TORONTO –

As hotel and restaurant owners increasingly turn to temporary foreign workers to fill labor gaps, there are growing calls to give those workers more paths to permanent residency.

“If there are particular occupations where there’s a real need and we’ve become dependent on temporary foreign workers… we should include them in a permanent system,” said Naomi Alboim, a senior policy fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the labor picture for the accommodation and food service industry, the use of temporary foreign workers in the sector has been increasing for years. According to Statistics