Hey, I'm Jan. You probably noticed I'm not in a studio right now.

And that's because, well, we're building one from the ground up with new floors, new tables, new chairs, the whole works.

And honestly, we're building more than just a studio. We're building a whole new show.

The news moves fast these days. Headlines change by the hour, and some weeks feel like years.

It's a lot, and it can be hard to keep up.

So, we want to give you a place to pause and take a breath, a place to help you make sense of what's going on.

So, every episode we'll take one topic, just one, and look at it from a few different angles.

And we're starting with immigration. Who gets to come here? Why do some people decide to leave? What's working in our system and what isn't?

Welcome to the first episode of the rundown.

More highly skilled immigrants are choosing to leave Canada and build their futures elsewhere.

What could convince people to stay in this country long term? Daniel Burnernhard, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, has some answers.

>> Daniel, welcome to our makeshift studio at the Rundown.

>> Thank you very much. Great to see you.

Now, let's talk about your new report.

Your new report identifies two factors that motivate immigrants to stay in Canada. Let's talk about the first one.

Optimism about the future sounds pretty obvious, but what's the deciding factor? Why is that?

>> Well, I think first just a quick word if we can about the importance of retention.

You know, there's a growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada.

A lot of people who think that basically every problem in Canada is just an immigration problem from, you know, housing, healthcare, etc.

Uh but no matter your view on these things, as the number of immigrants uh is reduced, as the population ages, uh it becomes even more important to retain the people who are already here and who are established and are contributing to our society.

So that's what our report uh sought to identify what triggers people to stay.

And optimism for the future is actually a really interesting one.

So many of the statistics look at how much money people are making their current condition.

What this shows is actually immigrants are uh very practical.

They understand that it takes some time to establish yourself in a new country, in a new society, and they're willing to to put in the work uh so long as there's a credible hope that that investment will pay off.

And so, it's not so much how well am I doing today, but how confident am I that my work will pay off tomorrow.

And uh and it seems like a very very powerful factor um that determines whether people stay or go.

Now, I should note it said in your in your report, 1% increase in optimism boosts the likelihood of staying by 28%. That seems pretty massive.

>> It's a huge and powerful lever.

All right, let's talk about the second factor. Sense of identity and belonging.

Of course, another one that sounds pretty straightforward. This saw an increase, a 1% increase in a sense of belonging was a 25% likelihood that they would stay.

>> Yeah. And we've always talked about Canada's welcoming disposition as though it's this like nice thing that we do.

Okay, we're welcoming. We're open.

But what this data actually uh reveals is that a welcoming disposition is now a core success strategy for Canada.

Um, you know, immigrants are leaving the country at record rates and the most coveted or prioritized immigrants, the economic highly skilled immigrants are actually leaving at much higher rates than than everybody else.

And so that friendly feeling, uh, that neighborhood barbecue, that time when your kids can play together in the parks, that's more than just a kind gesture.

That's actually now a contribution that each of us can make to ensure that this talent stays in Canada to play for our team instead of leaving uh uh to play for an opposing team in an increasingly difficult and fractious world.

>> You talk about uh economic immigrants. I'm going to throw another uh group in there, franophones.

Uh these are two categories that the government prioritizes uh but are most likely to leave Canada. How come?

>> Well, there are a number of reasons for this.

Um, the franophhone uh case is a little bit different.

The government has decided to use uh the immigration system basically as a a mechanism for trying to maintain the balance of bilingualism outside of Quebec.

Uh I'm not so sure that that's the best tool for the job, but that's what they're doing.

What people are finding is that they arrive in Manitoba, for example, uh in notionally uh bilingual communities where they can use government services in French, they can go to the movies in French.

Uh and that makes it very very difficult.

So they're leaving at you know 70% higher rates over the long term than uh than um immigrants in general.

And the highly skilled economic class immigrants um are are also leaving at at very high rates and and we're now starting to see actually they're also leaving faster.

So the contribution period is shorter.

Anyone who runs a business knows that it's uh easier, better, uh more profitable uh to retain a customer that you have instead of going out and finding a new one.

So churn is is a real problem uh for Canada and it's exactly the same when we talk about talent for the country.

All right, Daniel. So the Institute for Canadian Citizenship found in an earlier report that one in five immigrants who come to Canada leave within 25 years.

