Temporary Workers in Canada: A Multifaceted Program 1

Abstract

This article highlights important developments in the character of temporary worker flows to Canada between 1973 and 1985 through the use of unpublished data and new measures for analyzing this data. The number of employment authorizations are converted to person years to indicate the overall labor market impact of temporary worker flows and this measure is employed in an analysis of unpublished data from Employment and Immigration Canada. The analysis reveals that a significant and growing proportion of employment authorizations are exempted from governmental procedures which link the admission of temporary workers to the Canadian labor market. In many cases, these exempt documents are being authorized for social and humanitarian programs (e.g., refugee claimants, in-Canada immigrant claimants). As a result, the actual “labor recruitment” component of these authorizations is considerably less than interpreted from published statistics of employment authorizations. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.