Temporary Worker Program Participants, Canada

Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) was designed to allow companies to bring in a limited number of temporary workers to Canada to fill labour shortages.

The program has been criticized by the United Nations:

Canada’s foreign worker program a ‘breeding ground for contemporary slavery,’ says UN report

Below is a map based on TFWP data released by the Canadian Federal Government. The data show companies’ approvals for temporary foreign workers (TFWs). The data does NOT show whether a given position has been filled, only that the organization in question has received permission to hire a TFW rather than a Canadian for the job.

The TFWP is divided into different streams:

• Global Talent Stream - Seeks to hire talented workers (like software developers)
• High Wage Stream - These are not a high wage, but TFW who will make the median provincial salary or more.
• Low Wage Stream - Workers who will make below the median wage.
• Permanent Resident Only
• Primary Agriculture - This stream mainly requires workers for harvesting and other related seasonal activities.

You can see the median Canadian salary for each province here.

The sum of TFWP Permissions by company across Canada (2019 Q1 to 2024 Q1)

Note: The following map shows the sum of all company approvals between 2019 Q1 to 2024 Q1. These permissions to hire are not the same as hiring someone. I recommend that you treat this map as a measure of Canadian companies’ desired use of the program.

In particular, programs like the Primary Agriculture Stream likely hire people on a seasonal basis, and then the workers return to their home country. For the other programs, it is unclear whether TFWs stay in the country and how long they are employed. This map represents a useful indicator of the maximum number of TFWs in the country for these other streams.

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