Alberta cracks down on TFW abuse as youth unemployment climbs
Guest host Sheila Gunn Reid looks at the Alberta government's effort to tighten regulations surrounding the controversial Temporary Foreign Worker Program and lower the province's youth unemployment rate.
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Guest host: Sheila Gunn Reid
While Ezra Levant is away, I’m guest hosting and today we’re digging into a major shift in Alberta that every other province is now on notice about.
Alberta is stepping in to rein in abuse of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program through Bill 26, and the timing couldn’t be more telling.
Youth unemployment in Alberta is sitting around 14%, after climbing as high as 17% last year. Students trying to find summer work are facing even steeper odds. Meanwhile, overall unemployment in cities like Calgary and Edmonton sits in the mid-single digits.
The jobs are there. Young people just aren’t getting them.
Bill 26 gives Alberta the authority to licence and audit employers hiring temporary foreign workers, verify whether they actually tried to hire Canadians, and flag or penalize misuse of federal labour permits.
In sectors like food service and retail, where the program has become routine, that oversight is long overdue.
The federal government doesn’t even track how many temporary foreign workers are working in some of these industries. Alberta is stepping in anyway.
Other provinces could do the same. They haven’t — Alberta has — and that raises a bigger question about who the labour market is really working for.
GUEST: Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides joins the show to talk about Bill 25 — Alberta’s new law on political neutrality in classrooms, including banning activist displays and refocusing schools on academics.
COMMENTS
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Anthony Salotti commented 2026-04-03 07:29:04 -0400That’s great ! .We have to do this in Ontario too. -
Bruce Atchison commented 2026-04-02 23:24:55 -0400I’m glad Alberta has the best, and most beautiful, premiere in the land. And she’s smart too. The only mind virus she has is net zero. She also needs to fire those advisors with dome syndrome. They’re giving her bad advice. Maybe she could suspend the tax on gasoline and diesel too.
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Paul Scofield commented 2026-04-02 22:31:19 -0400Maybe it is a Canadian English pronunciation thing: like with “resource,” “sorry,” “project” and the final letter of the alphabet “Z.” :-)
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Matt Abrahams commented 2026-04-02 22:00:38 -0400Why is it nobody at your organization can pronounce the word “scrutiny” properly?
