“Just hire domestically.”
It’s the standard retort to anyone suggesting recent federal immigration shifts are placing unprecedented strain on workers and employers alike. At the Brampton Board of Trade (BBOT), our members tell us clearly that the local labour pool needed to meet operational demands simply isn’t there. Yet skeptics like Mike Moffatt and Cara Stern feel that labour shortages are overstated. Who has it right?
With youth unemployment sitting at 13.4%—more than double the national rate of 6.6%—Moffatt and Stern argue that expanding the low-wage Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program and increasing international student work hours flooded entry-level sectors. In their view, this allowed businesses to sidestep basic capitalist principles and keep wages suppressed.
While instances of program misuse certainly exist, blunt immigration policies actively worsen structural labour shortages in specialized fields. These are essential industries where raising entry wages cannot magically produce a certified professional overnight or replace the 700,000 skilled tradespeople retiring across Canada.
Current policy treats every sector with the same broad brush. By relying on sweeping Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) statistics (like lumping Brampton into the broader Toronto CMA), federal rules allow a slowdown in retail to dictate terms for critical supply chain dependent industries.
In Brampton, a general 6% unemployment rate doesn’t tell the full story. High unemployment service-sector blocks like retail mask the practically 0% unemployment rate in manufacturing and logistics sectors that struggle to fill technical roles. By relying on the larger CMAs, the policy assumes that a worker can easily commute from one municipality to another, but with worsening congestion and affordability, that expectation simply isn’t reasonable. These rigid regional metrics create chaos for small businesses, in particular, and trap temporary workers in legal limbo.
Intended to ease urban population pressures, this exclusion feels like a sudden door slammed in the face of workers who are already deeply rooted and contributing locally. Instead of rewarding economic integration, it displaces skilled individuals based on arbitrary statistical borders, forcing essential talent out of mid-sized economic engines like Brampton and into rural areas with far fewer job prospects.
I don’t inherently object to the way the federal government has re-prioritized immigration. Their focus shifts from low-wage to high-wage “top talent” in fields like healthcare, STEM, trades, education, or French proficiency. These are necessary focus areas. What is deeply destructive, however, is the complete lack of grandfathering protections for current PR hopefuls who built their lives around Canada’s original promises.
By pivoting aggressively toward hyper-targeted selection, the federal government has moved the goalposts mid-game, leaving thousands of capable, integrated workers stranded. In 2023, category-eligible candidates (those in aforementioned priority fields) represented 63.5% of Express Entry invitations; by 2025, that funnel expanded to 87.0%. Express Entry is an online system Canada uses to manage immigration applications from skilled workers. That leaves a microscopic 13% window for general applicants. For an integrated technician keeping Brampton’s logistics hub operational, the chance of securing PR through general merit has virtually vanished.
This bottleneck is compounded by a widening language-points gap. Express Entry invitations for French proficiency surged from 17.8% in 2023 to 49.2% in 2025—nearly half of all economic invitations. The Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) is a 1,200 points-based system Canada uses to rank profiles in the Express Entry pool. French language draws often have much lower CRS cut-off scores (an all time low of 336) compared to general draws which often exceed 500. This disparity leaves non-French skilled workers frantically chasing points just to remain viable. When Ontario’s skilled trades stream paused, I spoke with local CNC machinists who were left with the impossible choice having to downshift into retail, scramble to learn fluent French, or search for LMIAs that are now virtually unobtainable in Brampton.
Which Workers are Worse Off?
Consequently, many tax-paying, integrated workers in Brampton find themselves far worse off today than when they arrived. This is not a recipe for a healthy society. The following is not an exhaustive list of affected workers:
- Logistics & Operations: Essential local roles like warehouse supervisors, supply chain coordinators, dispatchers, and inventory handlers are excluded from targeted “Transport” draws, which strictly cover niche occupations like commercial pilots. Essential logistics personnel are pushed into the hyper-competitive general pool.
- Corporate & Professional: HR specialists, marketing coordinators, analysts, and accountants who previously qualified via CEC draws with CRS scores in the mid-400s are now blocked by cutoffs exceeding 500.
- Infrastructure Support: Technical and administrative staff who manage critical back-office operations do not fit the narrow “construction trades” category, leaving them without a viable pathway despite being vital to housing and growth goals.
- Food Processing: Retail store managers and food service supervisors no longer fit priority categories are deprioritized without native-level French. They are also barred from rural initiatives due to their Brampton postal code.
Canada is a Leaky Bucket
Ironically, while Ottawa focuses heavily on recruiting elite global talent, Canada consistently fails to retain it. According to Royal Bank of Canada estimates, systemic underutilization and underemployment of foreign credentials drain $50 billion annually from our national GDP. Rigid credential recognition barriers leave 26% of college-educated, foreign-born workers overqualified for their roles. This is a crisis most visible in healthcare, where only 41% of internationally trained doctors and 37% of foreign-trained nurses are licensed to practice.
This mismatch drives massive attrition. Within 25 years, 35% of foreign-born senior managers and 25% of foreign-trained healthcare and scientific researchers leave Canada entirely. Without fixing credential recognition, the very talent we strain to attract will keep moving on to better opportunities elsewhere.
Brampton Board of Trade Action Plan
The Brampton Board of Trade calls for four key policy fixes:
- Grandfathering Protections: Extend the following grandfathering policies:
- Temporary residents who entered Canada on or before a determined date under active study or work permits shall have their eligibility for economic Permanent Residence (PR) pathways evaluated against the core criteria enforced at their time of entry, provided continuous legal status has been maintained.
- Temporary residents whose status is expiring may qualify for a Bridging Open Work Permit (BOWP) or interim work extension if they demonstrate compliance with either of the following criteria:
- Entry into the Express Entry pool before a specified date and a minimum CRS threshold or an active Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) profile; or
- Active continuous full-time employment within designated priority sectors (e.g., healthcare, skilled trades, construction, agriculture, STEM).
- Targeted Sectoral Metrics: Replace the blunt 6% CMA unemployment threshold with granular, NOC-specific, sub-regional vacancy data.
- Work permit extensions under this framework shall require an automated Labour Market Alignment Check.
- Extensions in non-priority, low-wage sectors will carry a structured 18-month hard limit to allow businesses time for workforce transition, after which standard LMIA caps and regional unemployment triggers will strictly apply.
- Multi-Year Permit Extensions: Extend LMIA-backed permit durations for portable or sector-essential roles to clear administrative backlogs and restore hiring predictability. Tie multi-year permits to designated essential sectors (e.g., healthcare, construction, agriculture).
- Mandatory Pre-Departure Integration: Provide incoming workers with comprehensive, native-language guidance on employment rights, credentialing pathways, and cultural orientation before arrival, funded via a modest surcharge on LMIA applications.
And most importantly, all of the aforementioned policy fixes should be informed by industry engagement.
Immigration is a soup of administrative complexity. Brampton’s economic vitality depends on immigration policies that deliver certainty, honour basic fairness for workers, and reflect the real-world operational needs of local industry. Aligning national policy with ground-level economics is the only way to ensure Brampton businesses can retain the talent required to compete globally.
If you’ve been affected by immigration policy changes, email me at vsingh@bramptonbot.com.