However, a third of those people don't even wait that long. they leave within the first five years.

What are your top recommendations for policy makers to keep immigrants in Canada?

>> Well, if we look at these reports um uh the the the report that we just issued uh recently, these two factors, future optimism and identity belonging.

Let's look at those. So, what does future optimism look like?

Future optimism looks like the opportunity to re-qualify in the profession that you had in your country of origin. Maybe not today, but in a reasonable period in the future.

Um, future optimism looks like my kids are well established in the school and and are learning and have friends and are happy.

Future optimism looks like my neighbors actually care about me being here and uh and I can see myself being part of this community if not immediately than then one day.

Uh, so I think there are a number of um of uh of reforms on the professional side especially that that can help to boost this optimism and identity and belonging.

This one is is in some sense actually easier.

Uh our organization operates a program called the canoe pass c.

If you're a permanent resident within your first five years, please download it uh and enjoy it.

It's entirely free. Gives you access to over 2,000 culture, nature, and sport experiences across the country.

Uh programs like Canoe help people to integrate not in a classroom sense, not in some artificial abstract sense, but just practically into everyday life.

To sit next to you at a CFL game, uh to uh to be with you and your kids and their kids at the science center, uh to travel on a train trip, for example, on via rail uh somewhere, to to explore national parks and provincial parks.

These types of experiences are actually really powerful.

And again, it's not just about being nice.

It's about making sure that that doctor, that engineer, that uh that scientist, that software developer, that cyber security expert, all these people, they're handpicked to address Canada's most pressing needs. And when they leave, the needs that they are brought here to address don't leave with them,

right? Uh so if we fail to retain uh these talented people to play for our team, it's not just the immigrants who lose having, you know, felt like they might have wasted some some some prime years of their life.

It's actually all of us Canadians that lose um with with longer weight times in hospitals, with longer weight lists in child care, uh with more costly and numerous cyber security attacks.

This is about us and our collective interest, not about compassion for immigrants, but about Canada's, you know, strategy to succeed.

You talked about sort of the the sentiment at the moment. Can you give us some hope in that conversation for a lot of people who might be saying, well, there are a lot of immigrants right now and there seems to be a lot of blame in that direction, but as you mentioned, there are some gaps that need to be filled and it is essentially what this country is been made of.

I understand people are feeling squeezed. Um, life is really expensive.

Trying to buy or rent a house or an apartment is really expensive. Food is really expensive.

And so people are in protection mode. They want to safeguard what they have.

And I think that's a natural response.

My my invitation uh to people who are worried about immigrants basically coming to eat off their plate um is to remember that Canada is hardly full.

Uh we are a big, rich, bountiful country.

And to the politicians and policy makers, we talk about building houses, but what about building cities?

uh you know and and and new industries and a new frontier like we have so much opportunity here that we can harness and um we just need to think I believe um a little bit beyond the current circumstances.

If you believe that your best days are behind you as a country then it makes sense to try and just safeguard what you have.

Um, if you have some optimism for the future, then uh it makes sense to to welcome people to help to contribute to the strength and success and growth and development and advancement of your country because they want to play on your team and make it stronger.

If you have some optimism for the future, then uh it makes sense to to welcome people to help to contribute to the strength and success and growth and development and advancement of your country because they want to play on your team and make it stronger.

>> Daniel, we're going to leave it there. Thank you so much.

>> Thank you.

Temporary foreign workers are one of the groups of immigrants most often in the headlines.

So, who qualifies for the program and how does it work? Producer Sangita Patel explains.

>> We're hearing a lot about temporary foreign workers in the news, but who are they?

A temporary worker is someone who comes to Canada for a limited period of time.

It's a broad category that includes a number of subgroups like international students and people in the country on humanitarian work visas.

But when we're talking about Canada's temporary foreign worker program, that's a specific category of workers.

TFWs are hired when an employer is unable to find a Canadian or a permanent resident to fill a job and a worker is only allowed to be employed between 1 and 3 years.

The temporary foreign worker or TFW program began in 1973 as a way to get highskilled labor into the country, but it's gone through a number of changes in the nearly 50 years since the program first began.

First in 1992, it was expanded to include live-in caregivers.

The number of TFWs grew in size until 2014 when the federal government imposed some reforms.

