BC's cheap foreign labour is a policy choice

Start with the scale. As of July 2026 Canada holds 2.8 million temporary residents, and 465,514 of them live in British Columbia.^⁠[1] That is roughly 1 person in 12 in this province, counted after two years of federal cuts to the intake.

They are not only on farms. They staff restaurants, coffee counters, care homes, warehouses, and construction sites on every main street in BC.^⁠[2]

What it does to a paycheque

The Bank of Canada measured what this does to pay. Between 2015 and 2024 the wage gap between temporary workers and Canadian-born workers more than doubled, from 9.5% to 22.6%, and the shift held everyone's wages measurably lower.^⁠[3]

Cheap labour is the product, not a side effect.

Economist Mike Moffatt told federal cabinet the low-wage stream "suppresses wage growth, increases youth unemployment, creates the conditions for the exploitation of foreign workers, and reduces productivity." His prescription was to cut the program by 80% to 90%.^⁠[4]

BC Building Trades counted more than 7,100 temporary foreign workers arriving into BC construction each year, against about 7,000 skilled-trades immigrants admitted through permanent streams over five years, and concluded that parts of the industry are "addicted to temporary foreign workers."^⁠[5] That report came from the unions, not from business.

The fast-food numbers tell the same story at the other end of the economy. Employers across Canada were approved to hire 8,333 foreign food-counter attendants and kitchen helpers in 2023. In 2018 the food-counter figure was 125.^⁠[2]

The young pay first. In August 2026 BC's unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 24 was 13.2%, twice the overall rate, with 54,500 young people looking for work.^⁠[6] The Business Council of BC counts 51,000 fewer young people working than in 2019, and youth participation at 58.5%, the lowest of any province.^⁠[7]

Eby's part in it

In September 2025 Eby said the program "should be cancelled or significantly reformed," citing youth unemployment and outright LMIA fraud in Surrey.^⁠[8] The diagnosis was right.

Seven months later his government opted BC into a federal variance that lets rural employers keep their low-wage temporary foreign workers an extra year. Ottawa estimates about 585 BC employers outside the big cities are over the 10% cap it relaxes.^⁠[9]

The program is federal, but BC licenses every TFW employer through its own registry and can refuse federal expansions; it refused the low-wage cap increase in the same breath as accepting the variance.^⁠[9] The levers exist. He pulls them in both directions and calls it reform.

Unions built the NDP to keep labour scarce enough to bargain with. A premier who deplores the program on camera and extends it on paper has chosen a side, and it is not the side of the workers his party is named for.

The test is simple. If an employer in BC finds it easier to import labour at a discount than to raise a wage, the government has failed Canadian workers, and under Eby that is still the everyday reality.