Starting in late September, the federal government will no longer process employers’ applications for new Labour Market Impact Assessments—a key pre-hiring step—in regions where the unemployment rate is six per cent or higher. Firms will only be allowed to hire up to  10 per cent of their workforce via the program. (The Logic)

Talking point: The unemployment-based restrictions won’t apply to businesses in agriculture, construction, food processing or health care. The Liberal government expanded employers’ ability to bring in temporary foreign workers in early 2022, citing private-sector complaints about labour shortages. “That’s what the business community was asking for,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters Monday. Today, it’s reversing those changes and tightening access to the program because the “reliance on low-cost foreign labour” is “not fair to Canadians struggling to find a good job.” A recent poll also found that a large majority of the public blames population growth for affordability issues.