The picture-perfect mountain town of Banff, Alta. is still a tourist magnet, but when it comes to hotel staffing, it is struggling to fill vacancies.
鈥淲e have a great turnover with our Canadian applicants,鈥� said Michelle Lapoint, the executive housekeeper of the Moose Hotel. 鈥淭hey tend to come here only for ski season or only for the summer.鈥�
Previously, the town turned to the temporary foreign worker program to help fill roles where there were shortages. But in 2014, the Conservative government overhauled the program, bringing in tighter rules in response to allegations of abuse.
鈥淭he temporary foreign worker program had allowed us in the past to build a solid staffing base with people we knew we could train (and) that were going to be with us for an extended period of time,鈥� said Jennifer Rohloff, the human resources manager of the Banff Lodging Company.
Since the changes, the number of federally approved positions dropped by nearly 80 per cent.
The Banff Lodging Company, which owns nine hotels in the area, says it has 150 jobs to fill. It can legally hire 20 per cent of foreign staff as temporary foreign workers, but says that rarely happens, thanks in part to long processing times for applications that have no guarantee of approval.
鈥淲e pay $1,000 to put an application in,鈥� said Chris Thorburn, the vice-president of operations for the Banff Lodging Company. 鈥淲e have to recruit while we鈥檙e processing the application.鈥�
The Canadian government says that it has seen a 40 per cent surge in applications through the program across a number of sectors, including tourism, and that it is continuing to review the program.
鈥淭ypically, the pressure is for a government to swing back to opening the door to temporary foreign workers, and we know that when we do that, we can actually have a negative effect on the economy,鈥� said Labour Minister Patty Hajdu.
Last month, the federal government announced a $58 million tourism strategy that aims to attract more foreign visitors to a greater variety of destinations. But the tourism industry in Banff says it needs more people to fill the jobs.