After those reforms, the number of TFWs decreased in the country for a period of 2 years, but began increasing again in 2017.

The other change that happened in 2014 was splitting the program into two branches, the temporary foreign worker program and the International Mobility Program or IMP.

So, what's the difference between the TFW program, which we hear a lot about, and the lesserk known IMP?

Let's start with temporary foreign workers.

Employers wanting to bring in a TFW have to fill out a labor market impact assessment application or an LMIA.

Yeah, another acronym.

And employers have to prove that they tried to find a Canadian or permanent resident to do the job.

It's a lot of work to fill in one of these forms, and it involves very specific steps to follow.

Businesses that want to bring in a TFW also have to pay about a $1,000 processing fee.

And there's currently a 10% cap on the number of TFWs you can have at a specific work location.

That changes for some industries like construction, food manufacturing, hospitals, nursing, or inhome childare.

There, the cap is 20%.

Now, let's look at the international mobility program.

The IMP has fewer rules. It doesn't require an LMIA, so you don't have to prove you can't find a Canadian or permanent resident to do a job, and it has a lower processing fee.

So, who are these workers in the IMP?

The program can include workers like intercomp transfers.

So, say that you have a marketing director in London that you want to bring in from your international office and permits for workers under international agreements like KASMA or the EU trade agreement.

So, that's the story of the TFW program.

In 2024, TFWs made up only 12% of the close to 1 6 million temporary residents admitted to Canada.

IMP workers made up 45% and international students made up 32%.

The temporary foreign worker program is facing criticism from the left and the right.

Some people think the program should be reformed.

Some think it should be cut altogether.

Does the country need it? I sat down with Muel Scooter, an economics professor at the University of Wateroo, and Elizabeth Long, an immigration lawyer and a partner at LM Law Group.

Elizabeth Miguel, nice to have you on our program. Thank you for making it to our makeshift uh studios.

The temporary foreign worker program has come under fire on all political spectrums.

For instance, Conservative leader Pierre Polyv as well as BC's NDP premier David Eie all calling it for to be scrapped as a result saying it's resulted in rather high youth unemployment.

Is this criticism justified?

>> There's absolutely no question that the growth we've seen in youth unemployment is not a consequence a cause of the temporary foreign worker program.

the the growth we've seen in in youth unemployment is a consequence of a dramatic decline in the number of job vacancies in Canada.

In the summer of 2022, we had, you may have remember the headlines, we had almost a million job vacancies in Canada.

Over the following three years, they've dropped by more than 50%.

So, we now have less than half a half a million job vacancies.

The people who are going to struggle are the people who are trying to find a job.

When there are no new jobs being created, new labor market entrance like young people and new immigrants are going to feel that the most and that's where we see the biggest increases in unemployment.

>> and remember the temporary foreign worker program probably consists of only onetenth of the total amount of work permit holders are that are here in Canada.

Most work permit holders have open work permits. you're not part of the temporary foreign worker program.

In fact, the temporary foreign worker program is the most scrutinized area for work permits.

The employers actually have to try to prove that they can't find Canadians who can do the job.

So if we're looking at just numbers, the temporary form worker program um forms such a small subset of the just even temporary form workers in Canada.

Is that we talk about how small of a percentage it is.

What is it about the program that seems to be the sort of the obvious sort of reason people are picking at it?

>> So, it's not random when it becomes controversial.

It becomes controversial when the program is growing at the same time as unemployment rates are rising.

The optics of the program don't make sense to people at the time for good reason.

So you know when you see youth unemployment and you see a dramatic growth in this program which we have seen in recent years you know the the employers do have to go through this test to show that they can't hire domestically that test has become a rubber stamp.

So if you look at the data the the approval rates were reaching over 98%.

I mean they were just rubber stamping and so the growth in recent years has just been tremendous and the optics of that are not good.

It's a small program, but it doesn't make much sense to be growing this program at a time when the unemployment rate is rising.

It's a small program, but it doesn't make much sense to be growing this program at a time when the unemployment rate is rising.

All right, Elizabeth, um I want to quote uh the premier in BC said, "We can't have an immigration program that results in high youth unemployment.

Is the increase in the number of temporary residents making it more difficult for younger Canadians to find employment?"

