Standing Committee on Public Accounts

Comité permanent des comptes publics

For immediate release

Ottawa, June 20, 2022 -

In a 2021 report, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada (OAG) found that Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) did not address longstanding concerns about worker accommodations and did little to meet the commitments to improve living conditions for agricultural temporary foreign workers.

The OAG report focused on the amended Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations and the department’s inspections, which were meant to verify whether employers followed the new COVID-19 regulatory requirements that came into force in April 2020. It also examined whether Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada verified that the recipients it funded under two of its COVID-19 support programs met program terms and conditions.

ESDC’s inspections for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program gave little assurance regarding the health and safety of Canada’s agricultural temporary foreign workers during the 2020 and 2021 agricultural seasons. This meant that Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada could not rely on these inspections to identify employers who had received funding but were not complying with the programs’ terms and conditions.

A report by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts, which was presented today by Committee Chair John Williamson, made four recommendations to ensure that ESDC follows the OAG’s recommendations and reports to the Committee with evidence of progress made.