevolence rather than a transaction.
This rhetoric serves a clear purpose. By invoking gratitude, employers:
- Moralize compliance
- Depoliticize working conditions
- Frame dissent as ingratitude or disloyalty
In doing so, they obscure the reality that workers generate value, and that without labour, capital is inert.
***
The widespread use of TFWs is not about filling unavoidable gaps in the labour market. It is about disciplining labour as a whole. By normalizing a workforce that is legally constrained, socially isolated, and economically vulnerable, employers:
- Place downward pressure on wages across sectors
- Undermine collective bargaining and labour standards
- Recast exploitation as efficiency
- Frame resistance as entitlement
This harms not only Canadian workers but TFWs themselves, who are instrumentalized as a disposable labour class while being rhetorically praised for their “work ethic.”
The Temporary Foreign Worker system, as it is currently defended and deployed, is not a neutral response to labour shortages. It is a mechanism for maintaining low wages, weak protections, and asymmetrical power relations, while blaming citizens for refusing to accept indignity as a condition of employment.
Canadians are not unwilling to work; they are unwilling to be coerced, and employers benefit enormously from a system that ensures someone else always will be.
carsonbabich.com 