Alberta cancels foreign worker recruitment trip to United Arab Emirates

Minister of Immigration and Multiculturalism Muhammad Yaseen is sworn into cabinet, in Edmonton, Friday, June 9, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

The Alberta government says it has pulled the plug on a foreign worker recruitment mission in the United Arab Emirates scheduled for early next year.

Documents show the mission was part of the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program, which works to fast-track the permanent residency process for workers in sought after sectors like health care, technology and law enforcement.

The program, which is jointly run by both the provincial and federal government, is how Alberta works to manage its federally allocated economic immigrant targets each year. In 2024, it was 9,750.

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"We became aware that a potential recruitment mission to the UAE was being considered and that planning was underway by officials within the department of Immigration and Multiculturalism," Yaseen said in a statement Sunday.

"I have reviewed the mission purpose and at this time have decided not to pursue it further."

An itinerary for the three-day trip says government resources were to be used to facilitate interviews with workers and Alberta-based employers who signed up. Employers were to pay their own travel costs.

Alberta isn't unique in organizing such recruiting trips, although Yaseen's press secretary, Neil Singh, said in an email that this trip would have been the first organized by the province since 2021.

It's a practice employed by provinces including New Brunswick, Manitoba and Quebec to try and address labour shortages in key sectors.

Quebec announced last month that it was temporarily halting all international recruitment trips until at least next summer, as the government works to re-evaluate its immigration strategy and clear out the backlog of applicants to its economic migrant program.

United Arab Emirates was also the destination for a 2022 recruitment trip for Prince Edward Island government staff and trucking and health care industry representatives.

Singh said no specific industries had signed on to Alberta's trip for next year.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said increased immigration and population growth is partly responsible for issues plaguing the province, such as housing shortages and health-care capacity strains.

Yaseen said Alberta has experienced "unsustainable levels of immigration" as a result of federal policy but didn't say whether the United Arab Emirates trip was cancelled over those concerns.

Between July 2023 and July of this year, Alberta's population grew by 4.4 per cent, or about 204,000 people.

A government population report from September says about 60,000 of those new Albertans were immigrants, while 91,000 were temporary foreign workers, international students, refugees and asylum seekers.

"It is our belief that Ottawa’s priority should be on reducing the number of temporary foreign workers, international students and asylum seekers — not on reducing provincially selected economic migrants," Yaseen said.

In October, the federal government reduced immigration targets for the next three years by about 20 per cent, with much of the reduction to future permanent resident admissions.

Much of the decrease is to provincial nominee programs like the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program.

The provincial program limit was set at 120,000 per year for all provinces combined in 2025 and 2026 prior to the target reduction, which dropped the total to 55,000 in each of the next three years.

"We will continue to explore alternative options to address skilled labour shortages in key sectors of our market,” Yaseen said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 9, 2024.