“This is a blow to us.”

That’s from BC Restaurant and Food Services Association President Ian Tostenson on the federal government’s changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which take effect on Thursday.

The updated program will restrict workers to one-year contracts, down from the current two and, will also cap workplaces like restaurants and bars to fill 10% of their staff with imported employees, down from 20%.

Tostenson told MyPGNow.com with the province already in a dire skilled labour shortage, the new restrictions will only make it worse.

“This is really important. For every three people that retire in British Columbia we only have enough people to replace two. We are a third short at all times in terms of our across the board labour needs.”

The restaurant industry is already shy roughly 20-thousand people, with most of the vacancies centering around kitchen staff, this will further hamstring business owners.

“It’s going to put more pressure on the restaurants that are not doing well because of the pandemic but it’s also quite naive for the federal government to say go hire Canadian.”

“They (Ottawa) also say if you are in an area that is 6.1% for unemployment you can’t get a worker. It is just two simple – we are now putting together what we believe to be an alternate framework so they can recognize industries that truly show that we have a skilled worker shortage.”

He added while the food industry would like to hire more home-grown talent, the lack of applicants to culinary schools in BC compounds the problem.

“Our first preference is to hire Canadians but there are no Canadians for those jobs. When we hire a foreign worker, we go through an extensive process called an LMIA (Labour Market Impact Assessment) process, which basically shows there are no qualified Canadian workers.”

BC’s restaurant industry has brought in 3-thousand temporary foreign workers in the past three years.