Carney says foreign workers program must be temporary, aimed at high skills

OTTAWA—Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney says the controversial temporary foreign workers program should not be used to drive wages down or to fill lower-skilled jobs.

Speaking to the Commons finance committee for the last time before his departure for London in June, Carney said the intent of the program is that it be used primarily to fill needs for high-skilled jobs temporarily, until businesses can train Canadians to take over.

In a two-hour appearance, Carney used the occasion to touch on a number of politically sensitive subjects, including the government’s move to increase tariffs on imports from 72 countries, the labour market, the Canada-U.S. price gap and the contentious foreign workers program.

The latter issue became a hot potato for the government after news broke that an outsourcing company doing work for the Royal Bank had brought in foreign workers to do work that had previously been done by about 45 Canadians.

RBC chief executive Gordon Nixon later apologized and the government pledged to reform the program to ensure foreigners are not brought into the country for jobs already held by Canadians.

The challenge of a skills shortage is not unique to Canada, Carney said, but the solution is training not bringing in temporary foreign workers.

Contrary to some views, he added, Canada’s labour market is among the most flexible in terms of mobility among industrialized countries.

“There are some signs of skills miss-matches (but) we do believe employers play an important role to ensure life-long skills development is a part of the nature of business in Canada,” he told the MPs.

He added that the program should concentrate on shortages of high-skilled workers, and not on service jobs and other lower-wage categories that critics say are now being filled by foreign imports.

The solution to that, said Carney, is for employers to pay higher wages and improve productivity.

“One doesn’t want an over-reliance on temporary foreign workers for lower-skilled jobs, which prevent the wage adjustment mechanism for … making sure Canadians are paid higher wages, but also that the firms improve their productivity,” he explained.

Carney said he believes the current Conservative government review is intended to address those objectives.

In other testimony, the central banker said it is quite likely that interest rates will remain at current historically low levels for some time.

He said the bank policy-making team considers three factors in its decisions about interest rates—unused capacity in the economy, inflation pressures and household debt and finances—and all currently point to the trendsetting policy rate remaining at the current one per cent.

Throughout the hearing, committee members from different stripes attempted to draw in the governor into supporting their ideological views, and with some success.

Carney noted on one occasion that his only advice to his successor might be not to answer a “loaded” question.

On one issue—the budget decision to lift preferential tariff treatment on 72 countries, including China—Carney conceded to the opposition MPs that in general terms, one objective for such a policy is to increase government revenues.

Ottawa has estimated the higher tariffs on more than 1,000 consumer goods will bring in $350-million a year.

But he also sided with government members that another policy objective could be to help Canadian manufacturers compete with imports.

The question, posed by NDP MPs, was intended to solicit the response that the higher duties would exacerbate the price differential between U.S. and Canada.

But Carney said according to the bank’s own research, that gap has actually closed from the high teens to about eight per cent in the past two years, in part due to higher competition in Canada’s retail sector and also to the fact retailers needed to lower prices to discourage cross-border shoppers.

The meeting had its lighter moments.

Senior deputy governor Tiff Macklem, the prohibitive favourite to replace Carney, was asked directly if he was interested in the job.

“If asked I will serve,” he said to smiles from the MPs, but would not elaborate further.

The meeting ended with committee chairman James Rajotte handing Carney a parting gift of what appeared to be a poster from his favourite team—the Edmonton Oilers—to take to London with him.