A Burger King restaurant in Mississauga advertised a restaurant-manager position at $48,000 a year in September 2024 while also seeking permission to hire through Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program. The listing became a case study in a wider debate: whether an employer truly faces a labour shortage or is offering too little to attract a local worker.
What the listing showed
The position appeared on the federal Job Bank on September 25. Its schedule could include days, evenings, nights, weekends and overtime, and the annual salary worked out to slightly less than $25 an hour. A notice on the listing said the employer had applied for a Labour Market Impact Assessment, commonly called an LMIA.
An application did not mean approval had been granted or that the restaurant had broken a rule. Burger King said the job had remained vacant after months of recruitment and that its pay was competitive. The federal process required the employer to show that it had tried to recruit Canadian citizens and permanent residents first.
Why the wage attracted scrutiny
The Job Bank’s median wage for comparable restaurant-management work was about $22 an hour, while the 2024 living-wage estimate for the Greater Toronto Area was $25.05. Those measures answer different questions: a median describes the labour market, while a living wage estimates the income needed for basic costs. Neither automatically proves that a particular offer is fair or inadequate.
Economists Christopher Worswick and Benjamin Tal argued that ready access to lower-wage temporary labour can reduce pressure on employers to raise pay, improve conditions or invest in productivity. The concern was structural rather than an accusation against one worker: migrants usually have less bargaining power because their legal status can be tied to an employer.
How an LMIA is supposed to work
For a positive LMIA, Employment and Social Development Canada must be satisfied that hiring a foreign national would have a neutral or positive effect on Canada’s labour market. Employers must meet recruitment, wage, record-keeping and workplace requirements, and officials can refuse an application even after it is advertised.
Critics said the test should examine whether better pay, steadier hours or a redesigned job would attract residents. Industry representatives countered that restaurants faced persistent vacancies and that temporary foreign workers represented only a small share of the sector’s workforce.
Rules tightened immediately afterward
New federal restrictions took effect on September 26, one day after the listing appeared. Low-wage LMIA applications would generally be refused in census metropolitan areas with unemployment of six per cent or more, subject to exemptions for food processing, construction and health care. The cap on low-wage temporary workers at a workplace fell to 10 per cent and the usual employment period was cut to one year.
Toronto’s unemployment rate was above that threshold at the time. The exact treatment of this application depended on its filing date, occupation, location and the transition rules; a public job notice alone could not establish the final decision.
The real policy question
Temporary migration can fill genuine short-term gaps and give newcomers lawful work opportunities. It can also create abuse when workers cannot easily change employers or report unsafe conditions. A credible programme therefore needs wage enforcement, inspections, transparent LMIA decisions and realistic pathways for workers to leave a bad job.
The Mississauga advertisement did not prove that foreign workers caused low wages. It did show why a labour-shortage claim must be tested against compensation, hours, local unemployment and recruitment effort. The sound question is not whether migrants are willing to take a job, but whether the programme protects them while ensuring that employers first make a serious, market-based offer to people already entitled to work in Canada.