I hear anecdotally from people across this province who are saying, "My daughter, you know, my son is struggling to find a job.

Is there an actual correlation between the two?

>> Well, I I think we have to distinguish between the number of overall people who are in Canada who have open work permits from the temporary foreign worker program.

The temporary foreign worker program uh the government has uh worked since last year to dramatically reduce the number of people who can qualify for it.

For the most part right now, people who are able to qualify to employers are able to qualify to even apply, they have to have um salaries of high wage, which in most places are well over $30 an hour.

M so those kind of jobs aren't really the kind of jobs that compete with entrylevel jobs that youth unemployment uh seems to uh grow uh in these kind of situations.

Um so if we're just looking at the temporary foreign worker program there are a lot of issues and I I agree you know there are a lot of issues with the temporary form worker program.

agree that for a lot of parts the examination of the recruitment um may not be it's kind of artificial when you ask the employers to um recruit try to recruit Canadians when they have already identified someone in their mind.

Um, is this recruitment really um real or is it more of a sort of ritual, a sort of a recruitment requirement that is artificial?

is this recruitment really um real or is it more of a sort of ritual, a sort of a recruitment requirement that is artificial?

Can you give us an example of what that would look like in a particular job field?

>> Right. So for example, if an employer wants to apply for a labor market impact assessment, which is the basis of the temporary form worker program, um they would have to undergo very restrictive advertising.

So they would have to advertise at the job bank, they would have to advertise in at least two other uh places in in in Canada.

Um and on the advertisements they there the wording on it is very specific.

So you have to put things like what language is spoken in the workplace, what um you know what duties there are and wages etc.

And a lot of times for employers this is not the normal way that they would go about finding someone.

Um but for the most part employers who come to us if they want to go through the temporary foreign worker program we would have to ask them to readvertise otherwise their applications would be denied.

Um and so a lot of times this program creates a situation where this artificial part of it doesn't make a lot of sense.

There are better ways to get labor market benefits than forcing this artificial recruitment.

On a note that Elizabeth mentioned earlier, there is um there's a perception that temporary foreign workers hold lower paying jobs.

Uh and if the program was scrapped, Canadians might not be willing to fill those ones.

Is that a fair assumption?

So the biggest part of the growth in the program in recent years has been in jobs that require high school or less.

So that it is true that this growth has mostly been very lowkilled work.

you know, would these jobs be filled by by by young Canadians if if the program was shut down?

You know, I wouldn't think of it like that.

I It's the wrong way to think about economies work.

That jobs are just fixed things that somebody has to fill this slaughter. The whole economy starts to fall apart.

It's just not the right way to think about how economies work.

You know, tight labor markets, we talk about them like they're a problem.

They're actually very good for an economy, especially an economy that struggles with productivity like Canada does.

What a tight labor market does is it forces employers to work a lot harder to try and attract scarce workers to try and improve working conditions to try and improve productivity to invest in new technologies to get more out of the workers that you currently have.

These are all things Canada's in desperate need of.

So that's the sense in which you know the temporary foreign worker program is not a huge program but there's no single solution that's going to solve Canada's productivity problems and this is just part of that system of moving the dial in a way that's not coddling business in the way that we've been doing for many years.

Elizabeth do you want to weigh in on that?

Elizabeth do you want to weigh in on that?

>> Yeah. So the temporary foreign worker program has two subsets.

There are the uh work like seasonal agricultural work, you know, factory work, sometimes restaurants in in you know northern or less populated areas where you they just can't find workers.

They can't find bodies to do this work.

Now, this has been severely restricted recently by the federal government um for the most part of Canada.

There are some rural areas where there and some areas like construction where there are still exemptions.

The other part of it are the very highly specialized kind of work um you know certain kinds of engineers certain kind of scientists where someone the the employer just can't find those kind of skills to do the work.

Now we have a uh program called uh the global talent stream which is a subset of the LMAS that targets um STEM workers so engineers scientists and these kind of this program is unique in that it doesn't require the employer to have that sort of artificial recruitment.

That program instead says, "Well, employer, you want to hire this highly specialized worker.

We recognize that there is a shortage of these occupations, but certainly you have to pay the median wage for the occupation.

you're not going to depress any wages, but also we want you to provide a labor market benefit plan where you're going to provide three labor market benefits such as you're going to be hiring more um Canadians.

