The Canadian bureaucracy hinders Quebec employers and French workers

While Quebec employers need French workers for the looming tourist season, this recruitment could be compromised due to certain federal requirements.

David Cloutier operates a 43-room inn in the Charlevoix tourist region, report Radio Canada. For fifteen years, he explains that he “finds in France a competent and voluntary workforce”. This Quebec hotelier launched a recruitment campaign on Facebook this year. He received dozens of CV which he shared with other establishments in the region, which welcomes around 250 French people. They are workers who integrate easily. In two weeks, they are working, making friends and living in my community. ”

The problem is that he and the other employers in Charlevoix do not know when they will be able to welcome their future employees from France. As Radio-Canada explains:

In recent years, Ottawa has required that the biometric fingerprints of foreign workers, even temporary ones, be taken before they leave for Canada..’’

But while France is facing a third wave of Covid-19, the Paris test center remains closed. The only other center recognized by the Canadian authorities is located nearly 400 kilometers away, in Lyon.

Economic recovery compromised?

While the labor shortage remains glaring in Quebec, David Cloutier does not understand the current policy of the Canadian Department of Immigration:

Why can’t my workers give their fingerprints once they arrive in Canada ?’’

“For now, the way the system is done, their case is not even processed until they have submitted their biometric fingerprints’, he continues. These people will not come to Canada if they have to wait until July to be able to enter the country. ”

“It compromises our recovery, that’s for sure”, laments the general manager of the Hotel Association of the Quebec City region, Marjolaine de Sa, according to whom foreign workers account for 10% of the staff of hotels in her area. “ We are asking for flexibility so that fingerprints are taken on Canadian territory ”, declared the spokesperson for the Association Restauration Quebec, Martin Vézina. The latter recalls that the search for labor abroad is an expensive process and that “it is often the solution of last resort”.

Radio-Canada questioned, on March 25, the office of Canadian Minister of Immigration, Mario Mendicino, on a possible relaxation of the admission rules for temporary foreign workers. But, as of March 28, the channel’s calls remained unanswered.

Martin Gauthier

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