Restaurants Canada says B.C. premier ‘missing the reality’ of temporary foreign worker program

B.C. Premier David Eby speaks during a news conference at Clayton Heights Secondary School, in Surrey, B.C., on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Restaurants Canada, a national advocacy group that represents the foodservice industry, is calling out British Columbia Premier David Eby over comments he made criticizing eateries in the province for allegedly trying to hire temporary foreign workers instead of local jobseekers.

Both Eby and federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre have suggested ending the federal program that allows employers to hire foreign nationals to fill gaps in the local labour market.

Earlier this week, the B.C. premier directed his criticism at two Vancouver-area chain restaurants – a Starbucks and a Boston Pizza outlet. Eby told the Burnaby Board of Trade that the businesses were seeking to hire franchise managers through the foreign worker program.

“I don’t believe that they can’t find a British Columbian on their to promote to manager,” Eby said in a video clip of the speech posted to his social media. “I don’t believe it.”

In a statement Wednesday, Restaurants Canada said the premier’s remarks “are missing the reality of the foodservice industry” in the province, which the organization estimates employs about 183,000 British Columbians and accounts for one in five youth jobs.

The industry group says temporary foreign workers represent just three per cent of the total foodservice workforce in Canada, and are primarily chefs and cooks with specific skills and training not found in the local labour pool.

“Tourism-heavy areas with aging populations often don’t have the youth necessary to meet the sharp rise in demand during specific periods of the year,” said Kelly Higginson, the Restaurants Canada president and CEO, in the statement.

“Additionally, 24-hour businesses, like highway comfort stations, have a hard time staffing overnight shifts and may resort to the program.”

The organization acknowledged in the statement that “there are changes to be made” to the temporary foreign worker program to ensure employers support local workers.

“But those changes should not be made without consulting the businesses they will impact and taking into account the real gaps that exist in Canada’s labour market,” Higginson said.

There were about 11,000 temporary foreign worker positions approved in B.C. in the first three months of 2025, down about 37 per cent from the same period last year, while the rest of Canada has seen a 20.5 per cent decline.

The declines came after the federal government tightened access to the program last September.

“We need confidence in our immigration system,” Eby said, referring to the hiring of foreign labour in place of domestic workers “a corrosive and problematic thing.”

“We need an immigration system that ensures that predatory employers are not able to use the temporary foreign worker program to depress wages or to deny opportunities to other workers, who insist on their rights, that have the opportunity to go somewhere else,” he added.

Last week, Eby took aim at the immigration system broadly, saying the province “can’t have an immigration system that fills up our homeless shelters and our food banks” and “results in high unemployment.”

Restaurants Canada says the foodservice industry in B.C. generates more than $20 billion in economic activity annually, representing nearly five per cent of the province’s gross domestic product.

With files from The Canadian Press