So, if you're going to hire this foreign worker, for example, you're going to hire another Canadian as well.

You're going to invest money in training Canadians um and and so on and so on.

So this program is a very interesting program to me because it cuts away from the artificiality of the recruitment and in the meantime it makes the employer if you really need this person to actually also go and promise to add labor market benefits.

Um and it's been a very popular program because it's fast as well.

Do you want to chime in on that?

>> That's hugely important.

I mean that's a big part of the problem.

This program exists as a way to recruit talent from abroad.

This is an excellent example of where this program does not need to be shut down.

This is exactly as as the US looks to shut down the H-1B program. This is the route to to h recruit people, get them on the ground running very quickly.

Um, you know, this is a very mixed program.

There are parts of it that need to be curtailed, perhaps even phased out, but this is not one of them.

If you had the ear of uh immigration minister Alina Dyap, uh if there was one change that you would like to see to the program, what would that be?

So I think the low skill streams need to fa be phased out.

See the the the cost here is that every time the unemployment rate goes up, this becomes a big issue, right?

That's not good for the Canadian immigration system.

when people start not trusting the system, um questioning immigration in general because of a program that's actually quite small, that's not working, right?

Um we got to do this differently.

We got to stop this cycle of this program becoming so contentious.

And the way to do it, I think, is there is a price that employers have to pay when they hire a temporary foreign worker.

They pay $1,000 per position through this LMIA.

That's a really interesting policy instrument that the government can use.

So they can, you know, increase the price where unemployment rates are higher.

They can increase the price where we think there are occupations that are more slack.

Um, but I think the main thing you can do is you want to ensure businesses aren't using this as kind of a business strategy.

You know, trying to get profit margins by keeping your labor costs low.

That's not where we want to go with this.

So where you see employers repeatedly year after year using this program, you can escalate the price.

So the price you pay for an OMIA gets higher and higher every year to kind of wean these businesses off.

I think over a 3 to 5 year horizon, I'd like to see the low wage streams get phased out.

Okay, Elizabeth,

>> I think there are some nuances to this because there are some jobs that irrespective of, you know, how how much you want to recruit Canadians, you're not going to have that many Canadians working in the fields.

You're not going to have that many people working in the restaurants in northern BC.

And there are some skills uh even if it's low-skilled that employers are going to need to hire um uh workers who are willing to do that.

Um I think in terms of the higher skills um there are there are amendments to the program that should be in place.

And what do those look like?

>> I think uh number one look at the global talent stream and look at what works in the global talent stream the benefits that the employers are going to bring to the economy.

Um look and don't throw away the baby with the bathwater.

You know, we have certain elements of our immigration system that is vital to the growth of our economy that's vital to our uh employers, to our companies.

Right now, we have people who have invested their lives in Canada, who have been here for years, who have been educated here for years, and we need people in Canada to be taxpayers for the future.

Um, so we have a lot of good things with our immigration system and if we don't work to keep them, then we will suffer a great loss for the future in terms of our reputation, in terms of our businesses, and in terms of our communities as well.

>> All right, we're going to leave it there. Muel Elizabeth, thank you so much. Really appreciate the conversation.

>> Thank you.

And that's it for us here at the Rundown.

Our studio is under construction and so is our show.

We want you to help us build it.

The show, not the studio.

So send us your feedback and ideas.

Email us at rundown at tvbo.org.

See you tomorrow.

Tomorrow on the rundown. I acknowledge that there is a lot of you know um tension and um just uncertainty about how to manage these situations.

Uh but I think the key one is empathy.

How is my expression going to be received by the other person?

And if another person were to say something that I completely disagree with, how should I how will I receive that?

Um, and I think that that is one of the key messages that all employers should be putting out there is, you know, have more empathy in the way that you express yourself because however you may be hurting other people, you may also be subject to that.

And when when if we don't do that, the problem is that situations will escalate.

And you know, may that never happen, then you know, we have violence in the workplace.

One of the key things that we tell all our employers, our our clients is that um they have an obligation to have a respectful work environment.

That is an actual legal obligation.

And so if employers cannot guarantee that, you know, employees can have uh a good resource to go against their businesses.

>> Join us tomorrow on the rundown.