Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party colleagues will have to contend with shifting political sands when the House of Commons reconvenes Sept. 16.  

In a surprise move, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh “ripped up” his party’s supply-and-confidence deal with the Liberal government on Sept. 4. The accord signed in March 2022 was due to expire in June 2025 and had the NDP pledge not to bring down the Liberal minority government in exchange for implementing some of the NDP’s priorities, such as increased dental care and pharmacare. 

Whether the NDP arms the Liberals with the votes to pass items on its legislative agenda will now be decided on an “issue-by-issue basis.” 

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While declaring that his maneuver “means that election timing has become more uncertain (and) more likely,” time will tell if NDP parliamentarians will join forces with their Conservative and Bloc Québécois colleagues to move for a vote of non-confidence and thus trigger a snap election. 

Beyond the drama unfolding about the timing of an election, there remains a country to run with plenty of items on the government’s plate. The state of Canada’s immigration system is poised to be perhaps the central issue of contention as the fall session commences on Parliament Hill. 

Canadians have long been supporters of immigration but that support has taken a beating in recent years. Leger unveiled a poll on Aug. 30  indicating that 65 per cent of Canadians believe the current immigration targets — 500,000 newcomers in each of 2025 and 2026 — are too high. Seventy-eight per cent believed the current immigration rates are contributing to the housing crisis and 76 per cent say newcomers are putting stress on the health-care system.

The Liberals have already begun a response. In late August, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages Randy Boissonnault announced the government was moving to introduce new restrictions to the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program, one of the key planks in bringing newcomers to Canada. Employers will only be authorized to hire 10 per cent of their total workforce through the TFW Program. Exceptions are being granted for seasonal and non-seasonal jobs in the construction, health care and food security segments of the economy.

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In addition, the duration of TFWs hired through the low-wage stream is being stripped from two years down to one. The federal government will also refuse to approve Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIAs) in the low-wage stream, except for seasonal and non-seasonal jobs. 

It is not yet known if the tightening of the system will translate into a crackdown on labour exploitation.

Tomoya Obokata, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, investigated TFW conditions last autumn and found the system “institutionalizes asymmetries of power that favour employers and prevent workers from exercising their rights.”

Julia Drydk, executive director of the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, concurred that the reality of TFWs needing to remain tethered to a single employer to avoid the risk of deportation is “inherently problematic.” 

“What it does is making leaving an employer who is abusive nearly impossible for many Temporary Foreign Workers, especially those who might not be proficient in English or French or who have issues navigating the social services system in Canada,” said Drydk. “Labour market mobility is something that every other Canadian enjoys. We know if we are treated badly by an employer, we can move to a different one. Structurally or legally, we know that this is not how the TFW Program operates.”

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Earlier this year, Canada’s National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking (2019-2024) reached the end of its operational mandate. In the renewed plan, expected to be unveiled in 2025, Drydk would like to see more open work permits offered for TFWs as she deems it “instrumental to get at the root causes of how prevalent labour trafficking is in Canada.

Tsering Lhamo, the co-executive director of the FCJ Refugee Centre in Toronto, told The Catholic Register that protections her organization would like to see implemented is creating “more safe avenues for reporting incidents.” She would also like to see the federal government “consult victims of trafficking and exploitation” and support organizations in crafting a renewed combat strategy.